Beware the Beast

Have you all calmed down now? Apparently not! The politicians and the media commentators are all having a field day with recriminations, blame, knee jerk reactions and ill-advised “analyses” of why the #riots happened and what to do about it. Summary, but not exhaustive:

It’s all about inequality.
      So, please explain why the privileged are also prone to this sort of behaviour – the Bullingdon club and that nice Mr Clegg you keep reminding us about?

It’s the coalition cuts to youth services and youth clubs.
      So, please explain why those youths who avail themselves of Youth clubs were tucked up in bed while those who don’t were out on the streets?

It’s all to do with lack of opportunity, exclusion and poverty.
      So, please explain how the rioters all had Blackberries and were wearing Nike Trainers?

The youth of today are the product of the last Labour Government.
      So, please explain what role their parents played? They were the product of a Conservative government.

It’s too much Liberalism brought in by the last Labour Government.
      So, please explain the riots that occurred before that happened?

It’s too much commercialisation and consumerism.
      Again, please explain the riots that occurred before that happened?

The moral decay is led from the top.
      So, did we not know there was corruption at the top until last Saturday?

I’ll stop there, that’s enough to get the picture. The fact is that all of these things are legitimate topics for debate but have nothing whatsoever to do with what we have witnessed over the past week. And what’s really worrying is that I fear the politicians don’t know this and will just do what they did last time, business as usual, which will make it even more likely that it will not only be repeated more frequently but the impact will be even worse.

If you want to understand the riots, you first have to understand the language they are written in. That language is Mathematics. More specifically, Chaos Theory. Chaos produces clusters – I distinctly remember learning this in Primary School, but I don’t suppose they teach that anymore.

Think about what we witnessed on our TV screens. Looting (that’s burglary), vandalism, arson, muggings, confrontation with the Police, graffiti, Knife crime….. These are all everyday occurrences in most communities, some more than others, but they are spread out and mostly containable. Look at your local press. What Chaos does is to concentrate those things into a short period of time in specific locations and triggered (no pun intended) by the butterfly effect which gives rise to herd mentality.

That’s how Nature works. We forget at our peril that we are all part of that natural system, each of us small atoms rushing around in a giant test tube we know as the Earth. That we can think and rationalise does not mean we can control, merely attempt to understand.

By their very nature those triggers are unpredictable, so we know these things will happen again and again, not when or how often, but whatever our social conditions and whatever political ideology is prevalent at the time.

What to do? Well, we behave like boy scouts. We recognise the danger and we prepare to deal with these outbreaks swiftly, effectively, compassionately and reasonably. Not much to ask is it?

Of course I may be talking out of my arse. WTF do I know?

"Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of man; and his number is six hundred and sixty-six" Revelation 13:16-18.