"Richard," she said, gripping my shoulder firmly, "these petty
scuffles between animal rights activists and the pro-science brigades
are just the beginning. Something new is happening here - the epigones
of rationality are discovering a talent for cruelty and spontaneity.
They are becoming what the activists always claimed they were, vicious
thugs and torturers. The pro-science brigades are closing the gap
between rhetoric and reality."
"Sally, they're fulfilling the activists' own latent desires. In a
way, haven't the supporters of guinea pig rights always secretly
wanted to be guinea pigs themselves? Now they're getting their
chance…"
---
The seed of the story is the organisation, in response to a spate of
unpleasant muggings and victimisations of respectable citizens by
gangs of feral youth, of self-defence classes for middle class
professionals. These classes, run by an enigmatic former psychiatrist,
have an unusual emphasis on pro-active and even pre-emptive violence,
aimed at dismantling the inhibitions that keep middle class people
from getting into fights in chip shops ten minutes after closing time.
Peace-loving, cerebral individuals discover a hitherto latent
propensity for mayhem, which is briefly focussed on the protests of
animal rights activists outside a guinea pig breeding farm. Along the
way, the protagonists discover that getting into the occasional bloody
ruckus stimulates them into having much more exciting sex.
What begins as vigilantism, a reaction against the violent lawlessness
of our town centres after dark, becomes first a shattering of the
underclass's monopoly of casual violence and then an organised
recreational pursuit, like football hooliganism, an end in itself.
I'm not sure where Ballard would take it after that - which is
precisely what's so great about Ballard...
Dominic
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