Rioters in London: Making Sense of Senseless Violence
Posted: Sunday, August 14, 2011
by Douglas Cartwright
Living Words Coaching and Training
Two days ago my wife called me to say she was heading into one of the riot zones to pick up our 10 month old baby. The nursery had advised us to come and get our children as trouble was said to be brewing down the road from the main high-road.
The scale and ferocity of the rioting has been a shock to many. Commentators have been quick to label it as ‘mindless criminality’ and indicative of a ‘perverse spirit’ amongst our youth.
I am using today’s blog to argue that the rioters’ actions were not mindless and actually possible to understand. And, yes, I do think there are spiritual issues raised here as well.
I would like to offer some thoughts but first my heart goes out to those killed, injured and traumatised from the actions of my fellow Londoners. May God give you rest.
——-
As a man frameth, so is he
You don’t have to have white hair and wisdom to realise that human beings are not inherently logical. We are capable of logic but even our favourite fictional logician – Spock from Star Trek – struggles with his human emotional side.
Humans operate under a different type of logic – psycho-logic – the logic of the psyche. This ‘logic’ makes up its own rules and therefore in order to understand the conclusions it reaches you need to know the assumptions it is based on.
If you don’t know where a person is ‘coming from’ then you won’t understand their statements, emotions or actions. (as in “I don’t know why he did that…”) But to the person doing it – it makes sense – it’s their frame of reference and they live, breath and have their being from it.
The problem is we all operate from different frames of reference. A frame of reference is a mental context we put around situations.
So (for example) we can frame a situation as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and our perceptions and reactions will be created accordingly from out of that frame.
To many people, what the rioters did was:
- Criminal
- Mindless
- Senseless
- Etc.
But people think this because they can’t imagine what a looter could be thinking. ‘Decent people’ operate from a frame of reference of:
- Respect for property
- Respect for laws/police
- Violence is not an answer or at least a final answer
- Working for possessions
- Can’t afford/can’t have
But we know how some of the looters think already. Some have told us: Two 17 year old girls in Croydon said that smashing shop windows was “good fun” and “madness”, they were “celebrating” because they got some “free things.”
One used a ‘blame frame’ of reference:
‘It’s the government’s fault. I don’t know. Conservatives, whoever it is. It’s the rich people who’ve got businesses and that’s why all this happened.’
They believed “it was all about showing the police we can do what we want and now we have” and they “hoped it would continue.”: http://www.metro.co.uk/news/871891-croydon-riot-girls-boast-that-looting-was-good-fun
So we have frames of reference that state:
- Destruction of property is fun (with implications that there is no respect for other’s property.”
- We can do something and the police can’t stop us (lack of respect of police)
- Stealing is okay
- It’s someone else’s fault so that justifies our behaviour
Before you throw up your hands in despair come back for a moment. This is the reality of people growing up with different frames of reference, these get entrenched (or somatised – absorbed into the body) and feel like reality to the user. They then act them out as normal.
This is what our minds do. They seek to act out what we think and feel. As King Solomon said: “Every man is right in his own eyes.” And he was right.
It’s about Values
What is interesting is that while the riots are a visceral and tangible statement for politicians and the rest of us to take note of – that there is an element of society who feel that this is how they want/need to respond to their own issues – the riots were not overtly about making a political statement.
There was no Malcom X or Martin Luther King leading them. These riots were partly an excuse to get status symbols valued amongst that peer group for nothing.
The items looted were often high value, 42″plasma TVs, electronics, trainers: things a lot of these young men and women would have to save hard for or not have.
The looters took things that they valued and others would admire.
They took things that were important to them.
This is coming close to the crux of the matter. A value is a BELIEF that something is IMPORTANT.
ANYTHING we do is backed up by a value which directs us to gain or to avoid.
Therefore, these rioters believed it important to use violence and destruction to get what they wanted.
They believed that burning, hurting and destroying to get what they wanted was important enough that they would defy the laws and the police to do it.
You may not like to read this – but we thought we had a basic alignment of values in our society.
We do not anymore – and the further apart our values systems get the more our society is likely to be at war with itself.
These peoples’ value systems are completely different to ours when it comes to ‘normal functioning’ in society.
Many have never worked. This is not all their fault.
Yet they still value getting what they want, no matter what the cost. This is a dangerous set of beliefs which spilled out onto the streets.
Our society’s value system is sick and I am sick and tired of politicians and police getting pilloried for pointing out there are ‘problems’ in certain communities.
Last year 50 men were convicted of sexually grooming girls and 48 were Pakistani Muslims. Do I have a problem with Packistani Muslims? No.
Do I think the conviction of 48 people from ONE community indicates a problem? YES.
British society is very diverse but no-one seems to have the courage to point to a shared set of values anymore. Well, maybe that time is over.
Yes, we need to get certain people off the streets. But just sending them to prison simply means they’ll be exposed to hardened criminals Supposedly, one third of violent criminals reoffend.
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/uk/en/pressrelease/29691.wss
We are not reaching ‘hearts and minds’ as the Americans say. It is partly because in this multi-cultural and increasingly ‘rights driven’ society we have become afraid of stating what we stand for, for fear of ‘offending someone’.
At my wife’s nursery the teachers were told not to insist the children said ‘thank you’ because they didn’t understand it yet. Apparently they would ‘pick it up when they see you doing it’.
Well, an entire generation has grown up fatherless, poor and seeing drug dealers have the power on the streets. Obviously imitation alone works – but is not enough to create a good citizen!
I believe the readers of this blog are probably more responsible and self aware than ‘Tracey, Courtney, or Tiawana’ so I’m going to say it straight.
As individuals we are responsible for re-creating and changing value systems and the places we let them lead us.
What we were taught -or sold as we grew up – is now our responsibility to change. Don’t tell me you can’t. You may not know how, and it may be darn hard but you want to change for the better, right?
Professor Michael Hall says that what plays in our mind now is our memories but it is up to us to decide how to interpret them. That is a power adults have.
I presume you read about personal development because you want to be successful in your own way.
If you ever wanted a good reason to look at and redesign your value system it’s on the TV burning down a shop in Tottenham (North London) right now…
These people don’t have the awareness to step back and challenge the way they feel (which comes from their thoughts). You do.
It’s about feelings
The violence, in my opinion, is not senseless at-all. If anything it is too connected to senses and unrestrained feelings.
Experiments have been conducted which show that an early years lack of self-control with eating cookies placed in front of a child is a predicator of later life success to some extent.
If you will not restrain your impulses but act them out, you will think and act short term.
This is why I believe love and firm discipline are essential to shaping a child’s character. Teaching your child boundaries and about working for things – this is how the world works.
Yes, we all hope to have a genius idea and make a million by the time we are 20 but for most people that won’t happen.
We need to build our success and reign in our impulses so we can store up and use our resources wisely. I argue that LFT may be a big contributor to lack of success.
Funnily enough, a few years ago one tv channel arranged for 60 young criminal men to be sent to a 1950′s style boot camp. After two weeks of tough love and discipline most had turned their attitudes around and wanted to be responsible citizens.
Lives CAN be turned around
Peter Daniels is one of the 400 richest men in the world. He is a billionaire, owns his own bank and more real estate than you could shake a stick at.
He came from a family that was three generations on welfare; he was poor and illiterate until age 27.
One day he heard a Billy Graham sermon that all men were equal and it lit a fire in him. He determined to be successful and has never looked back.
He is an example of a life that WAS turned around. It can be done.
What is his value system?
He says “I believe the Christian gospel with its absolute principles, …[it] provides me with the strong deep believable motivations which give root to my desire to strive and to achieve within the boundaries with which I feel inwardly at peace.”
I saw him recently speak, at age 78 the man is a powerhouse. He has spent his life following Jesus, someone he is convinced has values worth imitating.
Maybe the first thing we need to do is start giving people some heroes again with decent values? And actually deciding what our society’s values are. We used to know.
Our society has made a mad dash away from Christian values – and as Christianity teaches love, respect, hard work and excellence this is also a spiritual issue.
When peoples’ God becomes their desires they can only go off the rails.
You may not agree with me. But that’s your frame.
Thanks for reading.
Doug Cartwright
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