Anthropology Policing

We Are Objects In Their World

May 14, 2023 by David 87 Comments

In the comments, pst314 shares an uplifting, utopian spectacle for Portland’s commuters.

What’s striking about such scenes, I think, is the eye-widening selfishness on display. Other passengers, other people, including children, are seemingly of no importance. Except, perhaps, as obstacles, or targets. And yet we’re told, often and at length, that those who repeatedly indulge in antisocial and criminal behaviour are creatures deserving of indulgence, and with whom we should empathise. As if the favour would ever be returned.

If you’ve watched the reality series Cops or Live PD, pathological selfishness is very much a staple, a defining attribute of the assorted misfits and predators. I remember one lengthy pursuit of thieves who’d robbed a store at gunpoint, terrorised its owner, and then fled the scene in a stolen car, and whose bid to escape did costly damage to other people’s property, and caused other road users to veer and crash, resulting in serious injury.

When finally apprehended, the thieves, themselves unharmed, were entirely unconcerned by the horror and destruction left in their wake, or the fact that it was all but miraculous that no-one had been killed. Instead, they were loudly indignant, as if they were the victims of the drama, heatedly objecting to the discomfort of handcuffs, and demanding to know why their phones had been confiscated. While, within earshot, injured children were being rushed to hospital.

It’s curious how those who find endless opportunities to declare their own altruism and compassion, and thereby signal their elevated status, are very often determined to excuse selfishness of a sociopathic kind and to perform remarkable contortions while doing so.

Such that, having been burgled, for instance – in the middle of the night, by people armed with carving knives – one should apparently sympathise with the bipedal vermin breaking into one’s home and driving off with one’s stuff – in one’s own car. And then, via incoherent prose in a national newspaper, fret about their wellbeing. Burglars being so deserving of our forbearance and goodwill, you see.

If readers are left somewhat puzzled by the piece in question, by Guardian contributor Anna Spargo-Ryan, this is understandable. Consistency doesn’t appear to be a priority, or indeed an option. What matters, it seems, is that Ms Spargo-Ryan is hailed by her progressive peers as a “beautiful person,” oozing, as she is, with infinite compassion. Albeit not so much for other local residents, also robbed in the night, most likely by the same criminal gang, and whose expectations of justice are deemed terribly proletarian and unsophisticated.

But then, ostentatious displays of sympathy for criminals – rather than for their numerous victims, and future victims – are much more statusful. And hey, that’s what matters.

As seen in the links above, the mental convolutions can be quite bizarre. If another illustration is needed, see also this stern moral lecture from the pages of Vice, in which we’re told, emphatically, that the people we should dislike and disdain, and indeed fear, are the ones who don’t feel entitled to rob us, or beat us insensible, or burn down our homes.




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