Hoisted by our own petard

The ‘father’ of modern day policing in the UK Sir Robert Peel, engineered the creation of the Metropolitan Police Service in the same decade the term ‘sociology’ was coined. Auguste Comte in 1838 believed ‘all human life had passed through the same distinct historical stages and that, if one could grasp this progress, one could prescribe the remedies for social ills’. It is therefore bizarre for anyone who has a basic understanding of ‘sociology’ to comprehend why, most of today’s pundits and commentators would have us believe that; meltdown of our society is due to an increase in crime and lawlessness. This is only the consequence, not a tangible root cause of the outcome.

Social and moral breakdown in our society is solely due to our own liberalism. The simple acceptance of what was once unpalatable as now being the norm. As a society we have lowered our standards and, it has become almost unacceptable to try and maintain them. Our children are taught to challenge whatever they are told, if people fail to reach a particular standard for any roll in life, we reduce it so as not to exclude them.

Our welfare state appears to reward those who do nothing to contribute to it and, various ‘experts’ also suggest changes to the age of criminal responsibility for kids will reduce crime. It will reduce the statistics we record, but won’t actually reduce the crime. All these factors are evidence of our societies desire to dumb down standards.

Why does it appear so wrong to reward achievement and why do we undervalue honesty, integrity and ethical standards? Why can’t it be ok to aspire to better things, whilst still accepting your destiny is governed by your own efforts? Our society and humanity as a whole do not owe us a living we owe them! The continued reduction in our ‘standards’ only serves to exacerbate the overall situation.

Recently Ann Widdecombe MP adopted the approach of making people feel uncomfortable about their own personal situation; she made them feel embarrassed about what they accept as normal. In short, Ann provided a form of social peer pressure, the only methodology that will actually reverse the trends in our society. Unless we are happy for our society to plummet to the lowest levels of deprivation, we all need to utilise these ‘tools’.

If we have no aspirations for a safe and civilised society we will be hoisted by our own petard.