Taking Responsibility: What's Wrong With Vandalism? (1986)

e [Music] there are a lot of things about you that other people see every day but deep inside you is something that other people don't always see your feelings a lot of the time you probably feel happy but sometimes you might feel other ways for instance suppose you own something you liked a lot and one day you accidentally broke it if this happened to you you'd probably feel very sad the more important the thing was to you or the harder it was to replace the worse you would probably feel it might take you a long time before you started feeling happy again other people have feelings too and even though different people might look different on the outside most people's feelings work about the same way yours do like you other people are often happy once in a while they have reasons for feeling sad too of course like everyone else you have a lot more feelings than just happy and sad sometimes you feel bored or angry and sometimes you feel like doing something you know you shouldn't do for instance there might be times when you feel like damaging something or breaking something on purpose everyone has feelings like this at one time or another even adults but why do people have these feelings sometimes people feel they'd like to damage something because they're bored and looking for something to do or because they're curious about what will happen if they break something or because they want to show off and think that might be a good way to do it or even because they're angry with themselves or with another person but whatever causes these feelings suppose people just allow them to run wild the world would be a noisy mess and everything would be broken no one wants that so people have to learn how to make manage these feelings but suppose you don't manage these feelings and you damage something on purpose that's called vandalism it isn't vandalism if you damage something by accident and it isn't vandalism if you want to damage something but don't it's only vandalism if you actually do it suppose one you decided to break something just for fun something that belonged to someone else suppose the thing didn't look very important to you you might think what would be the harm in breaking it it takes some imagination to see the harm one way to see it is to imagine how you might feel if someone broke something of yours you might feel afraid and worry about what else the person might do or you might feel sad that anyone would do something like that or you might feel angry because you think you don't deserve to have your things broken even if the broken thing didn't look important to anyone else it could have been very important to you for all sorts of reasons maybe you just happen to like it a lot or it was a gift from someone very special to you or you had some ESP special good times with it whatever your reasons for liking it if someone broke it on purpose you would probably feel terrible so it's easy to see that if you broke something that belonged to someone else the other person might feel just as terrible and that that's where the harm would be but that's not the only harm someone would have to to clean up the mess and that would take time and suppose the owner wanted to replace what was broken that would take time too and cost money and it's possible that there wouldn't be enough money to buy another one then what the owner would have to get along without it so it's pretty easy to see that if you damage something that's owned or used by someone else you can really cause a lot of harm but what if you damage something that's used not just by one person but by many people suppose you were very angry about something and suppose you didn't control that feeling but instead took your anger out on something many children use a swing on your school playground for instance there would be many people who couldn't use the swing maybe for a long time and they would probably all feel bad what else would happen someone would have to repair the swing or replace it and that would take time and money money that might have helped to buy something else like a new slide or a new teeter totter but now it couldn't be spent that way so if you didn't control your anger and you broke the swing you'd really be taking something away from a lot of people people you know what if you damaged something that belonged to someone you didn't know suppose you saw a flower garden and you had a feeling it might be fun to tear up that flower garden and you didn't control that feeling what would be the harm in that you might not care about flowers the flower garden might not be important to you at all but it is very important to somebody and that person would probably feel terrible because of what you did but what if you damage something that doesn't look like it's own by anybody for instance what if you decide to write on the wall of a large building like a post office or your school or a restaurant or a department store would that harm anyone the answer is yes every building is owned by somebody sometimes by more than one person sometimes by many people you might not know the owners they might even live far from you but whoever the owners are in one way or another they would have to pay to repair the damage so if you feel like damaging something on purpose and if you don't control that feeling but actually do some vandalism you don't just hurt a thing in one way or another you also hurt real people that's what's wrong with vandalism but no matter what your feelings are if you try hard enough you can manage them sometimes that's not easy and there might be one time when it's especially hard suppose you're with some friends and they feel like doing something they shouldn't do like breaking a window but you don't want to break the window you do feel that you want your friends to like you so at a time like this it might be very difficult to keep from going along with them once again though it helps to think about what might happen next suppose you do break the window then what a broken window can be very dangerous someone could get seriously hurt maybe you or one of your friends and vandalism is against the law so you could get into serious trouble but even if these things didn't happen someone would still have to clean up the mess and pay for a new piece of glass and put it in that would be a lot of trouble for somebody so for all these reasons you'd need to manage your feelings and not go along even though that might be very hard it could be that some of your friends don't really want to break the window either but no one wants to be the first to say so so if you speak up you might actually be doing some of your friends a favor and you'd be helping to stop something that could be really harmful but what if sometimes you really have a lot of trouble managing your feelings no matter how hard you [Music] try then you should talk about the problem with someone you trust an adult might be able to help you think of ways you can handle your feelings without vandalizing the important thing is to remember that in one way or another vandalism always hurts real people so if you feel like damaging something and you manage that feeling you have every right to feel another way proud of yourself oh [Music]