The Real Mystery

[poliphilo]

There's no mystery about why the kids did what they did.

The young crave excitement, lack empathy (it's to do with brain chemistry), have a huge sense of entitlement, despise their elders. 

So they smash things up. Everything from bus shelters to social conventions. Some of which is good. 

We've all been there, but we forget- or we cast a retrospective glamour over our youthful shittiness. 

I didn't burn and loot high street shops, but I did things that were, morally speaking, just as bad. Bet you did too.

There's no need to bring poverty into the equation. The PM, the Chancellor and the Mayor of London used to be in a gang called the Bullingdon Club. Their schtick was to get very, very drunk, trash restaurants and assault passers-by.  None of them was poor.

Usually there are restraints in place to keep youthful mischief-making within bounds- to keep the outrages small-scale and local.  For some reason they just failed. 

Why? Why now? That's the real mystery.

Comments

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

I had the option to go out with friends when I was a kid and 'make mischief', and I turned it down- largely because, I think, I was too empathetic. I couldn't throw stones at old people's windows and live with myself. I certainly couldn't find disrupting traffic and endangering lives fun.

But I can see that, for my friends who were involved, it was. They were bored, and there was noone around to stop them. Would they have joined the riots? Quite possibly, yes, for a laugh. Not with the intent of hurting anyone, but perhaps they would have hurt someone if they themselves felt threatened or disrespected.

So- what's needed then is authority, right? Someone to keep them in at night, and stop them running with a wild gang. Someone to instill in them the morality and empathy we plainly don't all have as kids.

So, the parents. Why were my friends, and the kids we see now, allowed out in gangs? Because the parents didn't care, or didn't know, or didn't want to know. The Michael Caine movie Harry Brown basically foresaw this, down to the death of a tormented pensioner just trying to stand up for himself. Kids whose parents can't or won't parent, who don't have dads, who had kids when they themselves were kids too, and have had a good role model.

Can't we expect more of these to be found in poverty? Isn't there a real connection between the welfare-queens the Telegraph demonizes and reality? Poverty doesn't have to be causative for this kind of behavior, but I think that in the uk at the moment, it largely is.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The bad parenting often goes back generations. The bad parents had bad parents who had bad parents. There needs to be intervention, but who's going to do it? An inspirational teacher? A social worker? The local vicar or imam? I don't have any answers.

We used to have a society in which any one who wanted a job could have one. Then we closed down the heavy industries, put thousands out of work and suddenly we had a working class and no work for them to do.

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

So either the country needs to find some jobs for these people, or it needs to convince them to stop having babies...

Maybe in the mean-time some curfews and bans on gathering in gangs would help.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Curfews and bans on gangs sound OK in theory, but you might find yourself outlawing the boy scouts. How do you differentiate (in law) between a harmless gathering of young people and a gang?

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

I guess the key ingredient is approved adult supervision. Approve the adult to supervise- and any kids gathering with them will be ok.

It's the kids loitering in gangs with nothing to do that cause the trouble- so focus on them. I can't see that there's any argument to be made for kids being allowed out to hang out in the park all night with nothing to do. Of course they're going to get drunk, take drugs, cause trouble. There's nothing else for them to do.

[craftyailz.livejournal.com]

Get drunk, cause trouble - now what does that remind me of? Crossing a river without getting feet wet? We've all done it. Is it bad parenting? I don't think so. It's part of being young. I've never done drugs - but some of the most respectable 50 & 60 year old people I know did a lot of them when they were young. People who are damn good parents. Should parents stop their children having alcohol until they are legal? Keep them in after dark until they leave education? My father believed that until you were earning your own living you had no right to any opinion - but as soon as you were earning you should do all you own thinking; how does that work? How do you learn respect if you're not shown it or taught it? How do you learn to live in society if no one shows you? Why is it the young who are always in the wrong?

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

I'm curious if you'd be for kids hanging around causing trouble in gangs at night, Ailz. I just can't, and never could, see any reason for that to be going on. The night shouldn't belong to feral kids 'just blowing off steam', and maybe knifing a few people, robbing a few things, etc.. It should belong to everyone, and anyone who wants to take a walk. But maybe I have a different idea of what a good society should look like. I'd prefer pubs to close earlier too, and have any public rowdiness dealt with with as close to a zero tolerance approach as possible.

Maybe I'm spoiled living in Japan- where this sort of thing doesn't happen. It's kind of unimaginable here. Sure, salarimen pee in the streets, but street violence is totally rare.

About respect, and whose role it is to show the young how to live in society, I'm with you on that. To raise good kids you need to be a role model. I guess many parents either are not, or are unable to overpower the bad role models kids have in their friends.

I don't have a problem with kids doing some drinking either, but why should it be off in some dark Lord of the Flies-like bus shelter? K & R's model for that always seemed very solid to me. Parents can make and organize those calls. And if parents are not prepared to give up that much time, then why would they have kids in the first place?

[craftyailz.livejournal.com]

No, but there again not all kids hanging round at night are gangs or looking to cause trouble. Often they are hanging round as it's the only place they can all meet up. I did it, Alice did it. Kids like the company of other kids and parents don't usually want half a dozen or more hanging out at their house every night.

What about University students they are often in a groups, drink a lot, are rowdy etc., but rarely kill anyone - except themselves maybe.

As for shutting pubs earlier, there are lots of out of town pubs that are closing down. Quite a few round here have gone. Imagine living next door to someone who has their mates round and drink at home instead of the pub - noisy until late or what.

While alcohol is seen as acceptable, in a way that cigarettes aren't nowadays, people will drink. But there again drugs being illegal doesn't stop anyone.

As for K & R you should ask them sometime what they got up to when they were kids.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

It's only a mystery if you rule-out the obvious: economics.

The Bullington Club just makes Cameron look more like Cameron: an upper-class twit incapable of feeling empathy for anyone outside his own socio-economic circle. It makes him look like a mean-spirited and unreflective hypocrite, a selfish school boy with a monstrous sense of entitlement, and so on. Nothing we didn't already know about him personally, or about his class, but surely nothing on which to build a sound equivalence with what's been happening in Brixton.

I liked to smash things when I was a frustrated teen as well, and so did all my friends, but we also thought we had a future. I don't get that feeling from these British youth at all. In the case of that dweeb Cameron, he certainly had a bright and prosperous future ahead of him. I see no equivalence.

In this country, the Reagan Revolution set us on the path to ever greater economic disparity. In Britain, it was Thatcher, but I think both were expressions of the same political movement. When the neo-liberals succeeded them, there was no meaningful change of course, economically speaking, and today we see the rather predictable results. You have angry kids self-destructively smashing shop windows; we have angry Congressmen self-destructively smashing the full faith and credit of the United States. Both are symptomatic, I think. If things don't turn around, I expect to have angry mobs setting shit on fire in this country, too.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes. The gap between rich and poor continues to widen. Cameron has that "we're all in it together" when it comes to his austerity measures, but of course that's not true. People as wealthy as he is are untouched by cuts.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Same in this country. We lost our AAA credit rating largely due to Republican refusal to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy elite. We all know this. Standard & Poors was very explicit about it and had even warned the Republicans, in advance, that their irresponsible behavior would have this result.

The Republicans of course say that it's Obama's fault, obviously, and last I looked the BBC, from its aristocratic perch high above, was still holding both sides responsible.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Why are the wealthy so averse to paying taxes? It's not as if hurts them. We're not planning to ruin them, just shave off a little of the excess.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

The obvious answer, that at least some of the wealthy are just greedy and stupidly short-sighted, seems a bit too glib.

I'm tempted to think there is some sort of psychological dynamic at work. Maybe accumulating wealth excessively is just a species of compulsive hoarding? It also seems obvious that for some individuals his or her self-image is bound up with how much stuff they control and, when lesser people are chipping away at it, perhaps they take it personally.

In the case of my parents, they are not rich, but hate paying taxes because they deeply resent their money being wasted on blacks especially and the poor in general. I find this rather typical of Republican voters. My sister and her husband certainly feel that way. Combined, they make about $500K per year, so again not quite rich but they have more money than I can comfortably imagine.

Truth is, I don't know why. I might as well be trying to imagine what it would be like to have a second head and a third arm.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, about the only thing I was afraid of was a spanking. Loss of privileges? Loss of my pocket money? Severe talking to? pffft. But a spanking? That was real, immediate, and painful, and I would do much (including behaving myself) to avoid one.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I only remember being spanked once. I believe a hairbrush was employed. If my parents wanted to squash me they accused me of "being selfish" in tones of withering contempt.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

My parents beat my sister and I with a belt or whatever else lay to hand, repeatedly and with joyous abandon. As staunchly loyal, John-Birch Republicans they were proud of it and are still proud of it, today.

My young nephew suffers from debilitating anxiety attacks and my mother suggested that my sister just wasn't beating him enough. After all, it had obviously worked wonders for my anxiety attacks, when I was his age.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

My mother said that often, but it was to me as the buzzing of flies at some distance.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My parents obviously had my number. When they said it to me I felt like the lowliest worm in creation.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

Poverty must be a factor, if only on the level that people don't have money to spend on things to distract them. And peer pressure to get the latest designer gear/accessories is HUGE these days, much greater than it used to be.

No idea why the police failed to contain the initial disturbances though - maybe they've become afraid to been to use use force following the death of Ian Tomlinson?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Everybody is blaming the police or the politicians or the parents.

Personally, I am inclined to blame the advertisers.

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

I don't see the logic in blaming advertisers. You said above that -

"The young crave excitement, lack empathy (it's to do with brain chemistry), have a huge sense of entitlement, despise their elders"

Is it advertising that caused that? Would somehow altering advertising regulation (a massive alteration to freedom of speech and free markets) change that?

I'm certain it would not. Half the kids accused of rioting probably didn't even steal anything, or anything worth mentioning. An anecdotal number of those that did stole ridiculous things like cheap rose wine and water bottles. Is that due to the great ad campaigns for Evian?

Does advertising also explain them just plain burning and smashing things, and attacking people? I can't see anything but the most tenuous logic making those connections.

Finally- blaming advertisers pushes the burden of self-responsibility away from the individuals responsible (and their custodians; parents, the police) and onto a seemingly unrelated group. Should we really try to teach these kids (and their parents) they are so dumb and persuadable that they can not be considered responsible for their actions?

More blame culture. The buck has to stop with the people making the choices, and in the case of kids their immediate guardians.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Well, no; it wasn't a logical progression from what I said in the post- more like a flip one-liner.

I said it because I could.

I hate advertising. It's the lie-machine at the heart of consumer culture. It makes us want things we don't need- and value things that are valueless.

I don't actually think there are any simple explanations for what happened. Some of the rioters were poor, some were anything but.

But riots have causes. They're symptomatic of something rotten in the state. Blaming the rioters- and only the rioters- without regard to the society they're part of- will get us nowhere.

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

Ok, fair enough.

As for assigning blame, I agree, the rioters are symptoms of a bigger problem. I'd blame the parents and other authority figures that let things get out of control.

An interesting article here about how authority figures have become too afraid to use any kind of discipline, and how that results in kids doing whatever they want.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8698193/How-to-recover-Britains-streets-for-civilisation.html

[mummm.livejournal.com]

Probably just "Because they can."

It's a shame... and no, as youths we really DIDN'T vandalize and cause bodily harm. At least not the people that I knew.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Most of the people I know did "bad stuff" of one kind or another.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

There seem to have been several different strands of this thing. For example, in In one part of London, the damage seems to have been very specific - banks and electrical shops - nothing else was touched.
Then there was the variety of people involved in different places - the Times found a ballet student, the daughter of a company director, and a primary school teacher, all of whom were involved, whereas elsewhere most of the damage seems to have been done by young men , and in some places even schoolchildren.
Not sure that it's enough to wave the "copycat" banner, although there must have been an element of that. Didn't Twitter come into it - that it was being used to call people out? That's a very new factor, of course
I was very struck by people commenting on the damage it might do to the Olympics - is it just possible that this might be an influence? How many of us wanted to see billions spent on buildings and sport? I'm inclined to hope that 2012 might produce a permanent improvement of travel in London - but is it possible that the disruption caused by planning that huge event - not only in London - has something to do with this?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

A lot of people are very angry about a lot of different things in Britain today. I can imagine that for some people the destruction of East London to build the Olympic complex is one of those things.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

Indeed! On the other hand, some people think that the eventual outcome will be better for east London. I'm reminded of the "slum clearances" that dumped people into strange places far away from their supporting community, sometimes on the higher floors of tower blocks where the lift's often out of service. i used to visit stranded mothers in such, and found it hard to keep my temper when people said how much life had been improved by them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We'll see. One person who's angry about the trashing of East London is Ian Sinclair- the psychogeographer. He's written a book about it. I haven't read the book but I've read some of the considerable publicity it's generated.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I haven't heard of him - but sounds interesting.
To be fair to the planners, it wasn't their fault that the blocks weren't adequately serviced - and Americans don't seem to mind high-rise life - but it made me so angry to hear people talking about "slum clearance" and "improvements", who'd never been inside one of those monstrosities

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I stole bikes and busted street lights when I was a teenager. That - I hope - does not make me a bad person...

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

Uh, yes. It does. It certainly made you a bad person at the time. If you don't do it any more, and have made some kind of reparations for what you did (at least by having the decency to feel bad about it), then perhaps you're not anymore.

Why do you even need to ask? Is stealing bikes and smashing street light somehow acceptable child behaviour? Youthful hijinks?

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

I'm not even going to attempt a justification. Because, really... Being drunk is my best justification, and that hardly - if at all - counts for anything.

My point was: If I've performed careless and inconsiderate acts in my past, does this make me a bad person? I will go all biblical on you and say He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. I cannot cast stones at the rioters, as I suspect you cannot cast stones at me.

What we CAN do, though, is to look at the causes of this behaviour and see it it is at all possible to make structural changes to society that might affect the situation and diminish the odds of it happening again.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Most of us did things like that. And probably felt righteous about it at the time.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

I once stood by and watched other children throwing stones at the (already badly dilapidated) "leaded light" roof of a disused Victorian warehouse/factory, below the hill on which we stood.
I did nothing to stop them, was merely fascinated by the excellent aim of some at the tiny "lights". When the police arrived, it never occurred to me to do anything but stand my ground and give my name and address.
I was fascinated by the skill, and quite unconscious that damaging something that was already falling down might be a crime. I suspect that the main reason that I didn't join in was that my aim would have been so appalling - but I also think that "throwing things" (other than in the garden or on a sports field) was a deeply embedded prohibition.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I once threw a discarded chip wrapper into someone's neat front garden to show my contempt for the "Bourgeoisie".

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I can't stop laughing.

[ooxc.livejournal.com]

"It just blew aht me 'and, sir!"?

[michael john grist (from livejournal.com)]

That may be, but aren't they pretty obviously bad things that shouldn't have done? Or should people just tolerate it, with whole neighborhoods living in fear, because that's just what kids do, and there's no point trying to stop them?

I have a hard time buying that line. It may be what kids want to do, but that doesn't mean they should be allowed to, or get away with it if they do.