I've been thinking that the older I get, the more right-wing, selfish and demanding I get.
I no longer believe that being poor, ill-educated and disadvantaged is an excuse for acting like scum.
I expect excellent products and services in EVERYTHING I buy and EVERYONE I deal with (although I blame Tom Peters for that one).
I don't really care whether fox-hunting is banned or not.
In short, my younger days had a fairly heavy lefty slant (not that you would have seen me selling Socialist Worker wearing a combat jacket with a dog on a string) and now I just find my level of caring dropping each day.
I don't think I'm alone in this. For every offended, indignant, passionate defender of a cause, there are a whole bunch of us who really don't give a monkey's about most things outside of our immediate sphere of influence and impact.
Badly segue into...
I saw a presentation today on how people trust institutions less and less as each police corruption, accounting scandal, endowment mis-selling, priest and choir-boy, etc, etc, ad infinitum... reaches the front pages. The upshot is that these once great bastions of truth, respect and, above all, honesty have become untrustworthy liars just out to line their own pockets and protect their power.
Anybody who has at least dipped their toe in the politics of the left will not find this in the slightest bit surprising. The big shift comes now because average Joe Public is now taking the same view. It's no longer about being left or right. It's about finding people, companies (as customer and employee), politicians, pressure groups, etc that align with your view of what's good and fair and treat you the way you want to be treated.
This leads into HOW we relate to the above groups...
We're doing it more and more from home.
Off-sales up, pub spending down.
Bank branches close, telephone and internet banking go up.
Write your own will, sell your own house, start your own company (on the web, of course).
So, if we combine the first topic with the second, are we heading towards a particularly selfish society of people who don't want to leave their homes, only want to deal with people like themselves and really don't care about the wider world?
This seems to fly in the face of the perceived notion that we are becoming a more open and tolerant society that cares about PEOPLE as much as it does the economy. So either the number of pressure groups and front page headlines of humanitarian issues show we are becoming that way or they simply put a caring face over the bottom line of a mass of "every man for himself " attitudes.
My conclusion is that we are becoming a nation of Libertarians. Tolerance, freedom and choice are mainstays, but come with a large portion of responsibility.
I don't care if you want to smoke, drink, shoot-up, drive without a seatbelt or crash-helmet. What I do care about is that you take the responsibility and the cost for your actions and don't expect me to pick up the pieces.
Unless we start looking after ourselves more and start to treat others with a respect that we would expect to be given to us, expect a nanny state to continue and grow.
What else can you do with a bunch of petulant, whining children?
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