Destruction, Rationalized

Over the past couple of days, some kids threw tomato soup on a Van Gogh (yes, it was covered in glass, but that doesn’t make this better) and glued their hands to a wall, while other kids poured milk over the floor at Marks and Spencer. The former was to “protest” climate change, while the latter had something to do with animals. There are videos floating around of both, but to the extent promoting themselves as the heroes of the woke are the purpose, I decline to post them here.

Both acts were met with outrage by sane people, The initial reaction was to be shocked, not just be the utter stupidity of the acts, by the flagrant narcissism, but also by the counterproductive nature of angering people who would share concern for the cause, but will not find destruction of unrelated objects of beauty and importance, or a floor to be cleaned by the lowest paid workers for the arrogance of little pissants with low self-esteem. After all, who would possible endorse such conduct?

hot take: when was the last time a climate protest of any kind headlined the NY Times, completely dominated your timeline, disrupted exactly zero working class folks, did no damage — and explicitly named the fossil fuel industry?

these protestors are brave. we need more of them. https://t.co/9IVU2N9RTM

— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) October 14, 2022

But what about the condemnation, the disgust, of so many about this unfathomably moronic acts of harm?

This is a recipe for rationalizing anything, not unlike those who believed Trump’s baseless claim that the election was rigged or any other insane conspiracy theory. If people approve of your protest, then it demonstrates its effectiveness for the cause. And if people disapprove of the protest, then it proves that you have broken through their the barrier preventing the lemmings from being able to hide in the status quo and ignore the harsh reality of catastrophe.

See how that works?

This, of course, is argumentum ad Kafka, the Kafka trap of heads I win, tails you lose. If you’re accused of being a racist and admit it, you’re a racist. If you deny it, then you’re totally a racist, since only a racist would deny being a racist. No matter what happens, there’s a lie we can tell ourselves that makes us the victor, the savior, the important person in a world where we fear no one will ever care that we existed. As the saying goes, you will be judged or you will be ignored. There is nothing worse to the unduly passionate than to be ignored.

On the one hand, there will always be someone, whether on social media of in a college classroom, who will string together words of rationalization that empower you to do bad, foolish, dangerous and counterproductive things. If your friends, your teachers, validate your worst feelings, then how can they be wrong?

And to be clear, if I twitted that today was Sunday, somebody on twitter would reply “Actually, it’s Monday in New Zealand.” There’s nothing shocking or surprising that there will be dispute, and often a swarm of gnats if you poke a certain nests. There is no shortage of nuts and knaves out there, and they now find each other and hold hands in support of whatever idiocy moves them.

For the most part, this is harmless in the sense that they worst then can hurl is invective, as if being called “fascist” or “cuck” by a swarm of dopes matters to anyone of substance. But when they are hurling soup at masterpieces, the harm that might follow steals from society things of meaning. Mind you, contrary to their insipid yet twisted thought processes, we are not merely capable of being deeply concerned about things happening in the world without having to harm a Van Gogh to shake the olds out of their comfortable status quo.

It would be easy enough to just chalk up these unduly passionate nitwits as crazies, best ignored so as not to further encourage their antics, but there are a few things that have become undeniable over the past few years. First, narcissism is epidemic among young people. From frog-lipped selfies to broadcasting their worst moments, sometimes made up because their worst moments aren’t bad enough to garner attention, they are in desperate need of other people’s attention. That leads people to be ever-more extreme in their conduct, as behaving like a mere jackass isn’t distinguished enough to cause a ripple anymore.

Second, they’ve been sold the catastrophication of our world. The world will end in a decade if we don’t “fix” climate change. This is the most racist time in history, with cops slaughtering tens of thousand of black people in the streets every year. Crime is out of control such that venturing outside your house means you will almost certainly be murdered. To some extent, each of these things present a real problem. Just not the predicted end of the world tomorrow.

And make no mistake, this same fervor to be a savior and matter extends beyond art galleries and supermarkets to the stops of the capitol, where cos-playing boys dress up like soldiers to fight for the “constitution” against purple-haired harpies on behalf of an orange haired loser.

Each wraps themselves up in rationalizations of destruction, an argument that affirms what they want to do, not because their cause is existential, but because they are sad and pathetic, in desperate need of validation to prove they exist and matter, or else why bother to live? This isn’t to say that no cause matters, or no problem is real or serious, but that the extremes of harm and destruction aren’t about fixing the problems, but about making sad people feel as if they matter by doing enough damage to get other people to look at them.