It’s infuriating. It’s offensive. You go to a public park, a main street, and you see artwork damaged. Seats smashed. Trees chopped down. Graffiti splattered on walls. Not even hate graffiti, which at least has some motivation -- even if I reject it -- but just graffiti for the sake of defacing a virgin wall.

            Vandalism. It’s mindless. Purposeless. Meaningless.

            In the village of Telkwa, on Highway 16 through northern British Columbia, people woke up one morning to find that during the night someone – or more likely, a small group of someones -- had trashed a garden display in Eddy Park, where the Bulkley and Telkwa rivers meet.

            I haven’t been in Telkwa for far longer than I like to admit. But I clearly remember that idyllic site -- sparling waters, green grass, with the massive snow-capped symmetry of Hudson Bay Mountain as an unforgettable backdrop.

            Sometime during the night, vandals smashed flower pots, trampled plants, scattered debris throughout the town.

            It happened in darkness. Of course. Vandalism depends on anonymity. Vandals know, deep down, that what they’re doing is unacceptable to society as a whole.

            Vandals – and crooks – are cowards. Anonymity lets them act without risking rebuke.

Vandalism hurts everyone

            Repairs cost the village of Telkwa about $1500, not including the wages of village staff. Which isn’t much, in today’s world, I suppose. Except that Telkwa only has a population of 1500 people. There’s no anonymous “them” to pay for the repair bill; it comes out of everyone’s wallet.

            On his Facebook page, Mayor Repen wrote, “It becomes harder and harder to justify these costs in a Village that is already financially strapped… And yet the law-abiding residents of Telkwa deserve a few basic adornments to foster community pride and ensure that this remains a pleasant village to live in. [So] we are seeking community volunteers to participate in a Citizens on Patrol program, with the intent of identifying those who continue to undermine our community with their destructive actions.”

            I heard about Repen’s posting on the CBC morning news. It felt almost insignificant against the juggernaut of political battles in Washington, flaming apartments in London, wars in Syria, and mass murders all over the U.S.

            Except that few of us are directly affected by those distant events. By contrast, vandalism affects everyone.

“I must be someone!”

            As I have written before, the sheer meaninglessness of vandalism bugs me.

            I can understand, even sympathize with, desperate people who break into a store because they need food, clothing, or medicines. I can try to understand – without in any way condoning – the passions that lead a person to commit murder, or to defy court orders in support of a cause they believe in.

            But I cannot understand the point of vandalism. It benefits no one.

            Simply stiffening penalties will not work. People who commit mindless acts don’t bother thinking about consequences.

            Vandalism strikes me as the last refuge of the hopeless. Their motto is the antithesis of Rene Descartes’ famous epigram, “I think, therefore I am.” Or, loosely paraphrased, “I can think, therefore I must exist.”

            Vandals don’t think. Their motto would have to be, “I can do damage, therefore I must exist.”

            I wonder if it is only their ability to destroy that gives them any assurance of their own reality. When they look at their trail of destruction, they can say, “I can see something I did, therefore I must be real!”

            Otherwise, would they be nothing?

Take away invisibility

            Because vandalism thrives on anonymity, the cure for anti-social anonymous acts has to be exposure. That’s the point behind Mayor Repen’s call for patrols against vandalism. It’s not a resurrection of the Conservative Party’s infamous “snitch line” during the last federal election; it’s a call for people to get involved.

            In a village of just 1500, I’m told, everyone knows everyone. So someone knows who smashed Telkwa’s flower pots.

            Unfortunately, there is no direct way to combat those who hide under the invisibility cloak of anonymity.

            In a kind of vicious circle, anonymity builds false courage.

            Protecting a relative, a friend, a member of a club or team, solves nothing. It merely encourages more vandalism. The perpetrators feel that they have successfully avoided identification. It may even allow them to persuade themselves that they’ve done nothing wrong, because they receive no negative feedback.

            But even if friends and relatives won’t turn them in, vandals will not act if they know someone is watching them.

            Telkwa wants to tear away the curtain of anonymity that shelters vandalism. I hope it works.

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To send comments, to subscribe, or to unsubscribe, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

I took a risk last week, writing about terrorism and apathy in England. I didn’t live through the WWII blitz, or the IRA attacks.

            But George Brigham had some experience with those, and he wrote, “It was good to read your column about terrorism and extremism in Britain. I often found myself declaring, when I lived in London in the 1980s & early ‘90s that the press far too easily labelled Irish terrorists as Catholic and/or Protestant. Today's terrorism is not Islamic despite a lazy media labelling it as such. It is a little surprising that The Independent should fall into this trap, it being much more responsible and trustworthy than most of the UK press.

            “However I do not wish to comment on the situation in this country -- neither the terrorism nor the election. Instead from the many stories of bravery and self-sacrifice to come out of the recent terrorist incidents, I offer this good news story. After the London Bridge incident, a man who was dining in a restaurant [when it happened], went back the next day to pay his bill. I think he'd have coped well in the blitz!”

Ted Wilson: “It’s interesting that you refer to Iodine in a column about extremes. I am allergic to it if I ingest it in quantity, i.e., if I eat any amount of shell fish or other iodine rich seafood. On the other hand I find it quite useful when removing Devil’s Club spines (quite common here in the Temperate Rainforest), wood slivers etc.. Used appropriately and in moderation it has its place. So it is with tolerance, or apathy -- too much or too little is very dangerous.

            Life is a pendulum. The primary function of the cortex is to moderate the fluctuations of the Monkey Brain. Tom Watson’s comment about Trump functioning mostly in his Lizard and Monkey Brains is probably an insult to a lot of lizards and monkeys.

Steve Roney offered an interesting comment: “Your idea that the proper path is a balance of two extremes is a familiar one. It is almost universal. Buddhism, for example, calls itself ‘The Middle Way.’ You see it in the Ba Gua (yin-yang) symbol throughout East Asia, and in the Yoni-Lingam symbol in Shaivist Hinduism. You also see it in Greek philosophy -- Hesiod’s ‘moderation in all things.’ It is at the core of Gnosticism.”

            “However, it is incompatible with monotheism. Think about it: God himself is an extreme: supreme goodness, supreme power, supreme beauty, supreme being. If we follow Him, we are, by definition, ‘extremists’.”

            Actually, I question whether God is an extreme. I also question another sentence from Steve: “Do you believe we should seek a balance between the two extremes of good and evil?” His comments indicates that he persists in thinking about good and evil being the extremes. My point was, and is, that evil and evil are the two extremes – virtues taken to an extreme where they become vices. Good lies somewhere in the middle, somewhere we each have to discover for ourselves.

On the subject of Trump, Bob Rollwagen wrote, “Recently, I have noticed friends and colleagues turning off the news programs to have what they call ‘A Trump-free evening’. Many just refer to him as a liar or a bully. I must admit that the endless and mindless detailed analysis by media of this one Twit on Twitter is numbing me to other more tragic and consequential world news. What are we missing because the airways are filled with ‘The Twit’s tweets’?”

            Bob also wrote, prophetically, about the apartment fire in London:

“The recent appt tower fire in London is horrible. I sure hope it is not the result of a lack of the lowering of professional ethics brought on by administrative financial mismanagement resulting from government budget that favour the needs of the wealthy ‘entitled’ few for low tax and supply-driven economics…”

            Recent news analysis seems to confirm Bob’s pessimism about shortcuts to save money.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca. Or just hit the “Reply” button.

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            My webpage is up and running again -- thanks to Wayne Irwin and ChurchWeb Canada. You can now access current columns and five years of archives at http://quixotic.ca

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PROMOTION STUFF…

            Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at www.singhallelujah.ca

            Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://www.hymnsight.ca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)

            Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://www.churchwebcanada.ca>

            I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, www.traditionaliconoclast.com

            Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawood@gmail.com to get onto her mailing list.

            Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatso@gmail.com or twatson@sentex.net