Two stories about disorder on the BBC yesterday, one in the heavens and on on earth.
The first, an earthly lament about the rioting in England. An anguished headline,
What turns people into looters?
by zimpenfish
What turns people into looters…
Let’s take a look at the hidden narrative in this headline.
We are not bad people, we are not looters! We get turned into them. Ordinarily we are just fine until something external comes over us. Like a prince before an evil witch, we are turned into slimy amphibians.
We have what looks from every angle like a dilemma. How can ordinary people turn into lawless ruffians over the course of five minutes? Where is the witch? What did it?
Of course, the sensible answer is that people didn’t change or turn into anything.
The sensible answer is that the same people only needed the right set of circumstances in order to behave in a new way.
That is disorder below; what about disorder above?
Well, it turns out we are managing to clutter up outer space with alarming amounts of junk. What a mess! The space junk we’re leaving up there is dangerous and it’s smashing into other junk and making more junk and it’s stopping us from putting even more would-be junk up there!
Oh dear! Whatever shall we do?
by zimpenfish
We’d like to get rid of it, the scientist says. But no one is building a system that can clean it up!
Why not? Well, it’s pretty simple. A system which can remove busted satellites from space can also remove non-busted satellites from space. All our governments are nasty, suspicious and afraid of the fallout of building such a system. Diplomatically, it’s unfeasible.
Why? Because they all know what they themselves would do with it, if they had the circumstances to get away with it.
We question why a little bit of social disorder causes us to take up arms against each other (we’re all such decent, ordinary folk!), but if we actually stop to take a look at ourselves, the heartbreaking truth is obvious.
We can’t even take out the trash for fear of one another.
)