To feel my values are out of place?

[moutonfou]

I was brought up to have a strong sense of conscientiousness and duty to others, i.e. basic manners, kindness, sharing, civic responsibility e.g. recycling, not littering, picking up dog poop, letting buses out, giving to charity, etc.

I always thought this was the norm but increasingly I'm dismayed by the world around me. There seems to be so much crime, greed, meanness, etc. I feel everything has become rather harsh and cynical and self-focused. I know things like littering and pushing into traffic aren't big things but they smack of someone who doesn't think they have a stake in society or a responsibility to others. I just got stung for £120 by someone who stole my card details, and people's reaction has very much been 'it happens'. It shouldn't happen! I can't imagine what kind of person wouldn't think 'no, that money doesn't belong to me.'

Is it just a vocal/visible minority making me feel this way or am I now completely unusual for thinking we should all have some basic decency towards each other?

The media and advertising (I guess you could include capitalism in that as a pp has said) have coarsened behaviour. There are a hundred examples anyone could give so I won't go on about them here.

As you get older you care about these things more because the world becomes you less of a store cupboard to plunder and more of a resource to be nurtured and protected, and that includes human existence and the way we treat each other.

IMO all you can do is focus on yourself and those you are responsible for otherwise the anxiety will send you mad.

YADNBU

And I also wanted to say that the OP's post could have been written by a middle aged or older person at any point in human history.

Yeah I'm not sure it's any worse than in the past; there's always been arseholes as a pp said. Also, isn't the crime rate going down for lots of things? I'm sure I read somewhere that violent crime was decreasing but people's perception of it was rising or something like that? My info could be out of date though.

You sound like someone who is getting old.

The world's always been like this.

I sympathise. It's horrible when you come up against sharp examples of people who are actively damaging, such as the person who stole your money.

Last week, a woman deliberately attempted to upset my girlfriend - calling her something repeatedly after we had asked her not to - and I felt almost bewildered by the deliberate unkindness. Wtf.

Most of the time we prefer to believe that most people wouldn't do stuff like that.

"And I also wanted to say that the OP's post could have been written by a middle aged or older person at any point in human history"

Or all the young people on Mumsnet who won't let their children do perfectly normal things because "you can't be too careful these days"

I share your values OP, and I think kindness is undervalued in society. I think honesty is almost seen as 'being a mug' these days tbh.

I'd like to blame Thatcher, and more recently, Brexit - but I think it goes far deeper than that. People were horrible in all eras - but also good. The rich in Victorian times justified themselves by thinking the poor were feckless and lazy - so little has changed really.

Those thinking things were rosy in WWII - and everyone pulled together - not so. There's a programme on iplayer at the moment about the blitz - and the people with bombed out houses were treated like crap too. Called 'scroungers'. The authorities even tried to stop people sleeping in tube stations - but quietly gave up this directive because it was majorly ignored by those sheltering from the bombing. We've just forgotten this because we won the war, plus the news was very much propaganda-ised at the time.

One thing I've noticed when I'm walking down the street is that people simply refuse to step aside so you can both pass through...they'll walk right down the middle and expect you to scurry round them. So arrogant.

Thinking about this some more - I think that possibly there's been a shift away from social responsibility, towards individualism.

There were many philanthropists among the Victorian rich - who felt it their duty to do good. Not so many rich philanthropists today - more billionaires owning private jets and putting their money into offshore tax havens.

I agree, and you don't even have to look much further than MN. The amount of posters on here who seem to approach the world with a 'me and my family come first and everyone else can go whistle' is frankly appalling.

I think crime is a mixture of causes. Childhood environment, family norms, desperation, manipulation, coercion. there are a section of people who commit crime out of cruelty and spite, and there are those that are spiteful and commit crime but not because they're cruel. its difficult.
Most people are kind, socio-centric and will help others, however, the mean ones get more attention because their actions hurt us or end up in the news. Cruelty screams louder than someone helping you pick up the contents of your bag which you spilled.

It's a lot easier to commit fraud or theft of serious amounts of money now because it's all online. That has changed. Thirty years ago if you got mugged then they only had cash and cards to use in person.
And yes we hear about stuff far more than we did before. And in a more graphic way.

I'm only in my late twenties!! (OP here)

Thinking about it there were a lot of kids at school who clearly hadn't been brought up with these values. So you're right that there will always be unpleasant people.

But I do feel it's got worse. Part of me wonders if it's the Tory govt and austerity which has made everybody more survivalist/every man for themselves.

The first time I was conscious of society as a place to be in was under early New Labour, and I guess there was a more widespread optimism then which maybe made everybody kinder to each other.

The first time I was conscious of society as a place to be in was under early New Labour, and I guess there was a more widespread optimism then which maybe made everybody kinder to each other.

One thing I've noticed when I'm walking down the street is that people simply refuse to step aside so you can both pass through...they'll walk right down the middle and expect you to scurry round them. So arrogant. This is certainly true. It's just bad manners.

Sadly, those of us old enough to remember would say that this decline has been going on for decades now, perhaps without us really realising at the time.

I disagree that it's just the way the old and the young have always been. There is a new ingredient in the form of the unprecedented explosion and gaining momentum in IT. Instant gratification, sensory stimulation of all kinds and the deconstruction of human face-to-face relationships into cyber relationships via social media. Morality has in some areas morphed away from society as a whole to 'all about me'.

People growing up in this environment are becoming hard-wired in the brain to rely on IT as part of their development, and it will come as a hard shock if there is a cyber attack that wipes out the internet and other services and we then (hopefully for a short time) have to survive on our wits.

sometimes you need to make a point of looking for the good otherwise you do always see the bad and negative, reinforced by your recent negative experience.

Only yesterday there was a thread on here about someone living in the friendliest place ever because people stop and say hello, we live in a great village where people do say hello, we are working towards having a community owned pub etc and we've been made to feel welcome and made plenty of friends. We have a volunteer group clearing up our church yard because the parish council funding has been cut yet again. Instead of complaining, we're implementing the changes we want to see.

We focus so much more on the negative in society and don't pay enough attention to the good things. The 100 happy days can seem patronising but it does force you to look for the good

Humans are a vicious, selfish, selfless, kind, mean, generous, placid, violent, collectivist, individualist lot on the whole. We solve some problems and create others. We'll never be perfect. Life isn't fair but IMO it's our job to try and make it more fair.

Agree with ShoesHaveSouls about the move to individualism. It really picked up pace in the 80s under the Tories. Weirdly, doing what you please and 'expressing yourself' was made to seem progressive. Social responsibility was painted as somehow old-fashioned. Probably as it benefited capitalism.

Gutted, as I can't see how we can go back

Social media means that you are more aware of what is going on in your wider friendship circle (and far beyond)

Someone having their wallet nicked on the high street when out Christmas shopping - once upon a time wouldn't even have made the local papers, and unless you happened to speak to them directly or a friend who had spoken to them, you wouldn't have known. Now it would be on Facebook and Twitter and spread round the world.

Although I don't think there has been a rise in actual crime I do think that Thatcher's "There's no such thing as society" pronouncement was very damaging I also think (puts on tin hat) that Mumsnet is not representative of people in general- in real live I don't see much of the "my little family/don't answer the door or the phone/don't offer favours people will only take advantage/tally chart play dates" misantropy that's so prevalent on here...

"The first time I was conscious of society as a place to be in was under early New Labour, and I guess there was a more widespread optimism then which maybe made everybody kinder to each other."

I think this is economics - the boom of those years seems like worlds away in the austerity years after the financial crash. We have seen flatlining growth, productivity and wages for an extraordinary and unusual long time now. People are accepting it as the new normal.

Every generation thinks like this ,the whole hell in a handcart thing.

People are no meaner or ruder or more criminal or anything else than they were 10, 20, 50, 100, 500 years ago. There always have been and always will be bad people.
You just personally get more experience of it as you get older. But you also get more experience of kindness and generosity and altruism, so why not drop the negativity and focus more on that?

Tony and Cherie Blair's property empire. I'm sure if you wanted one they would be only too happy to oblige.
www.theguardian.com/money/2016/mar/14/tony-cherie-blair-property-empire-worth-estimated-27m-pounds+

Oh FFS derxa that's just totally irrelevant to the thread in every way.

And I'm no fan of the Blairs - I hate them.