So you burn your pagoda

[aceofshrubs]

[Companion entry to my piece about social contracts. My reaction to the seemingly dominant reaction to the London Riots.]

I have never been so disappointed in people I thought were reasonable and open minded.

Comments

[swordianmaster]

The problem is that Britain has wingnut retard-ass conservatives who think that anyone who doesn't have pockets as full as theirs is a "lesser" person. EVERY place in the world has them, it's just that in America and Britain, those people are in a seat of power somehow, and as of such are the "damning" majority.

I'm a bit of a wingnut retard, myself, but it's more in the sociopathic, misanthropic "just execute anyone involved in these riots regardless of race, class, or standing" way.

I'm glad that I wasn't the only one to see the obvious parallel between these riots and the 91 LA riots - though London hasn't had a devastating earthquake to trigger things, I don't think.

[swordianmaster]

And to further cement my freakish sociopathy, I want to clarify 'anyone involved' to include the London police and possibly upper echelons of government. They helped start the mess, after all, they should be partly responsible.

All humans are equal. It's a shame that zero equals zero in a vaccuum. People build relationships, and those relationships are the only meaning that any single person has. At their core, a person is only worth the resources they waste.

[swordianmaster]

I'm not disgusted with it, I'm disgusted with people in general, and this rioting... it brings out the absolute worst in people.

[swordianmaster]

also, get on aim gdit

[aceofshrubs]

Actually, I was talking about the 1992 LA riots that started over four white police officers beating a black man and then getting acquitted. Or rather, that's what sparked the riots. They really started over shitty inner-city living conditions, marginalization of certain minorities, unequal wealth distribution and a bad economy.

Some of this stuff is coming out of right wing nuts, and some is coming out of pretty normal people. That your "Execute anyone involved" is one of the mildest things I've read about this*, is pretty much argument enough I think.

----
*Excluding your suggestion about the police, etc, because most people aren't going that far.

[swordianmaster]

...Was King in 92? I could've sworn that it was King -> Earthquake -> Riots in that order, not that there were two sets of riots. Huh, goes to show what I remember about those years.

But yeah. The Rodney King thing goes exactly to show.

(That said, right now I am in fullblown misanthrope and, as I stated above, believe that pretty much every human is on the level of dirt and pond scum.) A huge portion of it is class struggles, as it's the upper class who is blaming ALL of it on the lower class, using them as a scapegoat. Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if a goodly amount of the looting in 1992 was done by rich white Hollywood-ites.

You mentioned civil disobedience in your earlier rant - what happens when a social contract is presented as broken and the contractors react with violence, as opposed to those the contract holds accountable? Tiananmen Square comes to mind.

[aceofshrubs]

Just looked it up, it looks like the Earthquake happened about a month after the riots. Which I don't remember hearing about at all, so goes to show what *I* know :P

That's when the world pretty much sucks, sadly. Civil disobedience CAN work, and so far it seems to generate a more stable system than violence does. But it has limits and it can have a very high cost.

On the other hand, social and governmental change that starts in violence has a long period of recovery and tension after all the fighting stops. Then everyone realizes they still have to live together. Unless there's been a genocide, then things are different >.>;

[aceofshrubs]

Leaving aside the issues behind the broken social contract, my biggest problem with people's response has been the amazingly violent language they've used. There's really no possibility of dialog between the two sides right now, which pretty much eliminates a peaceful long-term resolution. I'm looking further ahead than the immediate rioting when I talk about this.

And as for the calls for a police state- that's a place where your phones are constantly tapped, you're always under observation, the police can harass you for anything and when they do it's often violent. It's not even what England had before these riots- it's worse than that.

[aceofshrubs]

I haven't at any point said the rioters are in the right, doing anything acceptable, or that they shouldn't face consequences. I'm not defending their actions, but I am defending their status as human beings, and bemoaning the way they're being regarded as something subhuman