I started a blog post a few weeks ago - the weekend that Amy Winehouse died and the tragic events in Norway unfolded. What had struck me was the polarisation of opinion - the comments that Amy's death was self inflicted, the utter lack of sympathy or understanding for those who suffer from the disease of addiction, the accusations that those who expressed sadness at it were somehow belittling the events in Utoya. As if we had limited supplies of empathy and had to carefully choose where we would dispense it.
I feel the same bewilderment today - four days after the Tottenham protests sparked riots and looting across London and other cites. Maybe its the immediacy, pace and lack of depth that comes with 24 hour news and social media but people seem to be polarised again. I've seen so many knee-jerk demands to 'gas/water canon/shoot' the rioters and so many people describing them as 'animals', 'thugs' or worse. If you don't join the condemnation, the shouting loudly for teenage rioter heads on sticks (or, at the very least, conscripted to 20 years' national service) then you must be condoning their behaviour. It reminds me of the US, post 9/11, with Bush splitting the world neatly into 'Good Guys' and 'Bad Guys', claiming bullishly 'If you aren't with us, you're against us'.
So it is that London has split into the 'Good Guys' (police, small businesses, people who make the former cups of tea) and 'Bad Guys' (the rioting hordes). Shiny white stetsons vs big black stetsons. 'Us' and 'Them'. And 'They' are evil. A homogeneous, faceless gang of baddies. A collective noun. A riot of thugs, if you would.
Then there are those who get very cross when you start to ask 'Why is it that we have generations of British people who are so disconnected from society that they will literally burn their own communities to the ground?'. 'These bleeding heart liberals shouldn't be looking for excuses,' they cry. 'Lets just run the animals over with tanks'. 'They're bad people; they've always been bad people'.
Isn't it a coincidence then that all of these bad people live in such close proximity to one another? That they seem to be comprised of a similar demographic? Is there not a teensy clue there that maybe 'they' don't come onto this earth 'bad people', but that their 'badness' is a product of the lottery that is birth and social status? And if that is the case, then it is a good thing, no? Because we actually have some control over those things. We can decide whether to be an inclusive, supportive and benevolent society or whether to be a society of polarised margins throwing literal and figurative rocks at one another.
I worry that the easier choice - the seductively obvious choice - is the rock throwing. The 'Us' and 'Them' mentality. Its hard to spend time, effort and resource working on being a better society. Its bloody difficult to try to envisage, and then realise, a society where there are no citizens who think that destroying their neighbourhoods 'for kicks' is their only valid option, or who are so divorced from society that a 'fun night out' means destroying their neighbour's livelihood. Its difficult to think of ourselves as connected and sharing responsibility together for the world we all have to live in. But we are, and we do. And if we genuinely want to live in a fairer world, a more peaceful world, then we should.
Its easy to be angry. Its easy to be outraged. Its easy to retaliate and fight fire with fire. But sooner or later, we'll all burn because of it.
