we got back from a trip and picked up the car at our hotel to find that someone had tried to steal the platinum out of its catalytic converters. We weren’t the only one hit, either, though it seems to have been a pretty incompetent set of thieves (they had damaged the cars but failed to get what they were after). The upside to the downside is that the dealership looked our vehicle over pretty closely and found a couple other unrelated problems which need fixing; the downside to the upside is that the cost of all that is going to be a right hook to the budget.The interesting thing is that as I was dealing with our crippled car the other morning, I got about the same reaction from everyone: “I don’t understand how people can do this. It’s sad how there’s no respect for other people’s property anymore.” Personally, I sort of understand it—it goes back to what Jason Lee Steorts was writing about in National Review in the piece I posted on the other day. It’s all about the spirit of vandalism: the willingness or even eagerness to deface and destroy those things which one does not personally value. Steorts talks about it with regard to beauty, but I think it’s a little broader; vandals destroy order (which is the foundation of beauty) for their own purposes, whether logical or illogical. We don’t normally think about breaking into someone’s property to steal something as vandalism, but at the spiritual level, it is: it’s vandalism for the sake of profit. We might call it applied vandalism. And this whole little mess has driven home for me just how much I agree with Steorts when he writes, “My friends ask what makes me a conservative, and sometimes I wonder myself, but there is an answer, and it’s that I hate vandals.” Me too—the acts, at least, even if I’m called to love those who perpetrate them. The spirit of vandalism is the spirit of chaos, of uncreation; it’s one of the truest expressions of the mind and character of the Uncreator.
Oh I am so sorry this happened to you! Hug Sara for me!
Thanks from both of us, Tyler Dawn–we really appreciate your concern.
That sounds like a nasty experience overall.
That’s an interesting definition of the reason to be conservative. I’d say I’m progressive for similar reasons, but I might define “vandal” differently, and I certainly disagree with the conservative position on the solution to the spirit of vandalism…but that’s what it almost always comes down to – the same perceived problem with two very different responses.
I think those of us who hold the positions we do for that reason–whether conservative or liberal–have more in common with each other than our differing proposed solutions makes it look; at the philosophical level, I suspect we have more in common with each other than we do with some of the folks at our own end of the spectrum who hold their positions for different reasons.
And yeah, it was a nasty experience, no question, especially as it kicked off a new round of money worries.
I certainly hope we have more in common that it is usually assumed – otherwise, little hope and a lot of trouble 🙂
🙂
Well, the “lot of trouble” seems to be too often the order of the day in any case. I do think, though, that if conservatives and liberals focused more on the commonalities, we could see and discuss our differences more rationally, with a lot less vilification and name-calling. Sure, some of them would still be big and emotional, but I think that even those could be approached more productively.