Only one way of looking at things produces a supreme sense of understanding and that is a completely controlled form of delirium or simulation.
- Baudrillard, Cool Memories
Social disorder in a number of Britain’s major cities has stoked fears about social order, in particular race and class. Accordingly, pundits of all persuasions are cranking up their propaganda machines, getting irate, and trying to whip up some mob frenzy around their pet issue or political outlook. Even before the fires were extinguished and order restored the usual suspects were on the scene.
The topics for discussion are familiar: big states, small states, markets, communities, traditional values or new ones, too much welfare or too little. Dependent on political persuasion they condemn or contextualise, but above all bemoan the impunity and brazenness of it all. However, viewing events through these mainstream frames obscures wider civilisational disorder.
Initial musing about race relations and police shootings has waned as a strange materialism stripped of any bounds emerged as the primary behaviour amongst the mob. This is the Epsilon on the rampage; obsessively coveting the material trappings of modernity, yet burning or otherwise destroying what can’t be plundered. It indicates deeply disturbed views on life. However, these views do not seem restricted to those running amok on the streets. There is clearly a profound disconnect between the cohabiting residents of London.
The Commons, the media, and undoubtedly the streets are now awash with competing perspectives on the event. However, the chaos does not reveal any clear lessons about society, the welfare state, youth, or much else for that matter. Indeed this urgent effort to bring meaning to the events is more illuminating than the staid arguments on offer.
The desire to explain is common and urgent. Developing a rational explanation is the first step to reasserting control over life. Explanations facilitate rational responses, promise to stop the behaviour, and return the sensation of normality. However, I feel that this is an instance where reason will not serve society very well.
Indeed the sheer lack of reason is rapidly becoming the stand out characteristic of the event. There is no issue, no platform, no slogans, nothing. It seems we have reached what many critics argue is the final destination of postmodern society’s march to nihilism: a spatiality and practice free of politics. Here is our Brave New World.
Yet fundamental to reaching this point is an approach to society that demands clear causality. In the wave of analysis that currently sweeps the media simple reductions abound. However, what is on show here is not a rampaging, monstrous youth born of the welfare state. Youth is always imagined as overindulged, irresponsible and threatening.
Nor it is simply a matter of the cuts; though those last few quid a week are vital for many, should we honestly believe that explains all this? Of course it is also alienation. This is a generation with fewer chances than many. A situation made worse by the abundant celebration of material splendour all around them.
To try to extrapolate simple lessons from these riots them is to embrace the view that society is simply a complex mechanical entity that requires periodic tinkering to ensure its smooth function. However this is not the case. This disorder is not simply malfunction. A riot is not a protest, nor any other kind of statement, it has no reasonable implications.
Many decry the behaviour of an underclass and call for greater effort to contain and rendered them harmless. State technologies such as prisons, welfare, and education are reiterated as the favoured remedies. However, this simply indulges the notion that the Epsilons really are Epsilons, social detritus that threatens society proper.
However, such a view is challenged by reports that “normal people” have been participant in the disorder. It also demands consideration that despite their lack of participation in organised education and sanctioned economies, perhaps the Epsilon underclass is not as ignorant of society as many would suggest. The idea that being illiterate or uneducated necessarily implies an inability to ponder how things work seems to belie a lack of imagination. Baudrillard reminds us that pondering the others’ stupidity is a risky game. Taken to its extreme, stupidity holds intelligence in check.
Those who find themselves largely excluded from society may have a far more interesting perspective of how it works than those nestled safely within. In this sense these events give cause to consider - in a vague and ambiguous manner - the tone pervading society. Over the last few years it is increasingly visible that social elites behave as though their actions held no consequences, their privileged positions no responsibilities.
Think not only of the ill-conceived wars of choice dubiously begun and carelessly abandoned, but also of the global economy held to ransom by markets and financial institutions “too big to fail” regardless of their irresponsible, antisocial behaviour. These examples are also underwritten by a nihilism that says: I will have my way regardless. If such behaviour constitutes the tone at the top, a tone against which no social strata musters pragmatic opposition, what is left but mimesis?
Should we glean anything at all, it is that nihilism is both a collective and an individual choice. We can confront the strange, complex troubles which beset us socially and personally, we can also try to ignore it all by clinging to rehearsed arguments about order and property, or we can go wild, senselessly taking or destroying whatever takes our fancy.
the Colonial
