Obsessed by puritanical, petty enforcement of the most basic of rules, but often oblivious to the real damage of the serious stuff, our nation seems to be one of appalling nosey parkers and interfering busybodies.
The past couple of weeks really have shown us up. Happy to dob in a neighbour or passer by for the pettiest perceived transgression during lockdown, yet apparently completely deaf and blind to serious transgressions such as domestic abuse or worse.
We do seem perfectly psychologically primed to be the most draconian civilian policemen you can possibly imagine. That’s why as soon as level 4 lockdown was announced, our 111 service was swamped by callers dobbing in neighbours and strangers for breaking the rules. It’s also why the police web site fell over from overuse within an hour of being set up.
It’s like we can’t just mind our own business. We have to have something to say about what everybody else is doing or we have to ‘help’ the authorities because – well – we can’t have people getting away with ‘stuff’. An overwhelming desire perhaps to ingratiate ourselves with ‘teacher’ by telling on the naughty kids.
This is not a new or recent development. We’ve probably always been a bit like that – you know – do-gooders doing good. The difference is that once upon a time, the scale of our tell-tale mentality was largely unseen. We did it with anonymity, with a certain sense of secrecy, not wanting to be seen as the tale-tellers. We did it sneakily. Today, we’re living with a different generation. A generation looking for its 15 minutes of fame and willing (or even clamouring) to expose itself publicly, warts and all.
With instant information through social media networks and a sensational, clickbait driven and inexperienced mainstream media that has few principles about truth, the filthy underbelly of our national personality is exposed instantly for all to see. It goes viral – and the worse it is, the more viral it becomes.
All this while the focus of our leaders is on hate speech legislation, decriminalizing cannabis and taking abortion out of the Crimes Act. Because those are so critically important to the well being of our society. Perhaps the lowering of even more standards?
We dob in bad drivers and neighbours for breaking the lockdown but we don’t notice or report those who assault their partners or their kids. We notice ‘hurty’ words but we don’t notice or report physical violence.
With the best of ill conceived intentions, have we maybe become blind, ardent supporters of ‘liberalisation’? Have we consciously decided to abandon principles and standards for the sake of ‘inclusion, diversity and hurty feelings’? Can it possibly be true that a majority of us think ‘hate speech’ legislation is important and a necessary thing? What about abortion? And what of cannabis?
Have we become ‘a weird mob’?
Or maybe we always were.
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