"Of greater interest and importance... is the kind of innovation which is a true cultural innovation in that it introduces into a culture a behavior which is unknown not only to that culture but to any culture. I shall call it emergent innovation, or cultural transcendence. It is always negational or anticultural and depends upon the randomly assembled package of the interests of some individual. It also depends upon an over-determination of aggressive competence (an "interest in" aggressiveness). We may begin by considering one minor manifestation of such aggressiveness, the behavioral phenomenon of adolescent vandalism. Even while I have been writing this chapter, a group of five unusually enterprising adolescents from my city stole from construction and demolition companies large amounts of explosives, together with the equipment needed to set them off. There were several mysterious minor explosions and then came a really quite spectacular one, the destruction of the concrete ticket-office at one of the high school stadiums. Fortunately or unfortunately (it is difficult to decide), the boys were detected and captured within a few days. Such acts take place in situations of impunity. There are consequences, but not, the vandals hope, to themselves. Vandalizing empty houses is particularly popular, especially if the residents of the house are at a higher economic level than that of the vandals. More than once in this book we have encountered the behavioral phenomenon of rehearsal, and adolescent vandalism is the rehearsal of aggressive competence—in situations of impunity. Nevertheless it is designed to destroy or damage property valuable to others. Sometimes the value of the property is quite small; twice in seven years I have had my mail box destroyed, both times very late at night, and obviously with bricks or stones thrown from moving automobiles. On the other hand, a few years ago a nearby expensive house burned to the ground. The point is that the property destroyed is valuable to somebody; otherwise there would be no point to the vandalism. But property is a sign, at least minimally a sign, of value. The vandals themselves respond to that sign either with little intensity or a great deal. The sign destroyed may elicit from them a powerful response (it may engage an interest), or it may elicit a very weak response. But it can be successfully predicted that it will elicit a powerful response in the vandalized. I am furious when my mailbox is destroyed, although it is worth only a few dollars. Nevertheless, since it is my property, the mailbox is an interest which sustains my persona and also my self-ascription of value, particularly since it has my name on it. I am likewise irritated when children cross my property or play in my pond, but I am ashamed of being irritated, and I let them. Children have to play someplace besides home. The man next door, however, has put up a hurricane fence specifically to keep children from treading on his sacred ground. It may not be sacred to them, but it is sacred to him. It sustains his personality. His fence is an act of aggressiveness, masked as defense."

-- Morse Peckham, Explanation and Power