A riot is an ugly thing. And once you get one started, there is little chance of stopping it, short of bloodshed. The best cure is heavy rain.
The question is not why we have riots in the summer, but why we have so few of them.
Articles about political motives miss the point: you can find an excuse for any action if you look hard enough, but all riots are essentially the same outbreak of natural liberty against order, fuelled by the exhilaration once it begins, and the hope of free stuff when looting begins. Alienation you can blame, which is the eternal state of young men. The point of society is to value all so that all have a place, but if a young man searches for slights to feel rejected, and to find points to kick against, he will. This is not about a cause, any more than were the ‘George Floyd’ riots of 2020. They are about excitement, and the joy of liberation from societal norms.
In this Hobbesian world, settled society can only exist because “Desire of Ease, and sensuall Delight, disposeth men to obey a common Power: because by such Desires, a man doth abandon the protection might be hoped for from his own Industry, and labour.“, and likewise “Desire of Knowledge, and Arts of Peace” and “From Love Of Praise Desire of Praise, disposeth to laudable actions“, but this is the thin surface built by individual men and women and ready to be cast aside when the desired goals are not to be met.
Mankind at heart is motivated by the animal instinct. The peace of society is a thin crust. A civilisation a thousand years old can be broken in a moment, whenever young men cease to believe in it.
For the constitution of mans nature, is of it selfe subject to desire novelty: When therefore they are provoked to the same, by the neighbourhood also of those that have been enriched by it, it is almost impossible for them, not to be content with those that solicite them to change; and love the first beginnings, though they be grieved with the continuance of disorder; like hot blouds, that having gotten the itch, tear themselves with their own nayles, till they can endure the smart no longer.
Those who have gathered in the streets may be there for the thrill of it, hurling bricks and burning cars; some for looting; some just to see what a riot looks like, and to join in the fun.
It is crime, plain and simple, yes; but it is more. It is the necessary consequence of the breaking of common society and common understandings. Society has been hollowed out, by neglectful parenting, by the collapse of church-going and the village pub, by prolefeed in place of uplifting entertainment, by screen-bound solipsism, and creation of immature online parallel societies. There are swathes of townscape without social bonds.
Multi-culturalism is a blessing: it means that at least some in society have a culture, where the native-born often have none. (If you want to blame the government, blame it only for trying to monopolise the attention of the nation, instead of sitting back and being a subject within society like the rest of us. Jealousy by government will squeeze out the genuine bonds of society.)
In the meantime, pray for rain, to dampen the enthusiasm to go out in the street.
See also
- The Liberal delusion: a retrospective
- The road and Damascus
- The Noble Savage, Caliban, and Hobbes
- The broken fence
- Quarrel of a dying empire poisoning modernity
- Of the natural Condition of Mankind as concerning their Felicity and Misery
- In fear of Jahannam
Books
- The Liberal Delusion by John Marsh
- By Thomas Hobbes:
- By Anthony Burgess:
- By H G Wells:
- By Aldous Huxley:
- By George Orwell:
- By Jordan Peterson: