An interesting weekend for Londoners.....

Well I guess we were probably overdue a bit of street theatre here in the UK. We typically have some form of rioting about every ten years or so, and generally it is during a period of hot weather. It is questionable as to how much if any effect the weather has on these things, but it is as good a reason as the official one. Apparently the police responded to an incident of an armed man, received fire, and returned it, killing the man. This sparked a response from the local community, leading to widespread rioting and now looting. Anything can be an excuse for this sort of behaviour, but what it tends to come down to is that our society is a lot less stable than we like to think.

There has been a suggestion historically that society is only three meals away from anarchy, but this has never been the case. We see extreme poverty and hunger around the world but seldom the complete breakdown of society despite people missing not just three meals but hundreds. The causes of civil disobedience are many and varied but boil down to just one think. Society, as we have it currently established simply doesnt work in any real sense. People don't "get on" with each other, in the main they barely tolerate each other, and are in a constant state of stress. In normal situations these stresses are dealt with successfully, but once a trigger has been found anarchy is the prefered solution.

If we want to have a society that works, and that is stable we need to completely rethink the way we do things, the way society is managed and governed and the way that it is organised. We need to find a way to encourage people to take pride in themselves, their communities and the wider World as a whole. This can not be enforced or ordered by laws but must come from within, from education and understanding between all peoples. The big problem, and one which must be addressed if we are to succeed as a species is ego. We need to find a way to deal with our egos on an individual and group level such that we remove, or at least subsume the selfishness that causes most of our problems. This is not going to be easy....