robbery & the human condition
so I may or may not have left my car door unlocked last night - hard to tell, because I have done so before (I've also left the lights on numerous times) - but when I left the house to go to work this morning I discovered that the driver's side door was indeed unlocked and that all of my tapes were gone. all but two actually: an irreplaceable live BNL tape, and the Rheostatics' Whale Music, of which , ironically, I think I have maybe two other copies. There was a Don Cherry tape, a Roy Hargrove one, Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, Miles Davis, U2, Fun For Malakai (damn. that one was irreplaceable too)... and a bunch that Bill Rowat taped for me my first couple years in highschool when I was first getting interested in jazz.
So what the hell? totally feel violated and robbed and bullied. called the police right away, who of course cannot do anything, and simply won't go searching for a bunch of missing cassettes...! that seems to be all they took, too: ownership and registration are still there (I think... afraid to open the little booklet I keep them in to check), mapbook is still there, neither the full cup of cold tea nor the reserve brake fluid has not been poured out into the car, the trunk wasn't popped, the ignition wasn't tampered with, the lights weren't left on (though the right turn signal was... that could've been me, mind you)... all that seems to have happened is that they took the tapes. Who the hell steals tapes, and why?
the main problem is the end result: at the best of times I think people are difficult, shameless, and self-centered. At the worst, I think they're worthless, useless, and fit to be done away with. I often get the urge either to hermit myself away or to move far away from all human contact - like really really far north or something - so this really just feeds that idea: People are bad. we just are. we all act like children in a sandbox, and our worldview is tiny and narrow and uncompromising. We are innately selfish and self-serving. It's no wonder the world is such a fucked up place, honestly. In the end everyone is only looking out for his or her own interests.
I had this funny debate with a friend of mine a few years ago about whether or not there was such a thing as "true" altruism - where the person doing the good thing really gets nothing out of it - and the answer was no. Even a mother dying to save her child is doing so out of self-interest: survival of the genetic line. I had a very hard time accepting this, mostly because I wanted to be right, but it does fit my world view quite well. People are shitheads. Even the Bible backs me up on this one: Psalm 53:3 says, "Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one" (echoed by Paul in Romans 3). And I must remember to include myself in this and not feel self-righteous: I may not have broken into someone's car, but I do tons of stuff that bulks me into this all-encompassing group. It just feels like there's very little that can be done about the human condition, even when we have Christ interceding on our behalf to God.
So what the hell? totally feel violated and robbed and bullied. called the police right away, who of course cannot do anything, and simply won't go searching for a bunch of missing cassettes...! that seems to be all they took, too: ownership and registration are still there (I think... afraid to open the little booklet I keep them in to check), mapbook is still there, neither the full cup of cold tea nor the reserve brake fluid has not been poured out into the car, the trunk wasn't popped, the ignition wasn't tampered with, the lights weren't left on (though the right turn signal was... that could've been me, mind you)... all that seems to have happened is that they took the tapes. Who the hell steals tapes, and why?
the main problem is the end result: at the best of times I think people are difficult, shameless, and self-centered. At the worst, I think they're worthless, useless, and fit to be done away with. I often get the urge either to hermit myself away or to move far away from all human contact - like really really far north or something - so this really just feeds that idea: People are bad. we just are. we all act like children in a sandbox, and our worldview is tiny and narrow and uncompromising. We are innately selfish and self-serving. It's no wonder the world is such a fucked up place, honestly. In the end everyone is only looking out for his or her own interests.
I had this funny debate with a friend of mine a few years ago about whether or not there was such a thing as "true" altruism - where the person doing the good thing really gets nothing out of it - and the answer was no. Even a mother dying to save her child is doing so out of self-interest: survival of the genetic line. I had a very hard time accepting this, mostly because I wanted to be right, but it does fit my world view quite well. People are shitheads. Even the Bible backs me up on this one: Psalm 53:3 says, "Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one" (echoed by Paul in Romans 3). And I must remember to include myself in this and not feel self-righteous: I may not have broken into someone's car, but I do tons of stuff that bulks me into this all-encompassing group. It just feels like there's very little that can be done about the human condition, even when we have Christ interceding on our behalf to God.
posted by BT at 10:53 AM
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