Haven't really been compelled to write anything in a while, but the riots in London have given me pause to think about what's going on.
I think the points have been made that the riots are really an expression of disenchantment manifested through material gain, which is of course the wrong action to take. However, all day, while wanting to castigate the perpetrators of the actions more and more for destroying my beloved London and in meaningless carnage, I've wanted to find ways to think of why they're somehow justified. It leads me to think that the problem is really societal - in the same way that a trader is rewarded for finding a dumb client to take his worthless stocks and CDS off his books; the same way that a real estate developer will develop a building by cutting corners that means he's only building a house for the next 20 and not 100 years; in the same way that an actor will get his agent to negotiate a fee on a film which means that the supporting cast will be of a lesser calibre... it's all a product of a culture of our civilisation in which individual rapaciousness is somehow justifiable by the company that person keeps: I'm sure all of the above examples could quote a bunch of friends/enemies/colleagues/shareholders/rival companies who would do the same thing flashes/blinks/flaps in unthinking/automatic logic. And it's this that justifies it. And then you get one or two who do corroborate that kind of cynicism, and it makes it ok. In a sense, this is what true competition is, and thus, meritocrats find that kind of thinking appealing, because only with true competition do you get growth.
I beg to differ.
The problem for me is that this kind of thing was never intended as good capitalism, and it's not justifiable for a democratic society. It bands together all things that were always seen as evil - avarice, envy, covetousness, etc. because those are always the momentary impulses that we all have to suppress if we really want to not just think of others, but think of for ourselves in the long run. But when you glorify the institute of short term gains and you put it under the heading of decision-making, then you really do get a society which becomes very self-interested.
I don't mean to conflate too many things together, but I really think that unless we start looking to an ethos where people are rewarded for more for long-term projects, which have to win out over periods of time, then there will be no great social effect. Short-termism destroys more potential than it unlocks, and in the case of the riots, it shows how much passing opportunism is a terrible thing to try and base a measure of success on.
Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that this is the typical mode of people that work in professions as I quoted, and that's also not to discount all of the people on the street as opportunists (some are legitimate protesters, others are just common idiots), but what I mean is that as a society, we haven't really explained it to ourselves the kind of fallacy behind that sort of thinking. It is not taught in our schools (where short-termism has won the war over longform expression in any case), it's not carried by our media (which is increasingly interested in the sounbite narrative of adversarial contests), it's not espoused by any kinds of leaders (where we hail those primarily who came from nothing to great power) and least of all it doesn't find it's expression in art (where the succinct expression of a simple idea, beat, joke, point is the pinnacle of artistic endeavour). With odds like these, and no possibility of weaving everything together to form a rational context, no wonder nihilism seems like a pretty viable way out.
I think the points have been made that the riots are really an expression of disenchantment manifested through material gain, which is of course the wrong action to take. However, all day, while wanting to castigate the perpetrators of the actions more and more for destroying my beloved London and in meaningless carnage, I've wanted to find ways to think of why they're somehow justified. It leads me to think that the problem is really societal - in the same way that a trader is rewarded for finding a dumb client to take his worthless stocks and CDS off his books; the same way that a real estate developer will develop a building by cutting corners that means he's only building a house for the next 20 and not 100 years; in the same way that an actor will get his agent to negotiate a fee on a film which means that the supporting cast will be of a lesser calibre... it's all a product of a culture of our civilisation in which individual rapaciousness is somehow justifiable by the company that person keeps: I'm sure all of the above examples could quote a bunch of friends/enemies/colleagues/shareholders/rival companies who would do the same thing flashes/blinks/flaps in unthinking/automatic logic. And it's this that justifies it. And then you get one or two who do corroborate that kind of cynicism, and it makes it ok. In a sense, this is what true competition is, and thus, meritocrats find that kind of thinking appealing, because only with true competition do you get growth.
I beg to differ.
The problem for me is that this kind of thing was never intended as good capitalism, and it's not justifiable for a democratic society. It bands together all things that were always seen as evil - avarice, envy, covetousness, etc. because those are always the momentary impulses that we all have to suppress if we really want to not just think of others, but think of for ourselves in the long run. But when you glorify the institute of short term gains and you put it under the heading of decision-making, then you really do get a society which becomes very self-interested.
I don't mean to conflate too many things together, but I really think that unless we start looking to an ethos where people are rewarded for more for long-term projects, which have to win out over periods of time, then there will be no great social effect. Short-termism destroys more potential than it unlocks, and in the case of the riots, it shows how much passing opportunism is a terrible thing to try and base a measure of success on.
Just to make it clear, I'm not saying that this is the typical mode of people that work in professions as I quoted, and that's also not to discount all of the people on the street as opportunists (some are legitimate protesters, others are just common idiots), but what I mean is that as a society, we haven't really explained it to ourselves the kind of fallacy behind that sort of thinking. It is not taught in our schools (where short-termism has won the war over longform expression in any case), it's not carried by our media (which is increasingly interested in the sounbite narrative of adversarial contests), it's not espoused by any kinds of leaders (where we hail those primarily who came from nothing to great power) and least of all it doesn't find it's expression in art (where the succinct expression of a simple idea, beat, joke, point is the pinnacle of artistic endeavour). With odds like these, and no possibility of weaving everything together to form a rational context, no wonder nihilism seems like a pretty viable way out.
