I have a new obsession. Over the last couple of days I've watched every video on http://www.baitcar.com/. Allow me to explain. British Columbia has the highest rate of auto theft in Canada. To combat theft, the police have started placing "bait cars" in high risk areas. When a bait car gets snatched, the police can remotely cut the engine at any time, making it easy to catch the offenders. Baitcar.com posts videos of these offenders as they steal the car, converse, and occasionally smoke crack until the engine is cut, when they invariably freak out (actually, it's not invariably; there's one where a guy starts reading a book, waiting for the police to call him out of the car. You have to be impressed by that kind of stoicism). A lot of the videos are played for laughs, including one where the theives joke about how funny it would be if they wound up on baitcar.com (while assuring themselves that the car they lifted is too "teenager-ed out" to be bait).
I'd like to say that the process has been educational, but it hasn't. Aside from a new verb ("gumping", the meaning of which I have yet to grasp) I haven't learned much. I had high hopes that maybe I would get a small glimpse into what drives (HIYO) these people to steal. Baitcar correctly identifies the link between drug use and car theft, but that wasn't quite what I was looking for. Drugs are the end that these people have chosen. I was wondering why they chose stealing cars as their means.
I'll be honest: I have stolen. When I was around 13 I had a summer of petty theft that was ridiculous. I stole stuff I wanted, like magazines, tapes (which were way easier to steal than CDs), video games and chocolate bars. I also stole stuff I didn't want just for the thrill of it: shoelaces, coin rolls, and at one high point, a box of thumbtacks (which I only just recently threw away). I understand the rush of stealing something, but for some reason there is a marked difference between stealing what I stole and stealing a car, and it's something besides the obvious fact that a car costs a lot more than a box of thumbtacks (unless, of course, you drive a Geo).
Honestly, and this is something I'm not particularly proud of, what makes what I did more acceptable in my mind is the difference between stealing from someone and stealing from something. If I steal a car, I'm stealing from a person (like me). If I steal from a store, I'm (more than likely) stealing from a corporation. And this is what I'll never understand about car thieves, or muggers, or home invaders: how they can so brazenly impose their will on another person and not feel bad about it (or at least, bad enough to stop what they're doing; I do plenty of things I feel bad about, just not bad enough). Do they not think about the inconvienience, the sense of impotence, the fear they put into people? What safety valve in their brain do they close off in order to allow themselves to take a car, a wallet, a television? That's what I was hoping to discover on Baitcar: the root of a car thief's self-entitlement.
I guess what I have learned is that I do not have a perfect compass of morality. I have personally committed the same act as the people on these videos and even though I understand why both my and their acts are wrong, I still do not understand why they do it as opposed to why I did it. There are a lot of reasons I did what I did, none of them any good. Sometimes it was becuase I was hungry (or, I should say, the North American suburban teenager version of hungry, where I casually wanted something to eat because I wanted it), because I was bored, or because I couldn't afford something I wanted. And I've seen some similar reason on Baitcar: some guys were going to strip it for parts to sell, some guys needed to get somewhere, and one guy even did it so he could give a buddy a lift home. Just because I can say with (relative) safety that I wouldn't or couldn't do what the people on the site do doesn't mean that I am free or clear, or better than they are. I have just as much self-entitlement as they do; I just express it differently (mostly by imposing music on people in the car, but in other ways too). If I wanted to be super philo-ma-sophical, I could ask if having a car means you have a sense of entitlement to that car, but considering that generally someone has paid for you to have that car, that entitlement is somewhat earned.
My point is, I think I was hoping to identify and discover what the difference is between me and the people of Baitcar, and since the only difference i could find isn't really a difference except in the way I react to it, there isn't much difference. I can either try to deny those feelings of self-entitlement, or I can start getting good with a screwdriver and find me a sweet Lexus.
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6 comments:
this was awesome.
Interesting post. I've thought about this too from time to time; how can people justify what they do when they steal from people? Are those who steal pathological in some sense, unable to feel empathy or a sense of remorse? I don't think the majority of these kind of thieves are pathological. I think the driving force behind this kind of theft is really a sense of desperation (for drugs, etc.) that far outweighs a sense of empathy or remorse. It's sad because I think a lot of time it comes down to drugs and drug issues are not easily overcome.
you must miss us
LOL well, without you guys to play NHL or SNK vs. Capcom with I'm in my head a little more.
Interesting point, Annie, but what about people who are doing it for the thrill, with no drug related issues?
Hmmm. I'm not sure. I just read an article though in a psychology magazine about what a 'psychopath' is actually defined as, and apparently complete lack of empathy and remorse are some of the main criteria. Maybe these people are psychopaths. It sounds extreme but apparently a lot of people out there can be defined as psychopathic, which makes sense if there is so much theft and other crime out there.
I think the root of self-entitlement that you're looking for is Sin. The root of all human self-entitlement, self-absorption, egoism, etc. etc. etc. is sin. Society doesn't like that word these days, its too "moralizing" (regardless of the fact that ever human decision is, in fact, moral), and too "religious." We often try to use the words "psychopath" and "pathological" instead, but they do not take the reality of sin away.
I was listening to Ravi Zacharais (sp?) on the radio a while ago and he was talking about a prominent Psychiatrist (or Psychologist, I don't remember which it was). This Psych said that the greatest disservice to humanity was to take sin out of the human experience. Regardless of a person's religious background, the presence of sin requires a person be responsible and accountable for their actions. Without an understanding of sin we can rationalize away our actions as not being "wrong." For instance, is it really "wrong" to steal a car to drive a buddy home? In that form of youth culture it isn't. Its honourable. Most of the young offenders I worked with were sorry for their actions because they got caught, not because they thought what they did was wrong.
The unfortunate reality, as you pointed out, is that we're not that much different then "them." We all sin, we all screw up. So we can either work on our skills with a screwdriver and jump starting a car (I would personally go for either a Jetta or a Jaguar) or figure out what it is inside us that drives us towards those actions.... hmmm do I really want to look inside myself that deeply.....
melissa
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