In an ocean of brutishness, there are some islands of decency

By : David Campbell
(Appeared in the National Times, Australia on January 9, 2012)

It seems the rest of society must bear the brunt of the actions of a selfish minority.

Holiday scenes: a middle-aged man finishes a stubby of beer and casually drops it on the beach; radio thumping, a carload of youths races through a seaside village shouting obscenities; a woman driving along a country road flicks her cigarette butt out of the window; a teenage girl stuffs the wrapping paper from her sandwich in between the slats of the wooden bench on which she's sitting.

They're just small incidents, everyday events, and maybe I'm overreacting, but surely it's worth questioning the thinking behind them. How can these individuals have so little regard for the environment and other people? They represent a subculture in our community, a group that might be called the ''brutes''. That's using the word in the sense of those lacking the ability to reason, to understand consequences; people who simply don't care.

They have no sense of responsibility, no concept of decency or consideration for others. All they're aware of is their own narrow, blinkered self-interest. To accost them and point out the problem is to invite verbal abuse and even physical violence. Somehow, you're the one at fault for bringing it to their attention.

There were undoubtedly quite a few brutes abroad in the English riots last year. Whatever the contributing factors - poverty, community fragmentation, social inequality, parental failure, family breakdown, welfare dependency, political incompetence - there was plenty of evidence of a brutish mentality: I see. I want. I take. But there's nothing exclusively British about brutes, and they're not a new phenomenon.

On October 31, 1923, on the eve of the spring racing carnival, a substantial number of the Victorian police force went on strike. The result was chaos and violence. On the weekend of November 3 and 4, mobs ran riot in the city streets, smashing windows and looting. Three people died. Trams were overturned. Property damage was substantial. Yet most of those who were eventually brought to justice were young men and boys with no previous criminal record. The line between order and anarchy is very thin.

Today they are everywhere, in all walks of life. They're not limited by ethnicity, age, sex, creed or social class. On the domestic front, they do late-night burnouts in suburban streets, gatecrash private events, trash rental properties, and regularly disrupt quiet neighbourhoods with wild parties.

In the financial world, they abuse people's trust by cheating them out of hard-won earnings. They exploit innocence with complete disregard for the suffering caused. It was a widespread brutish attitude to financial probity that led to the GFC.

There are celebrity brutes, sporting brutes and corporate brutes. There are brutes in politics, using their position for purely selfish ends. In the UK a few years ago they were caught rorting their parliamentary allowances. It's not difficult to find similar examples in Australia.

There are many manifestations of these creatures, but they all have one thing in common: a complete empathy bypass. They exhibit an inability to see their own actions in terms of a broader context. They don't regard themselves as part of the general community, but as stand-alone entities in their own little universe. They have an unshakeable sense of entitlement.

This is not an argument for sheep-like conformity. I simply make the point that a society can only function effectively if there is co-operation between its members and respect for others. But there are those who don't seem to understand this concept - and their numbers appear to be increasing.

Maybe I'm the one who's on the wrong track. Perhaps notions of courtesy, compassion and consideration for others are outdated and no longer relevant to our modern society.

Perhaps the message in today's world is that we need to be obsessively self-centred and ruthlessly aggressive to survive the pressures of the 21st century. In other words, it's head down, elbows out, and charge blindly ahead.

But then I read about the kindness of strangers. During last year's natural disasters, there was abundant evidence of a willingness to help in times of adversity, of a generosity of spirit.

So, the positive examples exist. And the more there are, the better the chance that the brutes will see - and learn.

David Campbell is a Melbourne writer.

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