My mother, father, (both long deceased), or their contemporaries would have said about this: "My goodness! What is the World coming to?"
My parents lived at a time when non-binary gendered people were not known by an acronym of capitalisms but, if mentioned at all, by medical terms or derogatory epithets.
There was no autism awareness nor any notion of 'rights' being deserved by other than heterosexual and 'god fearing' people. Even in the supposedly most free of nations it was not unusual for laws to negatively discriminate on the basis of sexuality and the needs of those with differences in perception or brain function were mostly unrecognised and often seen as disease rather than difference.
Yet, strangely, for all that it was a time one would categorise as far more inequitable and falsely judgmental than that of today, that exclamation of surprised disapproval would have been not uncommon.
This seems paradoxical to me and in considering why it is the case, I can only remark that, despite all the progress that's been made, albeit in fits and starts, there seems also to have been a regression in common understanding and acceptance of others by the average person.
It both saddens and worries me that in parallel with more openness, legal recognition & equity, there has been an insidious development of aggressive mistrust and divisive rhetoric and feeling in society. Yes, there have always been bigots and prejudice and name-calling but that seemed to me to be more the flaws of human nature and general social mores and traits. Despite the negatives, my impression is that there was a general sense of belonging to the same race - of humanity.
Today, my feeling is that it is harder to find that basic humanity and willingness to accept difference and focus on the issue rather than the person. I don't know how to say it well ... I'm groping ... but I just feel that society is more angry, more thoughtless and more stupid. Too many, it seems to me, would rather throw rocks than seek common ground.
The banning of books and artworks, revisionism of classics, attacks on librarians, (surely, most of them the gentlest and most inoffensive of people); the savage unconscionable meanness and hostility that is splitting society based on facile misinformation and disinformation, puerile memes or political diatribes without a jot of rationality or reason — these are all examples of that degeneration to which I refer.
How is it that society has arrived in this place?
As, if not more importantly, how do we get out of it?
