Monday 15 August 2011

England

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world

WB Yeats, The Second Coming.


The commentary on the riots in England makes for interesting analysis. The shock of the riots caused a deep, collective taking of breath; and out of the rush of air from the exhalation has come the great word WHY.

Why is this happening? Why would young people want to trash and loot? Why in a stable and relatively wealthy country? What is it all about?

In the relatively simple way the world is portrayed in the mainstream news media, the first possibility was that the riots might have a political cause. Reporters looked for evidence of the purposeful trashing of buildings belonging to multinational corporations. Was the disturbance a reaction to the economic austerity measures imposed by the British Government? Was it an outpouring of hatred against police and their violence and heavy-handedness in the poor areas of London?

The answer came swiftly and determinedly: there was no justifiable purpose. The chain of spreading mayhem was just that – criminal lunacy. It was simply wanton destruction by people who should know better. “Feral rats” is how one London woman was quoted as describing the looters. “What are their parents doing?”

It’s understandable that in the heat of shocking events like the riots in England words come without thought or reflection. My hope is that some of the more nuanced and complex views are given credence. Unfortunately it is a tendency in our culture to think in dualistic, black-and-white ways. Shades of grey, which are by far the norm in the complexity that is life, are pushed aside. We prefer the either-or approach because it calms our fears and makes sense of the world in a simple and seemingly logical way. The implicit formulation is this: WE are good, peaceful people. THEY are bad people intent on criminality and destruction.

But this kind of binary thinking inevitably leads to more suffering. We fail to see our social and spiritual interconnectedness with the other and so close ourselves off to our own complexity and the dynamic life of the world as a whole.

The looting and destruction in England were criminal and crazy. But they were other things as well. To me at least, in a context of poverty and urban alienation, the riots were a shocking result of the spiritual vacuum at the heart of our culture; a sign of the crisis of meaning that is eating the fabric of society. What creative and life-affirming direction do young people receive nowadays? What guiding role-models? What identity? What life-enhancing stories and myths?

When society does not hold a meaningful, enriching place for young people or offer an identity for them to grow into, then anti-social behaviour is a likely result. The kinds of riots seen in England are a sign of the unravelling of the social order, the decay of moral, political and economic institutions. The bizarre aspect of it all was that the looters were simply following the one remaining god society holds dear – consumption.

And what is the likely result of the disturbances? Inevitably the authorities talk of crackdowns and getting tough on crime, but there have to be strong and creative measures that give young people hope and direction. If poverty and hopelessness prevail, next time the vortex of rioting could be a lot worse.

As WB Yeats said, “the centre cannot hold”; things are indeed falling apart in Europe and elsewhere. However, the death of old forms presents the exciting challenge of renewal and rebirth. It is up to each of us, in millions of ways large and small, to bring the new order forward.