Friday 12 August 2011

Other Narratives.

There are so many theories to these riots (most of which are very neatly summarised here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14483149) that it's very tempting to add one's own.

But each story created from the chaos, says more about the teller than the story.

Let's assume that each person there had their own narrative. A mob may behave like a mob, but it's a coalascing of a thousand different stories, just as each grain of sand in a dune came there by a different route.

So each person was there for a very different reason - the hardened criminal keen to make trouble, the political activist craving a different sort of world, the daft kid caught up in a moment of high drama, greedy children valuing themselves and each other only by what they were, the irresponsible, the disenfranchised, the vicious and the desperate.

Before we can draw conclusions we need to hear those stories. Critically, compassionately, but above all reasonably.

Until then we should stop trying to create our own stories. Let alone trying to build a world on the basis of imaginary narratives.