Dear Editor:
I just finished reading Darcy Olson's letter (Riots have root causes, Letters to the editor Dec. 30) attempting to explain the root causes of the "Stanley Cup riot" this past spring. Like others who have tried to explain the cause, Olson has missed the point.
By blaming advertising by corporations that are bent on extracting every last dime from our evershrinking wallets and by blaming individual police officers for somehow not giving society enough confidence in law enforcement, Olson and others have let the rioters/looters off the hook while simultaneously letting our society off the hook. We always like to blame someone or something else instead of looking at ourselves when something goes terribly wrong. The riot and looting that occurred after a sporting event is the symptom of something more complicated than advertising and policing.
I was raised by my parents with the value that we live in a society governed by laws and that each individual in our society is an equal recipient of protections and societal courtesies. Courtesy is the key word that has been lost somewhere along the way when the rioters and others like them were and are being raised in this society.
For some reason, there are enough people like the rioters that are recipients of the courtesies of their fellow members of society who diligently obey the law and contribute to the orderliness that creates civil society. Yet these rioters do not live their life in a way that reciprocates those benefits.
I am not talking about criminals but seemingly "normal" people (that will never have a criminal record) who have a nice clean, shiny car (inside and out) and will toss their trash out of their window (while driving) to maintain their clean car.
These same people will throw their disposable coffee cups, fast food packaging, or cigarette butts into my yard or onto the sidewalk or road as they walk back to their clean homes because they feel that they can litter while somebody else can clean up after them.
These same people can't be bothered with recycling so they just throw all of their newspapers and bottles in the garbage can while others diligently recycle to contribute to the overall good. These people are recipients of societal courtesies yet do not contribute to the civilized society that they continue to benefit from.
Take this localized selfish mentality of our society to a global level with the petulant behavior that is our government's inaction on environmental issues and you can see the parallels of selfishness across various levels.
How did our society become this way? What would these people have done and what will they do if an earthquake hits Vancouver the way it hit Japan a few months before the riot? Will I have to board up my windows to protect my family for two weeks (and hope that nobody burns my house down) until authorities are able to bring order and provide aid to the area? In Japan, people waited patiently in a dignified manner for help and not one case of looting was reported.
What is different about Japan (which incidentally has been in a recession for two decades) that its people did not loot and riot in a selfish, crazed, "everyone for themselves" mentality?
Many have speculated on the causes of the riot and have blamed everything from alcohol, the police, politicians, educators, and all the way to the Vancouver Canucks. We need to look at ourselves.
Somewhere along the line, the rioters began to believe that it is okay to personally cheat and to destroy the orderliness and safety of our society and to just throw the responsibility of cleaning up and paying for the consequences onto others.
The explanation of the cause of the riot begins with the parents who had one to 18 years to shape the attitudes of the looting rioters.
Lets's look at the parents of the rioters and compare them to the parents of those that courageously tried to protect victims from violence and property from vandalism. Let's look at ourselves and our society that I fear might fail if a natural disaster were to strike.
Harmel Guram, Burnaby
