Society’s nutters
— J's sister gets chased by an odd woman on the Tube. Is society getting more dangerous?…”
J’s sister reports on her blog that she was recently attacked by a drab, repressed-looking, extremely neurotic character in a tube station over allegedly skipping a fare (J’s sister has a season ticket and can’t get through the usual barriers with it, which is an issue when there are no staff around).
Just what makes people do that?
Hearing about J’s sister’s misfortune, I was mindful of Stanley Cohen’s seminal stuff on moral panics, and also one by the criminologist Geoffrey Pearson. Pearson in particular seems to have spent a good proportion of his career trying to answer the question: is society going down the pan?
Pearson concluded that now (pick any recent example: 70s muggings, Cleveland child abuse, AIDS, kids killing kids) was no different to any other era of history. In any time, he finds, there are identifiable cracks in the polyfilla of regular social exchange.
Only now we have the media to whip it all up for us. I suppose that’s what makes all these dangers clear and present.
See also:
Legend on the prowl
A mysterious black panther spotted near Arlon last week has precedents in other European cultures.
- Originally published: 5 Oct 2009 in Editorial
Who you gonna call?
Hello you, I'm Mike Padgett. I'm not a Princeton curator, Knoxville mayoral candidate, Kentuckian pastor or Arizona journalist, I just share the same name. In fact, I am a consultant working in user experience and information design.
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