Society's Broken Windows
Posted: Dec 3rd, '04, 08:37
I thought this editorial I found in AM New York this morning had some significance toward the question of "why should we have rules in the chatroom?"
===============================================
By Kathleen Parker, Tribune Columnist
As we marveled over the basketball brawl between players
and spectators at a recent Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons
game — and then the fourth-quarter melee between
Clemson University and University of South Carolina football
players — I kept thinking, “broken windows.”
The “broken windows” theory of social breakdown goes more
or less like this: If a broken window in a building is left unrepaired,
pretty soon all the windows are broken, and so goes the
neighborhood.
The theory was conceived and popularized by Harvard professors
James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They wrote in the
March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly that if broken
windows are not repaired, “the tendency is for vandals to break a
few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the
building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or
light fires inside.”
The authors determined that the way to prevent vandalism —
and thus more serious forms of crime and urban deterioration —
was to fix the broken windows. To clean up the sidewalk. To fix
the small things before they become big things.
As mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani put the theory to work
by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes — subway fare
evasion, for example — and major crime dropped significantly.
It does not seem a stretch that what we witnessed on the
basketball court and the football field is merely the inevitable
conclusion of the general coarsening we’ve witnessed in the
culture the past few decades.
Where Wilson and Kelling considered broken buildings and
littered sidewalks, we might consider a profane and sex-saturated
culture in which course language, base human interaction
and incivility are no longer the exception but the norm. In such a
climate, shock jocks and post-pubescent television producers
think scatological humor and titillation on public airwaves is a
hoot. It’s knee-slappingly funny during family time — the better
to offend.
Parents struggling to raise decent, well-mannered children in
this swamp know, of course, that everything matters. Even the
words we use. When we ignore the little niceties — tolerating
coarse language or behavior in public — we invite larger fractures
in civilization, which is a fragile facade after all.
As for the relentless fascination with variations on ye olde
bump ‘n’ grind, confusion sets in. What’s wrong with sex? Not
one thing — in the right place and time. But the courtesy of
observing certain rules of decorum — previously known as
manners and once taken for granted — is passe. Soooooo whenever.
It is considered sophisticated, on the other hand, to ridicule
America’s “obsession” with such things as Janet Jackson’s
nipple, famously revealed during her “wardrobe malfunction” in
the Super Bowl halftime show.
The point then, as now, is only this. Either we believe in and
honor community standards or we don’t. Ignoring simple standards,
constructed to protect and advance civilization is like
ignoring the broken window. In time, the culture — like the
neighborhood — goes to you-know-where in a handbasket.
===============================================
By Kathleen Parker, Tribune Columnist
As we marveled over the basketball brawl between players
and spectators at a recent Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons
game — and then the fourth-quarter melee between
Clemson University and University of South Carolina football
players — I kept thinking, “broken windows.”
The “broken windows” theory of social breakdown goes more
or less like this: If a broken window in a building is left unrepaired,
pretty soon all the windows are broken, and so goes the
neighborhood.
The theory was conceived and popularized by Harvard professors
James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. They wrote in the
March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly that if broken
windows are not repaired, “the tendency is for vandals to break a
few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the
building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or
light fires inside.”
The authors determined that the way to prevent vandalism —
and thus more serious forms of crime and urban deterioration —
was to fix the broken windows. To clean up the sidewalk. To fix
the small things before they become big things.
As mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani put the theory to work
by strictly enforcing laws against small crimes — subway fare
evasion, for example — and major crime dropped significantly.
It does not seem a stretch that what we witnessed on the
basketball court and the football field is merely the inevitable
conclusion of the general coarsening we’ve witnessed in the
culture the past few decades.
Where Wilson and Kelling considered broken buildings and
littered sidewalks, we might consider a profane and sex-saturated
culture in which course language, base human interaction
and incivility are no longer the exception but the norm. In such a
climate, shock jocks and post-pubescent television producers
think scatological humor and titillation on public airwaves is a
hoot. It’s knee-slappingly funny during family time — the better
to offend.
Parents struggling to raise decent, well-mannered children in
this swamp know, of course, that everything matters. Even the
words we use. When we ignore the little niceties — tolerating
coarse language or behavior in public — we invite larger fractures
in civilization, which is a fragile facade after all.
As for the relentless fascination with variations on ye olde
bump ‘n’ grind, confusion sets in. What’s wrong with sex? Not
one thing — in the right place and time. But the courtesy of
observing certain rules of decorum — previously known as
manners and once taken for granted — is passe. Soooooo whenever.
It is considered sophisticated, on the other hand, to ridicule
America’s “obsession” with such things as Janet Jackson’s
nipple, famously revealed during her “wardrobe malfunction” in
the Super Bowl halftime show.
The point then, as now, is only this. Either we believe in and
honor community standards or we don’t. Ignoring simple standards,
constructed to protect and advance civilization is like
ignoring the broken window. In time, the culture — like the
neighborhood — goes to you-know-where in a handbasket.
