Sexism, racism, bullying, abuse of more than one type. Domestic violence, gang warfare, drug-related crime.
There’s your headline right there, Mr Editor.
We hear and read a lot about a modern world of equality, diversity and respect. And I must say I hear from people my age conversing around the tea pot that it’s all a heap of hyped-up baloney.
“Political correctness gone mad,” they’ll say.
Before you draw your sword and light my effigy, read on.
The “three meat and potatoes” brigade think everything was better in the good old days, when things were swept under the carpet and people lived in routinely blissful ignorance.
They were the good old days, when we left the milk money on the front porch, confused only by whether we needed blue top or red top that week, not whether the coins would still be there in the morning.
We left the car door unlocked while it sat in the driveway, and the backdoor open to allow the evening breeze to flow through the house.
Yet, the woman down the road who was abused by her alcoholic husband.
“Poor dear,” they’d say. “We spent most of our days trying to invite her around for tea to help make her feel better.”
People on the streets are screaming “enough is enough”, and it’s long overdue.
The child at school who was dragged out of the classroom by the hair and later caned for daring to suggest he’d been hard done by.
“Had it coming to him,” they’d say. “Nowadays he’d be diagnosed ADHD. Give him a good old fashioned smack, that’ll fix him.”
That’s right, now he’d be diagnosed and cared for in a way that other children in the 60s should have been cared for. And maybe we’re still not doing enough.
The girl of ethnic origin who was left to eat lunch by herself because of the colour of her skin.
“Probably didn’t speak English anyway,” they’d say.
When I reflect, I too enjoy talking about good times of an era we grew up in. It’s worth conceding though that not everything was “good” about the “old days”.
Whether then or now, there will be bad eggs with a skewed moral compass. It becomes a blame game, and it’s so easy to blame something or somebody I fail to fully understand.
So I check myself. The way I thought then doesn’t have to be the way I think now.
Nobody I know is running around the streets at night with a bag over their head and a fire stick in their hand, although Wanda does have a brutal beak on her when she wants something only to discover I’ve nodded off in front of the six o’clock news.
Yet, plenty of people I know are sniggering around the tea table about how “people these days” need to loosen up and learn to take a joke or two.
I just wonder how many of those need to loosen up enough to check their manners, and ask if they’re really giving everyone a fair go. Because that’s what good old fashioned living was all about, right?
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