Good to hear @Downtide.
So I get that some of the people participating in these riots (and frankly I think the behaviour has gone beyond rioting) are from disadvantaged backgrounds but others as @ucme said actually come from very privileged backgrounds. I also don’t get that because you are disadvantaged and the people around the corner live in a nicer house and have been fortunate enough to have a better education that that somehow excuses burning down buildings, robbing businesses, robbing and assaulting your neighbours or people in train stations. I don’t see how one justifies the other. The thing that I am trying to understand is how society has reached the point that we care so little about those around us, that carrying out such crimes is every okay for us as individuals. That we care so little about those around us, the place we live, that we could behave in this fashion.
I think @downtide is right about the lack of discipline but I also think it is about a lack of respect for themselves and everything around them. And I again wonder if this isn’t because we are so disconnected from each other. When I was a kid and had a seat on a bus, if there was an older person standing, I was expected to get up and let them sit. My parents expected me to be considerate of the old lady next door and to treat her with respect. My neighbours also took part in this too though. When I messed up, the fact that my dad didn’t see didn’t matter because Mrs Thomas across the road did and she would pull me up just as quickly as my parents would. I still care about that women and her family. When my mother died, I had a whole street of mothers and fathers who rallied around my family to help. I don’t feel confident that would happen now and I wonder if that is part of the problem? We have lost our sense of connectedness to our community. And if you aren’t connected, if you don’t care, it won’t matter to you that you are hurting the people who live around you. You don’t care about them. We are seeing the effects of becoming a “me” society, rather than a “we” society.
These are just my thoughts but I think saying they are disadvantaged is yes true but not sufficient reason for this behaviour. There are many poor and disadvantaged people on this planet, but they don’t all behave this way. How did we get here?