Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Glice
I'm going to offer an economic idea: in London, there is a very heavy emphasis on money. It's shit-difficult to get a job and a mortgage and live in a nice enough area. The reason nearly everyone on the tube during rush hour is a cunt is because you have thousands of people rushing towards a place where they feel demeaned and under-paid. The high-paid cunts in suits who will mow a geriatric down just for not walking quickly enough (or, sin of all sins, standing on the left on the escalators) have very little regard for anyone. This attitude comes to perpetuate itself in the 'lower' ranks of society.
It's not all doom and gloom, there are a lot of amazing, wonderful people in London. I used to live in Clapton, and the Homerton train where I would get to the rest of the world from was where someone was stabbed a couple of years ago. I met some wonderful people in that area, some amazing teenage freestylers, some of the friendliest African people you could imagine, a crack-head who would give you the shirt off his back (etc etc).
My point is that because the 'higher' ranks in society are often utter turds (which I suspect is a non-causal consequence of house prices (etc)), the young 'uns pick up on that general social nihilism, and manifest it in a different way, with knives.
|
I'd buy that if it was a problem isolated to London, but it takes place all over Britain. I really think it's a cultural thing, albeit one that finds it's most acute expression within more economically deprived areas (be it in parts of London, Manchester, Nottingham and, I'm sure, Bristol). It seems to be a shift in mindset, in which ideas of self-worth are shown almost solely by disregarding the worth of others. In its most extreme form this can be the act of stabbing someone simply because ..., at its more benign level it is playing music at levels that would inevitably antagonise one's neighbours.
Maybe we should stop thinking of kids as 'special', and start letting them know that, in the big scheme of things, actually, they aren't that special at all. I dunno, it's an argument that just goes around in circles. But definitely, until the 'Left' feel willing to look beyond mere economic causes, while the 'Right' come around to acknowledging tougher sentencing isn't the sole solution, we'll be stuck in the middle, having to cope with a problem that doesn't fit particularly comfortably with
any political agenda.