I've been wrapped up in my own issues for the past couple of days, but a news item I caught while I was on my break at work last night dragged me back into the real world, and its iniquities. It could be said, when set against wars, famine, economic meltdown, climate change and the rest, the theft of a work of art is pretty small beer, but it's the mindset the theft seems to typify that I found so disheartening. Some time over Monday night/Tuesday morning, persons unknown, as the stock phrase goes, forced their way into a South London park and stole a bronze sculpture by Barbara Hepworth which had been in the park since 1970, and hadn't even attracted any graffiti in that time. And all the evidence seems to suggest that the theft was simply motivated by the scrap value of the bronze, which surely can't be more than a few hundred pounds, as against the half million pounds the sculpture is insured for as an artwork. Oscar Wilde said that a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing. That observation seems to me to describe much of contemporary society. When major works of art, and even the metal fittings of war memorials, are seen as fair game by the conscience-free to make a few quid, the new age of barbarism can't be far away, if it hasn't already arrived.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
Hi Sammy;
ReplyDeleteThe scrap dealers here in my area are doing great business...and my employer has told us to keep a close watch on our back door so steel doesn't grow legs. It's a sad commentary on life. Our economies have come back to the point where have starving people .. a bit of Oliver Twist -esque.
hugs my friend, and
happy holidays to you.
-randy
Hello Randy
ReplyDeleteThere's no doubt that some property crimes are motivated by desperation, but it seems to me that many more are the result of selfishness and greed, the desire to have 'things', without the inconvenience of having to earn the wherewithal to afford them. And, of course, such crimes are far from being confined to the 'lower orders' - bankers, politicians, lobbyists, televangelists, need I say more?
I hope you have a happy and enjoyable Christmas.
Love & best wishes
Sammy B
It's happening here, too, perhaps not to that scale, but it seems at least once a month there's a news story about someone being horribly burned or killed stealing copper from an electrical substation, where voltages run in the thousands of volts. I truly think that is desperation, because no matter how little education you have, EVERYONE knows that electricity kills, yet they risk it. What bothers me is that scrap dealers, who in good economies would never stoop to but obviously stolen goods, simply snigger and hand over the cash to these clowns.
ReplyDeletePeace <3
Jay
Hello Jay
ReplyDeleteThere's plenty of cable theft going on in the UK - the railway seems to be particularly prone to it, I guess because there are signalling and other power cables all over the place, and so many points of access to the network. The thieves turn up, cut the cables, make off with them, and the trains grind to a halt leaving thousands of people inconvenienced, or even endangered, as a result. I'm sure you're right in saying that some of these incidents are born of need, of families going hungry and making people desperate, but I'm equally sure many of them aren't, arising instead from greed. And, as you rightly say, there's more than one link in the chain, the scrap dealers who don't ask questions, their customers who are equally inclined to turn a blind eye to make money, and so on.
I still think, though, that when it comes to cultural artefacts, in the broadest sense of the phrase, those things that ought to be available to be shared by everyone, it takes the issue to a different level of iniquity. 'Man cannot live by bread alone' is a bit of a cliché, I'll admit, but if everything is just reduced to its immediate monetary value, where's the difference between people and the fox instinctively pillaging the henhouse? Where have the 'higher instincts' of humanity gone?
Love & best wishes
Sammy B