Europe has many fine traditions. Its newest tradition is the burning car. Why burn cars? Because, as George Mallory once said of mountains, they're there. There are lots of cars around and if you're a member of a perpetually unemployed tribe that wandered up north and forages on social services, you might as well do something to pass the time.
Burning houses is a lot of work and house fires spread. Car fires are simpler. In a welfare state
everyone has houses but not everyone has cars. Burning cars is a way to stick it to those who work for a living. It's also a way to drive off the members of the sickly Swedish tribe and claim the area for your own. And it's also fun.
Either you have a plan for buying a car or for burning a car. Considering the Muslim unemployment rates in Sweden, France and everywhere else, it's safe to say the car burners don't have future plans that involve saving up for a car or taking out a loan for a car or finding work. Cars are things that they steal, either the usual way or by defrauding social services. They might get a car by dealing drugs, but those cars are disposable. One day they'll have to burn them anyway.
If you're the product of an industrialized culture, then you think of a car as a product of work. You realize that it's the product of countless raw materials, that the metals had to be dug out of the earth, that the machines that make it had to be assembled and that men had to stand around putting that into place. And you might be one of those men. And if you aren't, then you might know someone who is.
But if you come from a pre-industrial culture which may have factories, PhDs and cars, but no sense of the connection between product, innovation and effort, then why not burn a car or a city? Things fall into the category of that which you and your family own... and that which they do not. Anything in the latter category may be stolen or vandalized because it has no value.
The notion of a painting in a museum or a scientific principle or an eagle soaring over a lake having value is an abstract notion to you. Value to you is your own identity. A painting is valuable if you own it. If it sits in a museum, then you can either steal it or burn down the museum. The principle is worthless unless you can cash in on it. The eagle is worthless unless you can kill it or identify with it.
Some people would call that savagery, but that sort of talk is politically incorrect. And we all know that there are no such things as savages. The true savages are the people who use scientific principles to make cars and then use the money to commission paintings of soaring eagles for museums because they are greedy exploiters of the planet. On the other hand, the noble savages whose herds of sheep and goats turn fertile land into desert, who burned the great libraries of civilization and who believe that the hair of women emits rays that passing airplanes have to be protected from are close to nature.
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