Living in Australia i am saddened to see all the graffiti on walls, vehicles, buildings, trains and buses. This sadness is deeper when i consider that in my travels through Asia i have seen so little there.
My question is why?
Here in Australian you see graffiti in poor areas, in wealthy areas, in commercial areas. Some is just tagging, some is rude, some is just crude.
Why in a wealthy society, do younger people feel a desire to trash other peoples valuable private property? What is it about a society that sees it’s youth damaging property with gay abandon? Yes graffiti is damage. Graffiti is done with no consideration regarding the cost of such vandalism. In Australia alone vandalism costs millions of dollars every year.
In total contrast during my travels through Asia & I noticed little or no graffiti in most countries. ( the one interesting exception to this, was in the south of Bali. A point to note is that this is the main area visited by Australians when holidaying in Bali)
So in countries where kids seem to have everything, graffiti is prolific and in countries where kids have so little, it is nearly non existant.
From my observations i believe the following is the answer to my questions.
In the west kids of today are spoilt. They are given so much, they place little value on most possessions. They see their parents as earning large amounts of money and doing it easy. In Asia kids have a lot less and more significantly they are raised around their parents working life. They go to work with parents or are at home where many parents operate small businesses. Everyday kids actually see how hard their parents work to make a Rupee, Ringgit, Rupiah, Baht or Riel. By seeing this hard work, i feel kids get a true appreciation of what blood, sweat and tears parents go through to buy possesions or assets. This reality i believe stops young people vandalising and destroying property with graffiti.
Sadly, duty of care and other over regulation, has stopped many parents, being able to take kids to work in the west now. Also very few western families have home based businesses. This leaves little opportunity for kids to see how hard parents bust their butts to make a dollar. Since the dawn of time kids have gone off to work with parents. Maybe the west could consider some changes to the crazy over regulation, to seriously help our youth have a greater appreciation of so many things in the world around them.
