Cultural Onanism

Image source

 

Looting is a manifestation of scarcity and fear. Why would looting manifest itself in a city that has never known scarcity? Why would looting manifest itself in one of the safest places on earth during one of the safest periods in human history?

From our comfortable armchairs in Canada we've witnessed a collaborative anarchy that stands up to oppression in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Syria. From the same distanced perch we've also witnessed the worst of predatory anarchy in places like Rwanda and Somalia. So what are we to make of the mutant deformation that reared it's head in downtown Vancouver last night? What are we to make of the petty anarchy we witnessed?

GRASSROOTS?
First of all, yesterday's grotesquery seemed to imagine itself as some kind of grassroots anarchistic uprising. Hardly.

Yes, the smell of tear gas triggers powerful human urges. The urge to move toward justice, to fight against oppression, to tear down principalities and powers and strongholds that keep us from our true humanity.

If such urges were activated yesterday, they were activated in vain. No injustice occurred. Therefore justice could not be moved toward. Incredibly naive persons in an embarrassingly inappropriate context moved toward some wildly imagined justice and spent themselves in an orgy of cultural onanism.

These faux libertarians know nothing of the realities of Egypt, Tunisia or Syria. They will most certainly never know the realities of Rwanda or Somalia. They are petulant and bored and their imagined seeds of imagined justice are wasted. They are a parade of masturbating dandies. 

The very possibility of such misguided earnestness speaks to a deep deep spiritual ennui, a profound collective boredom of the soul. Without real scarcity, without justifiable outrage, without any tangible or logical opponent, the impetus to fight oppression becomes a ridiculous and sad parody. It becomes a protest against one's own good fortune.

LOOTING?
Second, how can looting be anything but yet another masturbatory exercise when you've never gone hungry and you lack for nothing? These people are masters of futility. Sated dullards engaging in looting as some triumphal act of resistance is worthy of pity and loathing. Their self-loving self-hatred compels them to the lazy petulance of lashing out at nothing in order to feel something and this response is so sadly predictable so as to be mundane.

THUGS?
Lastly, does snapping facebook pics in front of a fire really make someone a badass? Honestly. True predatory anarchy is a world in which the strong maim and kill and take from the weak. Look at the downtown dandies strut and posture, they imagine themselves thugs, they imagine themselves strong, they think anarchy is their métier. Consider the human condition from a global perspective. In a world of true predatory anarchy, these prancing peacocks would be among the first of the weak to be maimed and killed. They are tourists visiting a game farm they take to be the jungle. They act from secure comfort knowing they will awake tomorrow and life will continue as usual. How brave.

FALL OUT
So what kind of damage did the peacocks do? What have we lost? A couple of cop cars and some consumer goods? If that is your delusion, you are dangerously mistaken. The losses are profound and deep. Our city is more than buildings, pavement, trees, cars and collections of consumer goods. Our city is knit out of the threads of human interaction. Those threads coalesce to form a spirit, something that is separate from us, but emanates from us. The spirit of our city isn't borne out of our collective intentions, it's borne out of how we actually behave toward one another.

If, while walking in my neighbourhood, I throw a rock through a window, the next day I will find my neighbourhood a slightly more anxious, fearful and mean place.

If, while walking in my neighbourhood, I stop to wash a window, the next day I will find my neighbourhood a slightly less anxious, slightly more trusting and slightly more friendly place.

If the above illustration is true of the physical stuff of our city, it is also true of the threads of human connection that constitute the spirit of our city. I can cut threads or I can create threads and both will impact the city I live in. If I create threads of human connection I make the spirit of our city an ever so slightly more livable one. If I go on a self indulgent riotous rampage that infects all kinds of human connections with anxiety, fear and meanness, I have just made the spirit of our city a drastically less livable one.

So that's the deep and profound loss here. Not glass and plants and stuff, but the subtlety of millions of threads of human connection, the spirit of our city. What happened yesterday left a large and cankerous wound on our collective spirit. A lot of threads got cut, or damaged, or pissed on. Our city is potentially a much more anxious, fearful and mean place. But we don't have to let it be. We all have the capacity to create threads of human connection. If we all start doing little things that make our city slightly less anxious, slightly more trusting and slightly more friendly, it'll soon add up to a riot's worth of good, and then we'll have our city back.

 

Posted via email from The Broken Wing