London Riots - a symptom of what?

London Riots - a symptom of what?

August 10, 2011

After reading the following article, from "World Blog" (NBC news), I was compelled to write my thoughts.

Read the article here at this link:
The Sad Truth Behind London Riot

This article suggests that it is the government's fault for letting the "poor" people down. This is essentially condoning the criminal behavior of the thugs that destroyed millions of pounds worth of property, 100 year old family businesses, and the lives and well-being of hundreds of people.

While my own family was more "middle class" and stable, I went to school with some of these "poorer" people, some of them from dysfunctional homes. My home town was a mix of working class (many of them East-end Londoners) and middle class. But I got to see first hand (and go to school with) the people who many would classify as "poor". Most of them were decent, law-abiding folk doing their best to better themselves, get better educated, working hard for better opportunities for their kids.

But even back then, (in the 70s and 80s) there were thugs amongst them (many of them at my school) who had this gang-mentality of hating anybody in authority, (parents, teachers, police, etc) and deliberately acting to undermine authority. They envied the so-called "rich" or upper-class, and blamed them for everything, and ultimately acted out violently against them. They had this underlying belief that if you have problems:
a) you should expect other people to give you free hand-outs, instead of taking responsibility for yourself, and
b) noone else should be happy or doing well - you should bring everybody else down to your level of misery.

When I came to live in America 15 years ago, I saw this mentality here amongst the poor black communities in the project housing areas in Chicago.
But again, not all the "poor" people were like this - only the criminal gang element.

It is not about being poor and/or black, it is about having a sense of justice, responsibility and community spirit. Of valuing ones own life, ones own achievements and respecting the life and achievements of others. Or not.

Humanity has always been made up of those who are destroyers and those who are creators. How this is expressed depends on the resources available at the time, but rioting and violence for the sake of violence has always been a disease of humanity. Fortunately, caring for others, healing, teaching and creating have also always been positive traits of humanity. Both have co-existed since humanity began.
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Therefore, being poor, and having problems is not an excuse - it does not justify acting in evil, violent, criminal ways. So let's not feel sorry for these thugs. They are not suffering or oppressed. They are living in a free country, in a free society. They are free to live a good life, just like everyone else, and they could if they wanted to.
If they were living under the Taliban regime, for example, then we might be able to point to good reasons behind their violent behavior. But they are not.

What they need is better education from early childhood, by parents who are around, who care and who talk to them. They need encouragement to be responsible, to go out and work and create, not to expect the world to provide for them.

And expecting the government to provide for them, to supposedly alleviate their "suffering", is misguided to put it mildly. This sort of "disease" comes from an over-socialistic society that keeps the poor in their place with heavy taxes and heavy laws that prohibit the growth of the economy.
Read Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged". It was written in 1957 and was very prophetic of what would happen in our century if socialism replaced capitalism.

Here's a quote from one of her books on philosophy:

"The spread of evil is the symptom of a vacuum. whenever evil wins, it is only by default: by the moral failure of those who evade the fact that there can be no compromise on basic principles."
Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, 1966

The London Riots are (in my opinion) a symptom of some of Humanity's biggest diseases - Apathy, Envy, Greed and lack of self respect, a lack of values, a lack of purpose. A lack of many things infact - a void, in other words an "evil". (Ever wonder that the word "evil" is "live" backwards? To live is to seek goodness - to be evil is to be against or lacking in life itself.).