Rosemary McLeod: Terrorist acts don't change anything

Terrorist acts don't change anything, and currently it's hard to imagine what they expect to achieve. Photo/AP

I've never known, up close, anyone who belongs to Mensa, the group people with high IQs join to show off about how clever they must be or they wouldn't score high on IQ tests. But I'm delighted to find that they can defy my imagination.

I expected them to be weirdos living at home with mother, but they do get out sometimes. There's been a rush to join in Sweden, in fact, after reports that they're wild party animals. Police were called to the small city of Eskilstuna after hotel staff couldn't cope with them boozing in the corridors, playing the drums at 4am, and climbing on the roof.

Come to think of it, that's pretty well what I would expect, the behaviour of university students, living away from home for the first time in student hostels. Dunedin is long used to it, but Wellington less so.

Most recently the Joan Stevens hall of residence, named after a respectable elderly professor I can just dimly remember, has been a scene of student vomit and vandalism. Hillaire Belloc wrote of a character in his Cautionary Tales, "Like many of the upper class, he liked the sound of broken glass", and some things in adolescent human nature never change.

A female student told a reporter, after the recent wave of destruction, "My common room is covered in vomit and, like, my toilet is broken, or the doors are broken, or something's broken. It's just not a fun place to live." She added that she didn't feel safe there.

Funnelling straight vodka and tossing back multiple drinks at once were apparently par for the course, but now there's a ban on having visitors and alcohol. I wonder who polices it, if anyone.

I wonder why on earth students were allowed to drink there in the first place. I remember my own student experience all too well, and oddly enough it was the kids from the most respectable homes that made the biggest, filthiest vandals. It was a lesson in life to me how they were so privileged that the idea of consequences never occurred to them. Their parents always had a top lawyer friend to get them out of trouble if the worst came to the worst, and money to soothe furious landlords. Mine sure didn't.

There were almost no halls of residence then, but I guess this intake has no idea how lucky they are to get into them in a city where rents and other living costs are impossibly high, as we were told this week. That goes with privilege, too. They've never lacked for life's necessities, and, with families who can afford to support them through university, never will.

In their world arrogance passes for confidence. You can see them, now nearing pensionable age, drunk and loud in restaurants, bolstered by careers in law and commerce, and inherited wealth. And if they have Mensa-level IQs - that has never guaranteed maturity or emotional intelligence. Quite likely it's as relevant as having your horoscope read, and boasting that you're a Taurus. Who cares?

Privilege is as old and predictable as time itself, human nature being what it is. Not much has changed in the world since St Eskil, the Swedish city's namesake, was stoned to death in the 10th century on the orders of King Sweyn the Bloody for protesting that local Vikings were reverting to heathen ways. The town's monastery was destroyed on the orders of another king during the Reformation. More recently the town specialised in making sharp knives.

There were religious wars then, and we have them now. We have bloodthirsty leaders in the world who think nothing of killing people, and destroying whatever relics of their culture remain. And making weapons is still an intelligent career choice, because we still kill each other for reasons that are increasingly impossible to grasp.

Terrorist acts don't change anything, and currently it's hard to imagine what they expect to achieve. But young men set out to do them and die out of a dark, anarchistic impulse that has fuelled terror forever. Some call it religion, and some call it politics. Some volunteer, and some are forced to go. And however noble the claimed cause is, the behaviour is the same. With no war to satisfy the impulse, they get drunk, pee on the carpet, assault women, smash windows, or grab a knife and cut a stranger's throat. History offers no consolation.

Rosemary McLeod is a journalist and author.