Morality and the Riots

There’s a phone-in program on right now on BBC Radio 4 on the subject of what should be done to prevent the recurrence of the recent riots in the future. One of the themes that has come up frequently in the last week, and has been emphasised on this program as well, is the idea that the people at the top of the society behave as if they are entitled to whatever they want. Politicians, bankers and the Murdock newspapers are usually cited as examples of the concept. Regular rules of society don’t apparently apply to them. The conclusion is that, with these bad examples in front of them, kids from poor neighbourhoods say to themselves, “Why not take what we want too.”

There may very well be some truth to this theory. My problem with it, though, is that it picks out specific, defined sub-groups of the general society as behaving as if there are no rules for their own behaviour. One of the things that surprised me when I first came to live in England was the pervasive disrespect for rules of any kind. Having previously seen the UK from an outsider’s point-of-view, I came here expecting to find a very polite, orderly, queuing-up sort of society. What I found instead was that, except for bus stops and supermarkets, queuing is not so common.

In a pub or shop it is often necessary to demand your turn to be served in pretty direct terms. Otherwise other customers will just keep pushing to the front. On the road the experience is the same, only scary. During the day, delivery vans commonly park in no-parking zones and block half the street. It always seems to me that the courteous and logical thing to do is take turns passing the illegally parked van. But that is not the way it works. If one car heading in one direction around the van is successful, all the cars behind it will close up the gaps and follow. Cars heading in the other direction don’t have a chance to pass on.

Staying on the subject of driving, speed cameras have become very common around England. They’re a cheaper way to enforce speed limits than having cops do the job. The funny thing is that most people here feel strongly that the cameras are unfair, unsporting really. The idea is that since there aren’t enough cops in cars to patrol the roads properly, drivers are entitled to drive at whatever speed suits them.

The conclusion that I draw from all this (and a lot more in the same vein) is that it’s not just kids, bankers and newspaper editors who aren’t subject to the rules of society. A significant portion of the general population feels the same way. Of course, there are issues of degrees. Most of the population isn’t rioting, but there is a continuum from trivial to serious of exactly the same mind set.