What’s the Problem With Some of Our Young People
The relaxed and fun-loving beach suburb of Cronulla was shattered on the weekend when it became a theatre of war between Anglo-Australians youths and those of Middle Eastern extraction. It was advertised as a ‘day of pride’, but it will go down as a day of national disgrace. They were fighting for racial solidarity, symbolised by the flag of the Eureka stockade, and brought about by their distain for other cultures and other walks of life.
Six were arrested on Sunday and many more were medically treated for injuries ranging from stepping on broken glass to wounds from being bashed.
Those who are calling these shameful attacks ‘un-Australian’ are missing half the picture. Australia is a wonderful and peaceful country that has adjusted to the mixing of many ethnicities quite well. We are a safe, multi-cultural nation and in this regard we are the envy of the world. But this must not hide the fact we too have a problem with our youths. The wild and care-free energy of our young people is not always being directed into the right canals – those that will build them up as fine, upstanding adults, not mad, violent animals. In this problem we are not alone.
So what was the source of this insane, passionate violence? Disgruntled youths from many parts of Sydney traveled to Cronulla in part motivated by a desire for the excitement of troublemaking and being uncontrollable and destructive. A Sydney Morning Herald poll of over 12,000 readers blamed racism (25%), poor parenting (18%), stupidity (23%), and tribalism (17%).
As true as all these reasons are I would like to mention a few other issues that often get overlooked. Firstly the addition of alcohol was certainly a reason for many of the sporadic outbreaks of violence. Many of the attackers were heavily intoxicated, and as a result were easily responsive to the emotional machinations of the ugly crowd. The mob gave them their targets, and the excessive alcohol the looseness and motivation to attack. Testosterone mixed with alcohol is statistically almost always involved in gratuitous acts of unprovoked aggression, and Cronulla was no different. Not many people call alcohol the ‘demon drink’ anymore. Most young people laugh at the mention of it. But when alcohol is flowing with such quantities as it did during the weekend attacks, it is not hard to see its devilish nature.
Secondly, as much as alcohol consumption and binge drinking are problems for our young people, the collapse of morality, right-from-wrong, and what was known as common courtesy are equality as important when reflecting on the reasons for the weekend’s attacks. Without moral guidance (that is, the guidance of morals), people, particularly youths, are surrendered to some of humanity’s most primitive and evil urges, like the us-versus-them tribalism displayed on the weekend. They did not see that the log in their own eye, before they try to punch the speck out of their brother’s.
The events of the weekend should serve as a wake-up call to all Australians that many of our young people drastically need guidance and discipline.
GORDON MOYES
