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

[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