Arson and Old Lace

I try not to comment on the passing media show, but I have some thoughts on the 18-month string of arsons in the little Pennsylvania town of Coatesville that have drawn national media attention. I grew up 10 or 12 miles from Coatesville, and my first newspaper job was on a little daily there. I say I grew up within a few miles, but it was also a world away. My home was a leafy county seat, but Coatesville was a dying mill town. Lukens Steel is still there, by another name and with far fewer employees, if it's even still operating. But as long ago as the 1980s most of the jobs the mills once offered had dried up.

Some mill towns reinvent themselves—they become destinations, full of shops and restaurants and coffee bars—but Coatesville never managed the trick. A big part of the problem was the people there. Often, in dying mill towns, just about everyone with something to offer the world—intelligence, ambition, drive, that sort of thing—just about everyone like that leaves. That was especially true in Coatesville. I've never been to a place where the choking stench of defeat was so strong. The city's voters compounded the problem a few years ago by electing a slate of city council members who took advantage of smoldering anger over past council missteps by loudly billing themselves as reformers. But they were lamentably lacking in any background that would help them govern; they had nothing to offer but their blind resentment. They've flailed about ever since. Now they've declared a state of emergency. But frankly, I don't see what can be done.

I'm not a criminal psychologist, but it seems clear to me that setting a fire is a way of telling yourself that you exist, that you can do things. It's a stupid, destructive, murderous way to assert your existence, but people will go just that far and farther rather than feel utterly defeated and hopeless. Just now I remembered a conversation I had with a young woman who worked in the office of that newspaper. The subject of televisions or tape decks or some such came up, and she told me that someone in her neighborhood was selling them for $5 or $10 or so. "Well, sure," I said, "but they're obviously stolen." She shrugged. "You'd buy stolen stuff?" I asked. She shrugged again. "You wouldn't feel bad about that?" She wondered why she should. "Well, how would you feel if someone stole your own TV?" She said she'd feel bad. I kept at it, gently trying to get her to understand that stealing was wrong. I swear she wasn't having a bit of fun with me or anything. I think she had simply never been trained to imagine how other people might feel about things in general, and in particular how they would feel if you did something bad to them.

I think imagination is the basis of empathy, and empathy the basis of morality: You imagine how other people feel about things, and guide your own actions accordingly. It's a bad thing when an entire community loses its capacity to imagine. It makes the whole community a little bit sociopathic. They just don't care. Look, we all know who's setting the fires—punk kids. And they're giggling about it. If their own homes burned, they'd be upset. But it's not their homes, so they don't care. And it's exciting—you proclaim your existence in flames three stories high, for all the world to see. You become a celebrity, and you have a sense of agency. You made something happen.

The newspapers and traditional media simply can't acknowledge this truth, though. They'd be deluged with angry letters about what an insult it is to the many good people in the town. And there are, indeed, many good people there. There are good people everywhere. But in some places,like Somalia, the pathology runs too deep. The newspapers are prim about this—they'll call Coatesville "gritty," now and then—but they won't acknowledge the hopelessness. Well, not hopelessness—if you gave it the right leadership, the town could certainly flourish again. But right now the community is in a hole and doesn't know how to get out.

I wonder about saying this publicly myself, even on an obscure little blog. How can I malign an entire town, and say the real problem there is the attitude of quite a few of its residents? I wonder myself, but all I can say is that when I read people's reactions, it's interesting: They rage against the people doing the burning, and they speculate about what the cause is—a gang initiation, or drugs, are the two current theories. Nobody says "anomie"—it's not a very common term in Coatesville or anywhere else. But it's enough to explain the situation. And I haven't heard anyone there say that he or she was surprised about the situation, or ask why anyone would burn down buildings in their own town over and over again. They may not know much about sociological theory, but if they aren't surprised at the situation, maybe it's because in some way they have a pretty good idea of what they're dealing with.