(Untitled)

[alaria_lyon]

Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy. ~ Anthony Burgess

Comments

[alaria_lyon]

It is apparently from Anthony Burgess - who wikipedia says is an English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic.

I agree with your assessment. I think that the desire to affect is creation though also. Which is why arts programs in schools are so essential. I don't think it's as much that they don't know how to use their energy creatively (or constructively) but that they often do not have the opportunity.

[greenlily]

I'm assuming this is the same Anthony Burgess who wrote A Clockwork Orange. I've never read it, but the film version has the dubious honor of being, to date, the scariest movie I've ever seen.

[stealthdozer]

The old start wars the young die in. Reason will not decide the last.

Contemplation Of The Sword
By Robinson Jeffers (1887 - 1962)

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assassin and poisoner.

The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man's forehead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.

Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed

[imaginaryalice]

Only young people?

[alaria_lyon]

I think as people grow older it becomes less about the desire to create and more about the desire to destroy bigger and better.

[imaginaryalice]

Destroy what's bigger and better than them or destroy on a bigger and better scale than that available to them as young people?

(My icon is totally appropriate :P)