[whataretheysaying] Mary Madigan: "A society that places great emphasis on respecting others has next to nothing to say about protecting others"

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Posted by Mary Madigan:
"A society that places great emphasis on respecting others has next to nothing to say about protecting others"
http://whataretheysaying.powerblogs.com/posts/1187898013.shtml


   Three years ago, I visited London and wrote this about the City's art
   and culture:

     The attitudes of a culture are represented by its art. The art of
     the Renaissance rejected stiff, religious icons and took joy in the
     human form. The era of Sensibility was represented by thoughtful,
     warm-toned portraits.

     In Western Europe, the turn of the Millennium was all about flaying
     traditional culture and human beings...

     A culture represented by art that takes great joy in dismembering,
     disrespecting and deconstructing human beings is, to put it nicely,
     probably not heading in the right direction. When I saw those
     displays back in 2000, I wondered â where can these artists go from
     here? If their intent is to shock and horrify, what will they do
     next?

     That question was answered soon after 9/11, when German composer
     http://www.jahsonic.com/20010911.htmlKarlheinz Stockhausen called
     the terrorist attacks "the greatest work of art ever"

     Artist Damien Hirst said he believed the terrorists responsible for
     the September 11 attacks "need congratulating" because they
     achieved "something which nobody would ever have thought possible"
     on an artistic level.

     It's no surprise that these 'deconstructionists' would be so
     thrilled by images of burned and dismembered Americans. ..

     ...When I was in London last week, I saw that Brick Street, once
     the center of the creative/advertising world, is a small outpost
     surrounded by Halal fried chicken shops. Itâs hard to find a decent
     cup of coffee â or a pub.

     In every neighborhood of London, I saw more conservative Muslim
     women, in traditional black chadors, than I saw in Malaysia. In
     some areas, itâs a shock to see a woman without her head covered.
     Harrods was packed with wealthy young black-clad women spending
     their husbandsâ money.

     The [latest] displays at the Tate were tame â one was a retro
     exhibit about the sixties â another was an exploration of the home
     improvement trend.

     - oh, and there was something about the âArt of the Gardenâ.

     University bookstores donât feature sex (bad or good) anymore. I
     wonder if thatâs too un-Islamic. Foucault, Chomsky and other
     regurgitated retro-sixties 'thinkers' are featured now.

     As always, the bold rebels of the art world scrupulously avoid
     doing anything that would provoke a fatwa. The government caters to
     extremist Muslim special interest groups. In the art world, and to
     some degree, in the City itself, it seems that a coup has occurred
     without a shot being fired.

     Creativity in the City is now pretty damned dead. Conservative,
     pre-medieval Muslim dress codes and laws, recently exhumed anti-war
     diatribes are now the 'new' retro cool. Once again, destruction,
     suicide, the disinterred and the dead are on display.

     The only question is, where do they go from here?

   In his essay [1]The day reality hit home, Andrew Anthony answers that
   question:

     One warm-scented summer's evening in 2005 I pulled up outside a
     Thai restaurant to collect some takeaway food for my family. It was
     that relaxed time of the day, after work, the sky still light, that
     promising hour when the night ahead seems to hold unlimited
     potential. To drink in these soft London evenings from a pavement
     café or bar is one of the more civilised pleasures of city life.
     That's precisely what a number of people were doing in Maida Vale,
     a smart neighbourhood in north-west London, 10 minutes' drive from
     my house. All that spoilt the scene was the sound of loud female
     voices piercing the calm some way up the street. It took a few
     minutes to pick up and pay for the food and when I came out I heard
     the noise again, this time interrupted by screams.

     I drove to the corner of the street, where a gang of about 10
     teenage girls was involved in some sort of scuffle outside an
     off-licence. A single girl was being kicked and punched and having
     her hair pulled by the rest. I wound down my side window and
     barked: 'Hey, stop that!' At the sound of my voice the gang eased
     off and looked up momentarily, then, having satisfied themselves
     that I was of no concern, set about their quarry once again. Now I
     could see that blood was pouring from the victim's face on to her
     white, school-uniform-like shirt. I jumped out of the car,
     uncertain of what I was going to do, and headed straight for the
     gang, shouting as loudly and authoritatively as my strangled vocal
     cords could manage. Whatever strange sound was emitted seemed to do
     the trick. This time they let her go and, with theatrical
     reluctance, stepped back. The ringleader proudly inspected her work
     and received high-fives from her companions. A large thick flap of
     skin hung from the cheek of the beaten girl, like a sole that had
     come loose from a shoe. I asked her if she was OK and told her I
     was phoning an ambulance. She was about 16 or 17 and she was
     shaking in shock. She had been stabbed in the face with a broken
     bottle.

     Her attackers casually sauntered off, chatting and laughing, as if
     they had come out of a lively film at the cinema. If they felt in
     any danger they did not show it. I called the police and gave a
     description of the gang and clear directions on where it was
     heading. As I tried to comfort the girl, she was surrounded by
     several helpers. These people were spectators a few seconds before
     but now that the attackers had gone they snapped into loud
     Samaritan mode, shouting at each other and me to stand back as they
     led the girl into the off-licence. Where had these caring voices
     been before when the teenager was undergoing a lifetime's
     disfigurement? The attack had lasted for five minutes, they had
     plenty of time to intervene. I looked around. There were perhaps 10
     adults standing by, men and women, mostly in their thirties, and
     further along, easily within plain view and earshot, were at least
     20 more. Anger began to rise in me. I noticed one stationary
     onlooker with a smile on his face, a sort of amused smirk. He was
     standing no more than five yards away, a well-built, reasonably
     fit-looking man in his mid-thirties. His clothes - faded jeans and
     T-shirt - and general demeanour - unshaven, unruly hair - suggested
     that he did not earn his living as a stockbroker or corporate
     lawyer. He looked like he worked in the arts or some creative
     field, though of course looks can be misleading. In any event, he
     conformed to nonconformist style and I wouldn't have fallen over in
     surprise if I learned that his sympathies were anti-authority,
     pro-underdog, leftish, liberal.

     'What's so funny?' I asked him. 'She's a young girl. How could you
     stand by and watch that happen to her?'

     'Don't have a go at me, you pompous prick,' he replied, full of
     belated aggression. 'Why should I get involved? It had nothing to
     do with me.'

   "Why should I get involved" - that phrase is like a blast from the
   past - the wreckage that was New York City during the 70's and 80's,
   to be exact. Don't get involved was the New Yorker's mantra, our only
   means of self-defense. If someone was mugged, the immediate response
   was to blame the victim - he/she shouldn't have gotten involved,
   he/she shouldn't have been walking down that street, he/she shouldn't
   have been wearing such a short skirt, they shouldn't have been out
   during that time of day.

   Blaming the victim gave people some kind of control over the situation
   - it also gave them a chance to criticize behavior that they never
   liked in the first place. That person got mugged because they did A,
   B, or C. I'll never do A, B or C, so I'll never get mugged.

   And crime got worse.

   We see the same reaction to terrorist attacks. Many pundits blamed US
   foreign policy for the attacks - or they blamed the liberals, the
   homosexuals, the neocons, the people who didn't sign the Kyoto treaty
   or the global imperialists. When al Qaeda attacked Bali, the blame
   cycle started all over again. Iraq gave the critics from all sides and
   opportunity to place blame where it didn't belong . Pundits and
   politicians put more effort into placing blame onto their ideological
   enemies than they do into learning more about our actual enemies, the
   terrorists and their supporters.

   And terrorism gets worse.

   Anthony writes as a liberal who was mugged by reality - first by the
   9/11 attacks, and then by the deterioration of London society. The
   message that comes through is that tolerance of crime, like tolerance
   of terrorism, creates more terrorism and more crime. As Anthony said,
   "A society that places great emphasis on respecting others has next to
   nothing to say about protecting others."

   New Yorker Judith Weiss wrote about Anthony's essay [2]here. She says:

     Thus a once-proud and civil culture is brainwashed into disavowing
     the best of its heritage. It used to be that New York was known for
     its crime and London was the city where one could walk the streets
     at night.

     I had a mild disagreement a few months ago with someone who thought
     our values of individual rights and rule of law are so deeply
     embedded in our society that I was needlessly fretting about losing
     them. My argument was that the shift in values is creeping and
     insidious and one cannot afford to be sanguine about it. Eternal
     vigilance, as they say, is the price of liberty. (It was only a
     mild disagreement because we were at a dinner and the conversation
     was ranging far and wide and I agree with this person about most
     things and I decided not to get into it. But it's something I feel
     very strongly about.)

     Exhibit A: Great Britain.

References

   1. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2151530,00.html
   2. http://www.keshertalk.com/archives/2007/08/muggedby911.php