People no longer seem to feel like they're a part of society at large, and therefore have no commonality or connection with strangers around them.
Similarly people no longer feel any pride in, or attachment to, public places so littering (for example) is ok, because it's not their place, and therefor not their problem.
The woman making phone calls on the train doesn't care about the quality of life on the train because it's not something she has any investment in, and as for the goth chap in the ladies loos, he could hardly be more clearly distancing himself from any societal connection to those using the loos.
Oh, yeah, and in light of all of that, both Cameron's and Blair's lot are trying (as politicians always seem to) to fix the symptoms and not the causes.
There's a lack of social responsibility because there's a lack of society.
Ok, but how does one get to society? All this stuff seems to be self-reinforcing, so to an extent treating the symptoms may help to slow things down, but how to we get an actual reversal?
An interesting comparison is when I was back in Glasgow a while back and a bloke asked if I wanted a day bus ticket (at a bus stop) - I instinctively thought it was touting but realised the guy was well-dressed (and clearly well fed) and no-one else seemed to be bothered about his behaviour.
Turns out he was genuinely just finished with it for the day and happy to save someone else 50p and moreover this was normal to everyone else because that's just something that people do now and again.
I'm not sure exactly why, but it does seem that the further out from London/South East you go, though it's clearly not universal and is offset by bad behaviour, the more nice behaviour happens.
Are the buses subsidised by government money in Glasgow?
Not that I'm frowning on what he did, but if everyone did it, clearly the ticket prices would have to go up, which is kind of counter to the ideal of mass transit as a public service. So while his behaviour was nice in a local sense, it was also arguably anti-social.
Are we 100% sure that people aren't the same as they always are? I know it's a popular meme to say that rudeness and 'antisociality' is on the increase, but I'm not sure that's true. Were there less robbings, knifings and murders in Britain 50 years ago? 100? Perhaps they were less visible, but I'm pretty sure they were always there. Even during the Blitz, there were still burglaries.
I'd also suggest that we as a society have hypocritical and inconsistent attitudes. The same behaviour can be condemned in one situation, and rewarded in another. Take a BMW wanker cutting in front of a queue of traffic - that very same instinct is probably what gets rewarded when he's at work, where being a pushy bastard is seen as a valued quality. Someone like Alan Sugar, Gordon Ramsay or Simon Cowell is clearly being an unpleasant shit to other people, yet that behaviour is lauded by millions.
Is there any surprise that many people genuinely believe that 'might makes right' and 'greed is good'?
Ooh, new comments! Yes, I agree. This behaviour may well have been going on forever.
One interesting theory is that the behaviour was happening but was less visible. Or rather, it was confined to certain neighbourhoods and so was only seen by certain classes, i.e. not those who go on about how much worse things have got. Now we all mingle all the time, and so everybody sees everyone else behaving badly.
T'other day a kid threw an egg at the windscreen of a bus I was on. Is this the same class of behaviour?
most people are either unwilling or unable to confront itThe question when deciding whether to confront it is, "which is worse - the bad behaviour, or the potentially violent confrontation required to stop it?". So naturally they will not always act even if it would be beneficial to do so
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Does that mean that the main objective for getting people to behave better is to reduce fear of actual violence so that people will feel brave enough to confront non-violent, but nevertheless obnoxious, behaviour? Hasn't violence actually decreased dramatically in the last twenty years? If so, and presuming that the trend has something to do with fear of violence, then why do people feel more in danger of violence
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I think that a braver society probably would tolerate less low-level antisocial behaviour, so it's certainly an objective in this case. And for it's own sake, for that matter. There are two basic approaches to preventing bad behaviour, though. You can make a list of specific things to avoid, and specific rights to uphold, and enforce them authoritatively (which, given that we have authority at all, I think is right for "big" things like violence), and you can encourage people to treat each other with consideration regardless of who has what explicit rights and obligations (which I think is right for "small" things like common courtesy
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Sorry, I should say that I would expect to be a victim one year in every 50. That might mean I'm attacked once for telling some bloke to get the hell out of the ladies loos, or it might mean I'm beaten up once a day all year, by a gang of hoodlums who've chosen to pick on me.
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Appealing though this theory is, it may be a touch simplistic.
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People no longer seem to feel like they're a part of society at large, and therefore have no commonality or connection with strangers around them.
Similarly people no longer feel any pride in, or attachment to, public places so littering (for example) is ok, because it's not their place, and therefor not their problem.
The woman making phone calls on the train doesn't care about the quality of life on the train because it's not something she has any investment in, and as for the goth chap in the ladies loos, he could hardly be more clearly distancing himself from any societal connection to those using the loos.
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There's a lack of social responsibility because there's a lack of society.
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An interesting comparison is when I was back in Glasgow a while back and a bloke asked if I wanted a day bus ticket (at a bus stop) - I instinctively thought it was touting but realised the guy was well-dressed (and clearly well fed) and no-one else seemed to be bothered about his behaviour.
Turns out he was genuinely just finished with it for the day and happy to save someone else 50p and moreover this was normal to everyone else because that's just something that people do now and again.
I'm not sure exactly why, but it does seem that the further out from London/South East you go, though it's clearly not universal and is offset by bad behaviour, the more nice behaviour happens.
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Not that I'm frowning on what he did, but if everyone did it, clearly the ticket prices would have to go up, which is kind of counter to the ideal of mass transit as a public service. So while his behaviour was nice in a local sense, it was also arguably anti-social.
At least touting is wealth-redistributing...
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Perhaps they were less visible, but I'm pretty sure they were always there. Even during the Blitz, there were still burglaries.
I'd also suggest that we as a society have hypocritical and inconsistent attitudes. The same behaviour can be condemned in one situation, and rewarded in another. Take a BMW wanker cutting in front of a queue of traffic - that very same instinct is probably what gets rewarded when he's at work, where being a pushy bastard is seen as a valued quality. Someone like Alan Sugar, Gordon Ramsay or Simon Cowell is clearly being an unpleasant shit to other people, yet that behaviour is lauded by millions.
Is there any surprise that many people genuinely believe that 'might makes right' and 'greed is good'?
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One interesting theory is that the behaviour was happening but was less visible. Or rather, it was confined to certain neighbourhoods and so was only seen by certain classes, i.e. not those who go on about how much worse things have got. Now we all mingle all the time, and so everybody sees everyone else behaving badly.
T'other day a kid threw an egg at the windscreen of a bus I was on. Is this the same class of behaviour?
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Sorry, I should say that I would expect to be a victim one year in every 50. That might mean I'm attacked once for telling some bloke to get the hell out of the ladies loos, or it might mean I'm beaten up once a day all year, by a gang of hoodlums who've chosen to pick on me.
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