As secular as I am, I 100% agree with social conservatives that society is in decay. We have ALL the signs of it. At this stage, it is terminal. I agree, It is a values problem. This is also why some religious conservatives advocate state and religion. Which is also what many muslim’s problem is with the west – it’s not freedom – it’s having a value system based on economics. But many misplace cause and effect – they think the moral decay is causing economic decay – when it is the opposite. Modern economics has caused moral decay – because it is our value system.
Which gets to the heart of my thesis. Culture is an outgrowth of the economic/political system(one entity). Social conditioning is to support this system.
These riots are a prime example of feral consumerism. Or what early economic theorists considered the true “nature” of man – That of a ruthless genetic self-maximizer with no regard to surroundings, whose sole purpose is acquisition of resources for survival and sexual selection purposes – which is why we need a strong government(to protect from mans “natural” passions), with capitalism as the “bloodless” and “enlightened” competition system to channel these “natural” passions, of which all progress flows.
Interestingly, their rapaciousness is practically identical to the financial sector. Just pure ego-driven greed with no regard for law. It’s fascinating that the top and bottom of society are mirrors of each other.
How is this anti-establishment sentiment made manifest? By what can only be described as violent shopping.
Rampaging through the communities they grew up in, rioters take out their frustration over unemployment and boredom on the shops and businesses that provide jobs in their area. They smash-and-grab the luxury items which are supposedly the fruit of all the social climbing, work and effort society enshrines. Their generation’s grand gesture of disobedience is straight-up Western-style consumer-capitalism, pure and uncut, direct from the amygdala. Take whatever you can get your hands on for yourself and trash the commons with impunity.
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These people have been marketed to since birth, where at once they were dehumanized into an object. They’ve been intellectually and spiritually groped in a manner as insidious as the tactics of the most hungry-eyed pedophile. Their sense of self, their very existence, has been mediated by the economy into which they’ve been prepped for entry.
From personalized ringtones to Celebrity Big Brother, every possible act of engagement or empowerment has been a commercial transaction for them. Every sub-culture becomes an economic sector of co-opted dissent.
They’ve been raised as consumers, not citizens.
Given the opportunity to take to the streets, they come out in force as consumers, not citizens. They protest against their lack of spending power, their lack of high definition TV, the meddlesome need of government to extract taxation from them for services from which (if they reach their dotage) they’ll never benefit. They’re the purest incarnation of our free market—consumer ideology.
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By what metric can we judge the behavior of these people once the nature of our society is taken into account? What transgression can we hang on them which does not originate with our own behavior, denial or neglect? Having no sense of community? Having no moral compass? Wanting what they haven’t earned? Taking what does not belong to them? Exploiting the weakness of others through violence? Opportunism? Gluttony? Ignorance? Hypocrisy? Madness? Where can we draw a line that distinguishes their actions here from our collective behavior as a society both here and in countless, far-flung places?
Whatever the conscious motives or underlying machinations, the metaphor of these riots is the real message, a message which we ignore or underplay at our peril.
