Editor’s note: The following article is intended as a joke and should not be interpreted as a legitimate defense of arson. Please do not commit arson.
When most people think of arson, their minds immediately go to destruction and chaos. I get it. How could setting fire to public property possibly be justified? As an outsider, it must be hard to understand. But I’m begging you to open your mind and hear me out. If after reading this you still want to lock me up and throw away the key, that’s fine.
I don’t burn things as my livelihood. I do it because destruction is a form of creation. When things are first built, they’re easy to modify and play with. As they exist and are used, they start to solidify, and then you can’t change them anymore, not without starting over. And everyone is scared of starting over. That’s where I come in. When I see a business of the past, one that’s hardly useful to anyone and yet manages to cling on to their location out of their former success, it hurts me. They think they’re in too deep to let go. They’re going to go out of business in a decade anyway-I just give them a little push. A single match. Suddenly, it’s more economical to build an entirely new business rather than rebuild the old one.
I burn things because it changes them and society needs to see that change is possible. People need to see that they can change their surroundings. They need to see that even a small spark can grow to a roaring fire that incinerates oppression and waste in a brilliant spectacle of crackles and lights.