[CanaGuy]

The soccer hooligan's favorite sport: boxing a few ears. Yep, when you're tired of the old lady's nagging, watching telly, biffing the young'uns, and shy a few quid for the off-license...a bloke needs a little excitement in his life, and the riots are made-to-order. Here is Theodore Dalrymple's explanation of the thug's life and the women who love him:

One reason for the epidemic of self-destructiveness that has struck British, if not the whole of Western, society, is the avoidance of boredom. For people who have no transcendent purpose to their lives and cannot invent one through contributing to a cultural tradition (for example), in other words who have no religious beliefs and no intellectual interests to stimulate them, self-destruction and the creation of destructive crises in their life is one way of warding off meaninglessness. I have noticed, for example, that women who frequent bad men - that is to say men who are obviously unreliable, drunken, drug-addicted, criminal, or violent, or all of them together, have often had experience of decent men who treat them well, with respect, and so forth: they are the ones with whom their relationships lasted the shortest time, because they were bored by decency. Without religion or culture, evil is very attractive. It is not boring.

Thugs. I like saying that word. Thugs. The reasons for the riots in Britain have nothing to do with anything, except thugs out for a rant. Well done, thugs.

[CPO retired]

Great post,

Yes, Evil does offer a way out of boredom, doesn’t it? It offers excitement and stimulation too, not to mention a feeling of empowerment.

In the US, we have successfully created a God vacuum in the schools and society, and the void is being filled with another spirit who would be God.

I don’t think there’s an easy way out for us. 20% of the population will vote for skin color, and the majority of women (who are the majority) will vote for someone attractive or with good hair who offers platitudes and rhetoric that makes them “feel” good. “I feel your pain”, and “Hope and change” are examples.

[Oratam]

After listening to his 5 year old daughter say "I'm bored" about a thousand times (it takes up about 5 minutes of screen time) Louis C.K. in an episode of "Louie" says to her:

"‘I’m bored’ is a useless thing to say. I mean, you live in a great, big, vast world that you’ve seen none percent of. Even the inside of your own mind is endless; it goes on forever, inwardly, do you understand? The fact that you’re alive is amazing, so you don’t get to say ‘I’m bored.’"

He's absolutely right.

Bringing it back to England, I can remember watching episodes of "The Young Ones" on MTV in the '80s. The four roommates frequently complained about how bored they were. Maybe boredom is a uniquely English condition.