While students in Chile are fighting for better access to education, Britain's young are rioting for a better access to trendy jeans. At least that is the conclusion an outsider might reasonably entertain. Words are dangerous things, are they not? Limited or insulting, they take on a complex reality stemming from an author's favourite flavour of prejudice or fear, at best, and self-fulfilling prophecies at worst. And yet we are careless in our use of them. For instance, fling around the word 'anarchy' a little too liberally and pretty soon you'll get what you conjure as society accommodatingly reacts, just as a body may react to a hint from the mind, or water ripples in response to being struck. Beware your thoughts! They do indeed have a way of filtering down from the impalpable into the solid visible structure tagged 'your life'. The same goes for society and its collective conscience.
Everyone has their own opinion about the reasons behind the riots. Maybe they are all right, partially right, all wrong, or partially wrong. Apart from what plays out on the field of debate and posturing, what the Outsider wants to know is have we not all been (at least a little) wilfully blind to reality, and was not the current situation long overdue?
Can an unequal society expect to be safe and free? Can you really expect the very poor to live next to the very rich and not want a share? Is this not especially the case where our society prizes over and above anything else the power to acquire and accumulate, spend, use, consume, and discard both things and people? The Outsider has walked around London for years wondering how the two faces of misery and in-your-face wealth accommodate each other, how they manoeuvre in their separate parallel realities playing peek-a-boo through a thin veil of palpable tension.
It is easy to blame parents for being poor educators. They were probably at work trying to make enough money to house and feed their families. It is easy to blame the police for their poor people management skills. They were following orders, and trying to operate in areas rife with drug-fuelled crime and gang violence. It seems to the outsider that we are all responsible, if only by omission. Forgetting to care enough about our immediate surroundings and our immediate future. Living for now and in the worst possible way.
Is it surprising that young people should choose violence when violence is glorified by the prevailing culture? A brief look at what entertainment is on offer hints at what is being carried around in the collective subconscious. A fascination for crime and violence against other human beings. Be it through the way music videos glorify gang life or the careless way in which governments initiate wars, it would be hard to contest that we are, as a global society, seriously lacking in empathy. The capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another human being and understand that person's suffering. Be he the Afghan who loses his entire family in a drone attack, or the London shopkeeper who loses his means of livelihood, we are all at the end of the day, human beings. We all have in common that we are born, that we are certain to die, and that we would like the middle bit to be as pleasant as possible.
The society we have created is one obsessed with the short term. Where Facebook and Big Brother have supplanted relationships based on human intimacy and bonding, and left disconnection and the demeaning treatment of the opposite sex in their stead. We chose to remove God from the equation, only to turn to 'celebrities' for guidance. When the same royalty that stands up supposedly for the honour of his country can be found at sex shows in London's seediest nightclubs, the question must be what sort of society we want for the future, and why are we surprised at the behaviour of an 'underclass' when the so-called 'upper-class' is so obviously lacking in any sort of higher virtue.
We are all in the same boat. Deep down, we all want to give meaning to our lives. So where do you start? How do you cure a society that has gone so fundamentally wrong?
Education is an obvious start. The people on the streets are frightening because they themselves do not understand the reasons behind their actions. They hate and they resent. They feel something is wrong but do not have the desire and sometimes the capacity to lend a voice to their frustration. Education frees an individual by nurturing his capacity for self-expression.
Moreover, every one deserves to experience the innocence of childhood. Those of us, who were lucky enough to have had one, might agree that it is in childhood that you develop the deepest connection with life. Yet to be moulded by life, you experience it in a very vivid form. Children need to be protected in this vulnerable state during which they take it all in. Because it is invariably what you take in in your formative years that you give out later on. Violence on television needs to disappear. All media need to refrain from graphic portrayals of gratuitous violence. We need to accommodate families with children, and allow parents more time with their kids. Organize more cultural exchanges, teach more languages in schools. Through a language comes a new appreciation of the world as it is experienced by those who speak it. Knowledge of other languages breeds curiosity, and respect for other realities.
Respect for the environment is another obvious point we seriously need to consider. Above and beyond paying lip service to political correctness, we need to actually start caring about what happens to our environment. Feeding children's natural fascination with life through direct contact with nature will stand us in a better stead to meet the environmental challenges we face. Destructive tendencies stem from disconnection and alienation from the natural environment and from life. We need to nurture children who have an appreciation for nature and will grow up wanting to protect it.
Finally, we may all have to downgrade our expectations of life. We simply cannot all own a nice car and live in a big house. The world cannot cope with so many demands. We can all learn to be happy with less. The simple things are always the best. Sustained respectful connections with other human beings and with life are principal amongst these.