I believe it was Jung who developed the most surgically wicked of
psychoanalytic dicta: if you cannot understand why someone did something,
look at the consequences—and infer the motivation. This is a psychological
scalpel. It’s not always a suitable instrument. It can cut too deeply, or in the
wrong places. It is, perhaps, a last-resort option. Nonetheless, there are times
when its application proves enlightening.
If the consequences of placing skatestoppers on plant-boxes and sculpture
bases, for example, is unhappy adolescent males and brutalist aesthetic
disregard of beauty then, perhaps, that was the aim. When someone claims to
be acting from the highest principles, for the good of others, there is no
reason to assume that the person’s motives are genuine. People motivated to
make things better usually aren’t concerned with changing other people—or,
if they are, they take responsibility for making the same changes to
themselves (and first). Beneath the production of rules stopping the
skateboarders from doing highly skilled, courageous and dangerous things I
see the operation of an insidious and profoundly anti-human spirit.
More about Chris
My friend Chris, whom I wrote about earlier, was possessed by such a spirit
—to the serious detriment of his mental health. Part of what plagued him was
guilt. He attended elementary and junior high school in a number of towns,
up in the frigid expanses of the northernmost Alberta prairie, prior to ending
up in the Fairview I wrote about earlier. Fights with Native kids were a too-
common part of his experience, during those moves. It’s no overstatement to
point out that such kids were, on average, rougher than the white kids, or that
they were touchier (and they had their reasons). I knew this well from my
own experience.
I had a rocky friendship with a Métis kid, Rene Heck,fn1 when I was in
elementary school. It was rocky because the situation was complex. There
was a large cultural divide between Rene and me. His clothes were dirtier. He
was rougher in speech and attitude. I had skipped a grade in school, and was,
in addition, small for my age. Rene was a big, smart, good-looking kid, and
he was tough. We were in grade six together, in a class taught by my father.
Rene was caught chewing gum. “Rene,” said my father, “spit that gum out.
You look like a cow.” “Ha, ha,” I laughed, under my breath. “Rene the cow.”