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Once upon a time, this story would be headline news, but the fact is, as a society, we now hear stories like this unfortunate one, far too often for it to be sensational anymore

I think the exact opposite.

Once upon a time, cases like this would never even have came to the police's attention.

I'd lay my house in betting you that such a rape, in Lancashire, would never have been known about to Londoners if it had happened in any decade before the 70's. Not unless it was unusually grotesque or brutal, anyway.

"Once upon a time, this story would be headline news, but the fact is, as a society, we now hear stories like this unfortunate one, far too often for it to be sensational anymore"

A sign of the times and a sign of the disintegration of civil society. Although cases like this did occasionally happen in the first half of the 20th century, people today are far less inhibited about doing this kind of thing. We're not instilled with the same sense of right and wrong that we were back in the 60's. There's to much respecting of scumbags, mongs, and wasters and their ?rights?. Once they would have cowered before authority and respectable citizens. Now they can safely laugh in the face of authority, while half decent people have become their supine prey.

The permissiveness of the 60's and 70's was an interesting experiment to see if people really would be nice and reciprocate if you afforded them unconditional respect. Sadly, it's just confirmed what we already knew about the human condition. If you want scumbags, lowlifes, and the intellectually challenged to behave themselves and toe the line in a civilized society it seems you must first train them, you must put the fear of God into them - much like you would your pet dog.




Officer Dibble

[quote]A sign of the times and a sign of the disintegration of civil society. Although cases like this did occasionally happen in the first half of the 20th century, people today are far less inhibited about doing this kind of thing. We're not instilled with the same sense of right and wrong that we were back in the 60's.[/quote]

You're having a laugh, right?

You mean the 60's where women could still be beat by husbands and the law didn't get involved because it was just a 'domestic'? The 60's where women were paid half that of men? The 60's where you could make 'golly-wog' jokes on national tv, for family entertainment? The 60's where you could get away with having 10 pints, driving home, killing some poor fucker and it being taken as just an accident? The thousands upon thousands of 50-somethings that look back on their youth, being brought up in care homes during the 60's and were sexually molested, daily; this at a time when they had no one to turn to and a law system that couldn't have given two fucks? The 60's where it was still sometimes respectable to sell a child that may have been born to a teenage daughter...all for the family name and decency? The 60's where rapists got away with it because the victim was probably out too late, wearing a short skirt and had it coming to her?

I mean....time really does heal all ills, and maybe the 60's were fantastic -if you were used to a 40's-50's lifestyle-, but to say society was more moral then than it is now, that somehow they had a better sense of right and wrong......well, I simply don't agree.

Over the decades, some morals evolve and change while others stay stable. Are we more moral now? i'd say that we are on the bigger things like equality (racial and sexual), and there are more laws protecting the well being of children and animals.

There's a difference between politeness/courtesy and morality. You may have a point in stating/thinking we're a less polite, less courteous nation, compared to the 60's (and earlier), but I don't think we're any less moral.

Well said, Sam. Time the officer removed his rose-tinted specs and tried seeing his past as it was rather than how he likes to remember it.

As for the case that Emily posted about, not much can be said. Such people are scum and I'd like to believe in karma so that what goes around comes around.

My own hatred at the moment is firmly aimed at this piece of human excrement:

hope he gets his in prison

Note the lovely pieces of pyschobabble at the end too. Why are the authorities so fixated on the rapist's problems? Doesn't the victim count at all?

i dont think it is quite right to wish this rapist the same fate as his poor victim.... its not who we are... send him to prison... for a long long time.

You are right, of course. Crimes like this anger me and this is how I vent that anger.

"but I don't think we're any less moral."

I didn?t say society was more moral back in the 50?s and 60?s, I just implied that it?s straitjacket of social propriety might have had a somewhat tighter fit, and with hindsight, this might not have been such a bad thing as we imagined back then.

What is morality anyway? Who decrees what is moral and what is not? Who is the final arbiter? I?m sure (I know) that the people you allude to back in the 60?s never considered themselves anything other than paragons of moral rectitude - as did the Victorians before them and even the all conquering, slave taking, Romans back in classical times. We are no better than they; we are essentially the same people. The only difference between them and us are our mores, customs, and the unfettered certainty of our own moral superiority.

So what is morality? Is it just a distillation of fashionable 21st century British middleclass values? Are we right to look down on the Romans and the Victorians, because we believe that we, in the 21st century, have now scaled the very heights of moral certainty and rectitude? And might those who supersede us look back in a thousand years with disdain and contempt at OUR rampant immorality?

Anyhow, apart from that, don?t you think a tightening of the social straightjacket (particularly around the intellectually challenged) might benefit us all?





Officer Dibble

Your quote: "people today are far less inhibited about doing this kind of thing." told me you were talking of morality? If not morality, what else? Surely it's your morals that stop you raping any bird you take a fancy to?

You see, there are only really two reasons I can think of that would stop an average guy raping any girl he feels like. The first is his personal morals and the second is the law. If it's just the law that's holding the guy back, he isn't really a very nice guy is he?!! For me, even if the law said I could go on a raping spree, I wouldn't because I don't want to. i couldn't live with myself. Most people are the same, because if they were anything different, the laws making rape illegal would never have been thought of.

As for the question of morality: Well, that's a question philosophers have debated since Socretes. We all have our own version of morality, as well as the morality of the society we live in. Some people say morality is innate while others think it changes and evolves. I think it's a little bit of both. We all have a basic grasp of what is right and wrong and as a highly social ape, without morality we would never have become civilised in the first place. The fact that we are civilised is evidence that morality exists.

Since morality hasn't been securely pinned down, by any civilisation, for over 3 thousand years of pondering, asking that question on here, while interesting, isn't really going to help us compare a society's behavioural trends over the decades.

[quote]Sadly, it's just confirmed what we already knew about the human condition. If you want scumbags, lowlifes, and the intellectually challenged to behave themselves and toe the line in a civilized society it seems you must first train them,[/quote]

Hmmm, that depends on which morals you're talking about. The BIG moral rules are pretty innate. We know this because of the study of children. If a class is told they mustn't chew gum, they don't chew gum. if one is caught chewing gum, they know they've done wrong. However, if the teacher says they can chew gum, but only on Wednesdays, then they feel happy chewing gum on the day allowed. they understand that gum chewing is only wrong under certain circumstances; it's a 'rule'.

Compare this to, say, poking Elizibeth in the eye with your pencil. The teacher forbids all the children to do such a thing. However, -taking a similar approach with our 'gum chewing' situation- if the teacher tells the class that they are free to poke Elizibeth in the eye with their pencils, but on on Wednesdays, we find that -kids with 'issues' apart- the kids do not want to poke eachother in the eye, regardless of what an adult allows. They instinctively know the difference between the 'rule' of gum chewing, and the 'morality' of administering pain for no reason. This can be found with kids as young as two. we don't need training when it comes to the big moral rulings. Evolution has kinda sorted it all out.

Smaller morals, like nicking someone's banana when they're not looking, etc etc, while aren't exactly 'trained', these rules most likely are reinforced by setting good examples to kids. I think that if you're naturally immoral, no amount of training will sort you out (at least when it comes to the big things like rape, murder, torture, etc).

So, (rambling on, I know!) I don't think we're less inhibited about raping pregnant women, now, compared to times in the past.

All I can say about people who force their personal morality on others is that, again, it would depend on which morals were were talking about. Lot's of expected behaviour and etiquette have wrongly been given 'moral' status: 'pregnancy outside marriage , avoiding church, being gay etc.' Whatever your personal beliefs on the three mentioned, no morality is involved. Banning businesses from using children as slave labour is forcing your morals on others, while banning homosexuality is forcing your personal views. There's a major difference. Of course, this is going full circle into asking what's the difference between a personal view, and a personal moral, to which i have gone over, above.

I cannot know for definite what your morals are, but my experience of my morality tells me we are more moral now than at any other time, ever. This doesn't mean we're anywhere near perfect.

It's immoral that you've made me stay up till 05:30 to bring about this retort, I know that!