Whenever I look around me, I see a world that I have difficulty understanding.
When I was a child my father went out to work while my mother stayed at home to look after my brother and I as well as carrying out the necessary household chores of cleaning, washing, shopping and cooking; the house was always clean and tidy. When she eventually returned to work, it was part time so as to ensure that she was at home by the time that her children came back from school in the afternoon. My father worked office hours, Monday to Friday, but was also late home on some days and often worked on Saturday mornings. Both of my parents dressed smartly at all times, while my brother and I were proud to wear our school uniforms, complete with caps, and, later, to dress smartly for our chosen employments. My brother could not have been more proud of his army uniform while I always wore a suit to work..
On buses and trains I would always offer my seat to an older person or to a pregnant woman or anyone who seemed infirm. I would always hold doors for those coming after me or, indeed, would stand back and hold a door for those coming through in the opposite direction. I would not 'jump' queues and thought nothing of offering assistance to anyone who needed it. I would not be rude to my parents or to others and neither I nor those around me used 'bad language'. My parents' lives revolved around their children; when we went out, it was to child-appropriate places, not to pubs, clubs or other adult environments.
Today, everything seems different. Simple politeness no longer exists in many quarters, with the very notion of surrendering a seat on public transport being long forgotten. It is now quite normal for a door to swing back into one's face, as the previous entrant takes no time to look behind and really doesn't care who may be there. Queuing is a nicety only indulged in by those who are too weak or reserved to force their way to the front; saying 'excuse me', 'please' and 'thank you' is an alien concept not to be bothered with.
School uniform is not quite a thing of the past but, where it is worn, it is too often worn reluctantly, with shirts hanging out, no ties, caps or blazers and certainly no pride. Many people now wander around our towns and villages in such scruffy attire that it astonishes me; while a wrinkled t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops may be the clothing for a holiday resort, is it really the right wear for shopping in the local supermarket ? It seems that scruffy is the new 'smart' and many older men appear to think this is a way to regain their youth. It used to be said that a woman who dressed inappropriately to her age was 'mutton dressed as lamb', but today the men have joined them and, frankly, some of the sights one sees are grotesque. Do these people never look at themselves ?
Shop and office workers are increasingly turning up for work in their everyday attire; no longer does suit and tie or a smart skirt and top hold sway, and the most senior managers of major companies appear looking as if they've just fallen out of bed. There seems to be modern fashion for men to be unshaven, showing a sort of 'designer stubble' which owes more to being bone idle than to anything else. Even in Parliament, men have now been told that ties are no longer required; how long before suits are replace by t-shirts and jeans ?
Getting out of bed in the morning, particularly for those passed school age but not yet in full-time work now seems to be merely an option and, when they do emerge, they roam around aimlessly in their night attire for the rest of the day, glued to their tablets, 'phones or whatever other devices they use to satisfy their addiction to 'social media'. House work is a thing of the past, shopping an occasional necessity unless it's for the latest designer clothes or other fashionable items, cooking only when the takeaway is closed and washing up done only when there is no more clean crockery available; as for washing, of self and clothes, one wonders.
Priorities revolve around self-aggrandisement, satisfying one's own wants and desires at the expense of all else. A new 'phone comes ahead of the children's clothes and a foreign holiday before paying the household bills. Drinking and smoking take precedence over buying decent food, tattoos and piercings come before children's entertainments. Children are routinely taken to public houses, not for their own good but because their parents want to be there and have no one to dump the children on while they enjoy themselves.
Radio and television is awash with programmes and content that would have shocked my grandparents to the core and had my parents leaping for the 'off-switch'. The language now common on both mediums, and worse in the cinema, is mirrored on our streets with words that were absolute taboo in my youth being bandied about without thought by the illiterate and as a sign of their supposed power by many others. Children hearing torrents of foul mouthed invective from their parents can hardly be expected to know any better when they grow up.
Society has become increasingly libertarian, even libertine. Personal responsibility has been surrendered at almost every turn, as drink, drugs and sexual freedom have taken hold. When things go wrong it's all blamed on someone else and the state is expected to sort out the mess. While homosexuals demand the 'right' to be married, marriage amongst heterosexuals has become simply another disposal aspect of modern life. Children are, far too often, no more than a fashion accessory, being left to grandparents or others to care for while the parents carry on as if their children didn't exist. Huge numbers of children have complicated family arrangements and little stability as they are ferried around between the homes of separated parents, accumulating hordes of step-relations and half-siblings along the way, while neither true parent exercises any real parental influence. What hope is there for such children ?
I despair. We live in a world of slovens and slatterns, in which their are no standards of morality and in which anything goes. The day of reckoning will surely come.
No comments:
Post a Comment