Have come across some interesting pieces in the last couple of days on the issues arising from the UK riots.
The first was written by Peter Oborne, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator.
He writes:
Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.
Read the rest here. He’s not very complimentary about politicians from both sides of the political spectrum.
Fair enough. We are all accountable. And politicians need to try to practice what they preach, while remembering that they too are human and subject to frailty.
But as Oborne writes, the double standards are extraordinary:
The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.
The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.
These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society.
Someone tweeted this piece last night saying that what Peter Oborne has written is the moral compass for our time. I reckon there’s something in that.
Hat tip: LM
The dude has a point!
Corrupties are everywhere! 
I don’t think it’s as bad in New Zealand but the same moral argument does apply – from our own parliament there is far too much “do as we say, not as we do”.
From outside people can try to speak out and apply pressure, but as with anything real change has to come from within.
Clare, how can MPs in parliament turn things around and start setting an example that can be followed rather than despised? Somethings do happen, like:
But there are still far too many negatives and “politics/party crap comes first”. MPs need to set more good examples.
Britain’s problems are more concrete than a moral decay of society.
There is a whole raft of proposed causes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14483149 Each is as baseless as the last.
I think they are missing the point. People don’t take to the streets unless they have serious problems. My guess is that the underlying cause is unemployment. That in turn is caused by failing education and welfare systems and a labour market that discriminates against unskilled youth.
These problems are in NZ too.
The Telegraph article was very good, being a pom who was there for the previous tottenham riot, the brixton one, the soccer violence etc I have to say it dosnt take much for us to kick off. Rioting and public disorder is just in our DNA.
Always lots of hand wringing about moral decay afterwards, at least you can’t blame budget cuts as none of them kick in until next year.
If the riots were about need not greed then grocery stores would have been first hit rather than luxury goods stores. The link between the spending cuts of the UK government and the riots is tenuous at best. It has more to do with a young generation that has lost its moral compass through having being bought to expect hand outs rather than hand ups and having no sense of individual responsibility.
Morality and Individual responsibility have nothing to do with each other.
Morals are gained from parents, family and society and are more about doing what is right than havig resposibility for your actions.
Individaul responsibility in being prepared to take the consequence for your actions, if you get caught, and finding a way to take care of yourself(some times through any means that may be legal, or in the grey areas).
They are totally different
@ Waterboy
Individual responsibility could probably be considered a subset or component of wider moral behaviour.
As in “Do unto others…”.
Two words. Rubber Bullets
The concept of ‘individual responsibility’ is a necessary fiction. Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people’s behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.
@waterboy – so everything we do is someone else’s fault??
Although societies must hold individuals accountable for their own actions, people’s behavior is largely determined by forces not of their own making.
Whaaaaaaa….?
Holy dialectical materialism, Batman!
No free will after all, but then again, at least I won’t have to worry about all those dead hookers in the boot of my car.
Society made me do it, your honour!
I think you need to lay off the philosophy books for a while, Waterboy
@waterboy
Wubbish
Waterboy has a point, yes there is free will bla bla bla, but sometimes people can be pushed into doing things that they wouldn’t normally do!
I agree with Gregor et al. The “Daddy didn’t hug me enough/too much argument” isn’t really a good reason for burning and looting. I’d like to hear more about these mysterious forces that make you do terrible things. I know that I want to strangle kittens every time I hear a Brooke Fraser song but I’m lucky enough not to have any pets or latent criminal/violent urges.
Economic downturn, foreign wars, inept/corrupt politicians, unemployment leading to civil unrest…
Why it’s Rome in 3rd century AD. History repeats itself.
people’s BEHAVIOR is LARGELY determined by forces not of their own making.
How to stir up a hornets nest.
Of course peoples behavior is laregely determined by other forces, . If you need milk, you go to the store and get some, if you hae been beaten all your life, you are more likely to beat your children, the choices you make are based upon past experiences, what you perceive to be right, and what you know, free will comes in at this point putting all this together to make a choice.
If you hae never been taught right from wrong, your choices are more likely to be bad choices. Without being taught societys accepted Morals you cannot act upon them, being taught something is a force outside of a persons control.
@Waterboy – agreed!
Here is another good commentary on the causes of the riots by British Labour MP John McDonnell.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McDonnell_(politician)
Many of the media commentators were particularly struck by the TV images of very young looters.
This prompted the torys to go into lengthy diatribes in parliament about bad parenting and the teaching of proper moral values in the home – blah, blah, blah.
I thought that John McDonnell’s quote from the young woman who commented that she had never seen her parents together for months due to their working such long hours just to pay the bills, very telling.
See McDonnell’s speech on youtube, here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM-p-ZZVkYo
But massive amounts of overtime are not just about paying the bills. Increasingly even in New Zealand ‘overtime’ is becoming compulsory. Employers openly threaten workers with the sack for not working weekends or 10 hour days.
Waterboy, I don’t mean to tell you to suck eggs but check out some of the latest reseach in neuroscience.
Mammalian behaviour is a bit more complex than ‘monkey see, monkey do’. While conditioning is a significant factor, it does not by any means preclude instinctive emotional behaviour (e.g. knowing it is wrong to hurt or kill people).
Basically, the rationalists seem to have got it pretty much back-to-front; now backed up by clever experimentation and fMRI scanning.
@Gregor W – what about the research that says baby monkey sees abuse / gets abused and ends up with a different brain structure?
Or a person who goes to prison and then comes out hardened.
I agree with the journalist 100%. I repeat HEAR bloody hear!
Metaphoric bricks are thrown through everyday people’s windows frequently without this PM’s outrage over their morality. Take, hmmm, finance companies for examples, property developers like Bryers and on and on and on.
I accept that sportswear and tvs dont seem like the first port of call of the needy (unless they can get the best price for them when they resell – from which they will pay their rent and buy food) BUT if it were ONLY Greed, would not it be happening all the time?
Absolutely there were opportunists, just as the stock market and finance industry throws up opportunists who rort innocent people for greed.
We do a great disservice if we dismiss this as just being about morals, or lack thereof and equally if we justify it by “poverty” alone. Surely we can all agree that this kind of reaction runs deeper or it would be continuous and daily.
Is this the latest defence, I suffer from :instinct” blame my genetic/dna history? If so, why don’t all people react this way? Anyone got a breakdown of male to female rioters/arrested? I ask because women/females are poor too, or do they have higher morals than their brothers from the same home, or less greed?
“Morals” are intangible. Whose morals? Bishop Tamaki’s or Bishop Tutu’s? Obama’s or Cameron’s. Which parent, parents ideas of right and wrong vary too.
For example, double parking on yellow lines or no parking areas, driving after having your license removed because you were only speeding and need it for work, downloading music without paying… and so on.
@ Spud – where’s that research, mate?
There has certainly been a lot of work done in that area but I don’t believe it talks about physical changes to the brain (I could be wrong though).
Definitely true though that primate testing has shown extreme pathological behavioual issues as a result of systematic abuse, or even lack of affection from the parent.
However, what similar experiments have shown is that empathy exists in primates (and other animals) without compulsion. It appears to be inate.
Fellow-feeling (as described by Adam Smith many years ago) is an important feature of behaviour. It doesn’t need to be taught, BUT it can be weakened by desensitisation.
More recent research has suggested that psychopathic behaviour less linked to heightened emotional state but rather an absence of emotional recognition – basically a brain whose emotional centres are severd or faulty cannot decode the emotional state of others via body language, pain responses etc; no empathy. A lot of this is a brain wiring issue.
George W – There is a plethora of research that shows a lot of our prison population have brain damage. The theory is that its related to severe child abuse. The outcome is not however antisocial behavior directly but impaired impulse control. The expression then becomes the conditioned response rather than the learned response. A lot of this damage however cannot be confirmed except by autopsy. It gets complicated because we can see scar tissue, but need to understand the connections that flow through and natures repairs made to reestablish the connections.
Sorry no research presented – CBF – you can google any serial killer you like and get the same result.
This is why it is almost impossible to change antisocial personality disorder, yet also very manageable in a confined setting.
As for Spuds second point about good people going bad, I’m not sure this is true. I have not hear of any trouble from David Bain, Peter Ellis, Gilford Four etc. People can become institutionalized but as a learned behavior this can be unlearned or compartmentalized (situation specific behavior). What does happen is that those with minor offenses (impulse control) can learn how to move higher up the food chain.
Jeremy –
I think we are talking in parallel. Physical trauma can absolutely cause brain damage. That’s a fact. The same thing happens with brain tumours. I was trying to make the distiction between SEEING vs BEING abused. Seeing does not cause damage but does affect behavioual attitudes.
The brain is pretty complex so I wouldn’t say damage only causes impaired impulse control – that would need to be direct damage to the PFC and ACC areas.
As you stated, these types of antisocial behaviour can be controlled or mediated by environment.
What I was trying to get across was the that I didn’t agree with Waterboy’s original suppositions that;
a) morality and behaviour are separate
b) behaviour is largly an externatility rather than inate
The current science does not back up either of those positions.
Interesting stuff there Jeremy, much appreciated.
Is it really possible to reduce the impact of these folks if we keep trying to find a single simple reason to latch on to explain it all? It seems to me it must be a combination of things because otherwise research would reveal a more straight answer? I’m not dismissing research by the way.
Not everyone with an abusive background become abuser but they do display the background in other ways. perhaps fly off the handle at colleagues and loved ones verbally, over achieve, over compensation, display verbal bullying at work places. It’s not as simple as some abused go bad and some dont.
People carry their baggage in different ways. Some dont carry it at all.
George – Agreed, now I do understand where you are coming from.