Coming Home to Roost

Flash mobs have been organizing in Philly.  (Based on sensational media usage, I will define a flash mob here as a group of people (generally, youth) behaving “anti-socially.”)

I wasn’t alive in the sixties, but I imagine that all those marches & such were seen as something like a flash mob; otherwise, there’s no way that the police & military would have been able behave towards them the way they did with impunity. To be rational, laws were being broken–by definition, anti-social behavior.  To that point of the discussion, the moral implications of laws like segregation are irrelevant. For whatever reasons, the laws existed, & that had been the accepted state of the State before enough people became dissatisfied enough to change it.

Things happen for reasons. Anytime organized youth begin to actively rebel against everyday social order, it is wise to pay attention (it would be a mistake to view flash mobs as unorganized, because they are by definition; they may not be the NAACP, but that’s only because they hold a different set of shared public values).    This is the evolution of the gang, the product of decades of educational erosion.  It’s what happens when a few generations of people are forced to swallow educations that teach that the most important area of mathematics is money, instead of some area that can be studied  to learn how to generate money, for instance. Most people will readily declare that going to college is the best way to ensure that one becomes more competitive economically; learning truth (information) & applying it productively is tertiary, at best (test scores/grades are secondary).

It’s probably why we’re falling behind economically–our basic domestic product (people) hold value systems that don’t measure up to those of others around the world.  When I was growing up, people used to say that there were hungry children in China that were sad because they couldn’t eat my garbage; today, China’s at the bottom of everybody’s financial talk unless they’re discussing the decline of the dollar &/or euro.  Things have changed.

Everything in the universe exists in a state of flux/motion, including societies.  Groups of people have been & are organizing to upset the status quo. They’re getting attention & eliciting reactions from the authorities.  Things are changing.