With the arrival of the millennium, it is worth noting that it is becoming increasingly difficult for parents to teach their children right from wrong. We have a new social order in which the rules for common decency appear to have been rewritten.
If parents are to draw inspiration from our various public institutions then it does not bode well for the future. What can they have learned from even the recent past?
Should parents teach their children that if you steal a coat worth £40 you will go to Mountjoy jail? If you steal £100,000 of public money and place it in a offshore account, you will never be touched. When it becomes too obvious for it to be ignored, a tribunal will be called and your case will be buried in legal wrangling. Indeed, if you know the right people you can borrow money from a bank and subsequently have the debt written off.
These are very telling lessons for the next generation.
How can a parent explain to a child the horrific abuse perpetrated against children in institutional care as revealed on States of Fear? These people are still at large while the thousands of lives that they destroyed will never recover.
All the victims want is support to put their lives back in order and that justice be done.
What can parents be expected to deduce from the appalling actions of our public icons and captains of industry?
The problems of establishing a basic moral framework are not exclusive to Ireland. America has been soul-searching for the past two years over the terrible high-school shootings that have been occurring with such frequency. How could these atrocities come about? What sick minds could come up with these terrible actions? In this search for answers, they do not have to look too far. Sly and Arnie have been modelling these exact behaviours for years. There can be few more vivid images emanating from Hollywood in recent memory than the gun-toting, muscle-bound hero obliterating everything in sight with an arsenal of machine guns and bombs. It seems to appeal to our most base instincts.
Many Americans equate the right to bear these arms with their freedom. When I lived over there, it was as easy to buy a gun in the local shopping mall as it was to by a chocolate chip cookie. Rather than search their souls for answers, the shopping mall and the cinema are probably better places to start. The rapid advance of information technology and the Internet has meant that children have ready access to any type of pornography imaginable. But this is not the only source. Teenage magazines set the agenda for how a teenager should behave towards the opposite sex. If you are not ["]doing it["] by the age of 15 there must be something wrong with you. Girls "want it" and boys are ever ready to "give it", if these sources of information are to be believed. This attitude is constantly reinforced on radio, TV and in print. It must be terribly difficult for those teenagers who just want to develop at their own pace. It is equally difficult for parents to provide the right kind of advice which seems at odds with the barrage of images of promiscuity in which teenagers feel they should be engaged in order to be accepted as normal.
So where are parents to start in trying to provide some solid and meaningful advice to their children in the middle of this corrupt and technologically driven social order?
Perhaps the answer lies in calling up the values from the past. What were the values upon which the previous generation relied? Outside of religious concerns, which do not appear useful in the current spectrum, people respected traits such as honesty, hard work, a sense of humour and an appreciation of nature. Little things mattered and thoughtfulness was appreciated. The new social order has dictated that none of this matters if you want to be "successful". If parents want to teach their children to hold on to some of the values which they cherished in their own childhood, they must do so from within the home. These values do not exist outside.
ONE OF THE great advantages of travelling around the world is that it is possible to observe people going about their daily routines in diverse settings. From Kathmandu to Quito and from Boston to Beijing the wages have to be made. Households must run. Families must eat. It has always been very reassuring that, regardless of what country I might visit, the vast majority of people have been decent, honest and caring people. This was regardless of what corrupt government was in power, white-collar crime or religious oppression was being forced upon them.
The decency of these people came from within. The welcoming smile and the sense of justice came from within. For parents, I would encourage you to teach your children to find that decency from within.
