Vandals

Sometime in the fifth century an Eastern Germanic tribe with origins probably from Scandinavia fought for a foothold in Europe and even ventured onto North Africa finally sacking and looting Rome in 455, which is where the word ‘vandal’ originated.

Vandalism is something that reoccurs and there are spates of it, perhaps relating to the phases of the moon for vandalism is surely lunacy by another name.

But perhaps there is something in us all. After building a sand castle, even the most elaborate sand castle, what kid does not thrill at knocking it down? Most usually done with a smile. A tower of blocks, if not tipped over in the building process, is never standing for long – the builder or a sibling will see to it sooner than later. Patience, frustration and a steady hand are requisites for building a house of cards – maybe that’s a tower – but again someone will give it a puff, or slam a door and the tower will fall.

Any derelict building will have its windows smashed by stone-throwers. How is that different to the playful knocking down of a sand castle? The building is going to be demolished anyway, with the glass unlikely to be salvaged.

So were the stone-throwers testing their aim or were they angry at something and breaking the windows through some malice or other?

Throwing stones at electrical or telephone insulators up on poles is more   usually a test of stone-throwing accuracy and unlikely to be a result of malice but the cost of repairs cannot he sneezed at.

Recent reports of vandalism in a children’s cemetery caused considerable distress for the families concerned, it appears that the damage was carried out by a single individual for reasons that can only be found in his head.

Cemetery vandalism occurs from time to time, sometimes the offender gets a thrill at the toppling of the headstones while others desecrate through some form of hatred for whoever is interred there. Most obvious being Jewish graves, headstones tipped over and swastikas emblazoned. Who knows if the offenders really know what they are doing.

Similar vandalism has occurred to the grave of the unknown warrior which is simply a mindless act because what can you have against an unknown person?

Historical vandalism is nothing new, the first that comes to mind is when Henry VIII fell out with the Pope and decided to reform the church in England by the dissolution of the monasteries. He took the gold and silver [was it melted down or treasured?] and allowed the population to pilfer whatever they wanted. The Catholic church had been levying heavily for their services, so pilfering was a way of payback.

Stone and timber was removed for building and anything else of use was removed. Few would have seen this to wrong because it was sanctioned by the King, but today we see it as historical loss and vandalism.

Ancient writings and artefacts pose no danger, yet the perception of danger or affront gives excuse to carry out the destruction of them. Looking back, how the culture of Poland was dangerous to the Nazis is difficult to fathom but stemmed from a desire to wipe the nation off the face of the earth – as if it were a right. And why destroy the ancient archives of Angevin, Naples?

The burning of libraries has gone on and on, the loss of them has not changed history nor would they have changed history. The great works that have been lost, were records of history and ideas, not only for the people effected but the history of the world. The same way as Pandas are world treasures.

The latest losses, Buddhas of Bamiyan, the Mosul museum and the Assyrian artefacts are a loss to history and memory of the ancients. The world will not change because of the loss. Of course those losses pale in significance to the loss of life, and the atrocities committed; sometime in the future, the memory of what has occurred will be history and be judged.

The thing about this type vandalism, or murder and mayhem for that matter, is that goals can be achieved in different ways. We are all products of our upbringing and so have biases for what we personally accept to be true and correct – we only read articles in the newspaper that interest us, seldom do we read about what we don’t agree with.

So, take a pen and paper, then look around the room you are in and list in your head every item you see that is you favourite colour or shade of it. Then without looking around again list all the items that are your least favourite colour. It’s a demonstration of the natural bias we all have.

This is why resolving disputes through vandalism, murder [slaughter] and mayhem is carried out from a blinkered point of view and considering other options.

The issues are surely complicated, but sometime there has to be resolution, which can only come through compromise and awareness of other points of view.