Broken Window Theory

Was half a bad day actually. Like they say, it gets worse till the end.

Not wanting to tarnish my blog with this irreversibly disturbing memory, I’ll cut the crap short. While waiting for the bus at 6something in the evening with a pal, we came across an elderly man who was seemingly going to collapse under his legs. Long story short, we were 'assisting' him halfway when it turned out he was a drunkard and we decided to ignorantly leave the atrocious scene. A lady was so naively kind enough to pay for him a cab. Stumbled upon him again when we reached; him walking at a swift pace, all the dramatic vertigo almost non-existent in him.

I used to despise taking the bus for several reasons obvious to many. This is one nuisance which I would not hope to encounter again especially after a tiring day as it adds substantial amount of crap to an already educationally-disoriented day. Apart from the fact that there was ‘drama’ to not only behold but naively drawn into which, at the very least, relieved our boredom of awaiting the bus, this was really a foul experience to run into.

However, stumbling upon such situations would almost be inevitable when the bus is a regular mode of transport. I had always disliked the bus station environment for its dilapidated landscape. As such, I often feel a certain unsettling ‘aura’ which seems to repel me from using the bus whenever possible.

It seems that such a condition has reinforced a certain perception. Minor distasteful ‘occurrences’ such as this appear to have served a latent function to somehow being functional to the organic whole of society. It perpetuates a certain extent of disorders in society to naturally cause a change in the structures governing the organic whole. This subsequently moves society to a new social equilibrium to restore social order and as such, social change is able to occur.

But I prefer to apply Merton’s concept of dysfunction here. The disruption of order and stability in the functionalist sense here clearly wasn’t necessarily anticipated nor intended in the theoretical ‘function’ a bus station would perform as an integrating role which contributes to the natural workings of the social system.

Hence, it is these unintended effects which seem to be the “broken windows” by which a spiraling effect of deviancy amplification originates. It signals a message to bypassers or even users that such “practices” ought to be the norm there. Left unresolved, the condition perpetuates itself, almost in an exponential manner, creating and attracting stronger a degree of such conditions. It acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy as this theory works on the basis of false apathy it radiates.

The solution is therefore seen to be the initial eradication of such a condition rather than allowing it to intensify. Realistically, I wouldn’t think that such a solution would succeed anyway. Because it seems inevitable, functional or otherwise.

So I guess no social change that is going to benefit society is going to happen anytime soon. I should probably just accept the culture as being relative then. Or, a less post-modernistic view that there are still inherent inequalities of power and wealth in any society and that therefore such a condition is inevitably prevalent, in our society at least.

Unless there are agents who deliberately break windows for conspiring reasons. Well indoctrinated individuals.

Let’s leave it there.