Those who can, do, those who can't, destroy!

When I was at school, certain activities were obligatory. In fact thinking about it, most things were, especially for boys. Girls had a much easier time of it by and large. All boys were expected to be members of the Cadet force, dressing in horrible itchy uniforms that must have been surplus stock from the war, lugging around Lee Enfield 303 rifles that still had firing pins and were therefore able to shoot real bullets, and generally posing around for what purpose I never did understand. Another expectation was participation in the annual cross country run. Every boy in the school that did not have some medical exemption, and a not from your Mum was pretty useless in those days, had to run in this competition and the girls were merely expected to watch.
Now some boys liked this sort of thing and were good at it. Some were just prepared to go along and suffer it, while some of us hated it so much we’d do our very best to scupper things.
I think that this is a form of human behaviour that we see reflected in other walks of life. In the 90s there was a period when British Art and pop was making headlines, and a young breed of “Artists” were becoming phenomena, largely due to the financial support of Charles Sacchi. He seemed to buy whatever these enterprising people were prepared to produce and call art. And so piles of bricks, unmade beds, and animals preserved in formaldehyde, became works of art. It seems to me that these people were rejecting the formality of the “Art” establishment and pushing things as far as they were able to. Rather like us boys who couldn’t keep up with the real runners, we had to make our mark in some sort of rebellion, these people produced an anti art, similar to the way that the 80s saw a rise in anti music.
Our rebellions were always short lived and did nothing to change the establishment. We had our moments of infamy and the next year things were back to normal. Phases of destruction seem to come and go and the world nods and carries on as always. Yes Charles Sacchi’s collection still exists but does it mean much and would it matter much if it were to burn down tomorrow? I suspect not.