From the vantage point of middle age, little is more depressing than the prospect of becoming an angry, wizened old coot, slouched on his front porch, tossing little sticks at passing teenagers.
Which is why I am a little reluctant to wade into the London, Ont., riots debate, if indeed it can be called that. What's to debate? Getting mad at these designer-panted, Xbox-playing, skateboard-riding tween-agers (a teenager being a young hobbit in his 20s, not fully mature, in Tolkien's eyes) is too easy. Fish in a barrel.
On the other hand, these little fish did trash a London city street, attack police and firefighters with bricks, boards and bottles, and burn a CTV News van, at a cost estimated at $100,000. The 1,000-strong mob could easily have killed someone. That it didn't is a testament to either brilliant police work or, more likely, luck.
Just as in the aftermath of the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots, it's reasonable to ask why. No doubt the soft-hearted will proffer the usual answers - alienation, disenfranchisement, lousy employment prospects and the like. "Poor dears, we've failed them so." And I think, actually, that we have failed them.
But not in the way that some may think. We've failed them by giving them too much and asking too little in return.
Video games?
Authors such as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman contend that prolonged exposure to point-and-shoot "killing" war games desensitizes players to violence and lowers the natural human inhibition against it.
Grossman offers this as a reason for inner-city mayhem in the United States. I'm not so sure that adds up. I know gamers, young and old, and it seems to me that kids who are decent and not inclined to violence do not become violent simply because they've played World of Warcraft or Call of Duty.
(But do video games turn kids into couch potatoes and slugs? Absolutely.)
What about the decline of moral training and civility generally? Possibly that is a factor. Certainly we live in an indecorous time, in which basic manners and grammar both receive short shrift in the schools.
Traditional ethical training, as embodied in most world religious systems, has been on the wane in Canadian homes for 30 years at least.
On the other hand: Are we to believe that privileged suburban kids, raised by middle-class professional parents, were never taught right from wrong, or that rioting just for the damn fun of it is bad?
That doesn't really add up either, it seems to me. Middle-class working parents, whatever their religious inclinations, tend to teach their kids the value of becoming a middle-class working parent. Rioting and possible jail time are not on the menu.
Here's what I think: we see manifested in the young rioters an extreme form of a malaise that affects all Canadians generally. That is, that we are pampered, to the point of making us spiritually poor. In young people, perhaps that translates into recklessness.
Canadians have no natural geopolitical enemies. We live in a country rich in resources and mostly free of earthquakes, floods, volcanoes and other natural disasters.
Our country is so vast and naturally wealthy, generous and free, by global standards, that it seems a paradise to most people who don't live here. It really is extraordinary, when you travel just about anywhere, to come home. You are painfully aware, especially for the first few days back, of how extraordinarily well the vast majority of us live, compared to just about everyone else.
If Canadians generally are pampered, it stands to reason that our children are even more so - and not necessarily by deliberate parental or societal intent. The generation of kids now in their 20s has been given everything, because their parents love them and they want for nothing. But the lack of any hardship can itself become a hardship, morally and spiritually. What middle-class hooligans lack, perhaps, is a hard challenge and the adrenalin that flows from overcoming it. Hence, the false allure of the riot. How naive, smug, insular and dull must a person be to brag, on Facebook or Twitter, of the crime they've just committed? Only someone who lives entirely in a bubble of comfort could be capable of such stupidity.
Which brings us to my proposed reform and full circle perhaps to the grizzled elder shaking his fist on the front porch. If that is to be my fate, so be it.
I suggest giving those found guilty in the St. Paddy's Day London riot, anyone aged 17 or over, the choice of six strokes of the cane, à la Michael Fay, or two years' military service, a crew cut and "pull up your pants" to be imposed without delay. Or, they should be required to put in two years' community service someplace north, like Attawapiskat, where conditions are tough. Better yet, make a year of military or community service compulsory for all after high school. Let them see how the other half lives and let them put some sweat into helping others.
Honestly, it wouldn't do them a bit of harm. And it might do them a lot of good.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Michael Den Tandt
Which is why I am a little reluctant to wade into the London, Ont., riots debate, if indeed it can be called that. What's to debate? Getting mad at these designer-panted, Xbox-playing, skateboard-riding tween-agers (a teenager being a young hobbit in his 20s, not fully mature, in Tolkien's eyes) is too easy. Fish in a barrel.
On the other hand, these little fish did trash a London city street, attack police and firefighters with bricks, boards and bottles, and burn a CTV News van, at a cost estimated at $100,000. The 1,000-strong mob could easily have killed someone. That it didn't is a testament to either brilliant police work or, more likely, luck.
Just as in the aftermath of the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots, it's reasonable to ask why. No doubt the soft-hearted will proffer the usual answers - alienation, disenfranchisement, lousy employment prospects and the like. "Poor dears, we've failed them so." And I think, actually, that we have failed them.
But not in the way that some may think. We've failed them by giving them too much and asking too little in return.
Video games?
Authors such as Lt. Col. Dave Grossman contend that prolonged exposure to point-and-shoot "killing" war games desensitizes players to violence and lowers the natural human inhibition against it.
Grossman offers this as a reason for inner-city mayhem in the United States. I'm not so sure that adds up. I know gamers, young and old, and it seems to me that kids who are decent and not inclined to violence do not become violent simply because they've played World of Warcraft or Call of Duty.
(But do video games turn kids into couch potatoes and slugs? Absolutely.)
What about the decline of moral training and civility generally? Possibly that is a factor. Certainly we live in an indecorous time, in which basic manners and grammar both receive short shrift in the schools.
Traditional ethical training, as embodied in most world religious systems, has been on the wane in Canadian homes for 30 years at least.
On the other hand: Are we to believe that privileged suburban kids, raised by middle-class professional parents, were never taught right from wrong, or that rioting just for the damn fun of it is bad?
That doesn't really add up either, it seems to me. Middle-class working parents, whatever their religious inclinations, tend to teach their kids the value of becoming a middle-class working parent. Rioting and possible jail time are not on the menu.
Here's what I think: we see manifested in the young rioters an extreme form of a malaise that affects all Canadians generally. That is, that we are pampered, to the point of making us spiritually poor. In young people, perhaps that translates into recklessness.
Canadians have no natural geopolitical enemies. We live in a country rich in resources and mostly free of earthquakes, floods, volcanoes and other natural disasters.
Our country is so vast and naturally wealthy, generous and free, by global standards, that it seems a paradise to most people who don't live here. It really is extraordinary, when you travel just about anywhere, to come home. You are painfully aware, especially for the first few days back, of how extraordinarily well the vast majority of us live, compared to just about everyone else.
If Canadians generally are pampered, it stands to reason that our children are even more so - and not necessarily by deliberate parental or societal intent. The generation of kids now in their 20s has been given everything, because their parents love them and they want for nothing. But the lack of any hardship can itself become a hardship, morally and spiritually. What middle-class hooligans lack, perhaps, is a hard challenge and the adrenalin that flows from overcoming it. Hence, the false allure of the riot. How naive, smug, insular and dull must a person be to brag, on Facebook or Twitter, of the crime they've just committed? Only someone who lives entirely in a bubble of comfort could be capable of such stupidity.
Which brings us to my proposed reform and full circle perhaps to the grizzled elder shaking his fist on the front porch. If that is to be my fate, so be it.
I suggest giving those found guilty in the St. Paddy's Day London riot, anyone aged 17 or over, the choice of six strokes of the cane, à la Michael Fay, or two years' military service, a crew cut and "pull up your pants" to be imposed without delay. Or, they should be required to put in two years' community service someplace north, like Attawapiskat, where conditions are tough. Better yet, make a year of military or community service compulsory for all after high school. Let them see how the other half lives and let them put some sweat into helping others.
Honestly, it wouldn't do them a bit of harm. And it might do them a lot of good.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Michael Den Tandt
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