Being good has never been easy. If it were, presumably, there would be more good and less evil β unless evil is more attractive? The monthly Sapio has dire fears on that score. You wonder as you read why civilization after thousands of years, or science after hundreds, or hyper-technology after tens, has failed to speed our evolution past this ugly and primeval stage. The rank injustice of discriminating against children born, quite unwittingly, to parents not legally married seems glaringly clear, and in fact the ruling was unanimous; yet in , less than 20 years ago, the same Supreme Court ruled the discrimination was right and just, a necessary protection of the institution of marriage, without which society might descend into a state of feral chaos.
In cases of that sort, morality seems to change with time and place; in others β violence against the unoffending and helpless, sexual exploitation, abuse of children and so on β the standards are absolute, and even criminals, if they are sane and honest, will admit, or boast, that their acts are evil as society understands the word.
Sapio makes its case at some length, and only a bare summary can be attempted here. It begins by noting that the arrest rate for criminal offenses has plunged to an abysmal How did that happen?
Not so much police incompetence as the changing nature of crime itself seems the key point. Once upon a time criminals were either professionals yakuza or, if not, at least they had a clear motive: debts, a grudge, something you could put your finger on.
Police knew what and often who to look for. The rough draft of an explanation, which will do until the subtleties are worked out, is a crazy confluence of opposites. On the one hand, a decades-long economic downturn has shrunk conventional opportunities; on the other, the Internet has so vastly enlarged the realm of the possible that, quite literally, the impossible or unthinkable has vanished into the ether. Here, for example, is a business anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit can plunge into; no need of start-up capital or bank loans or anything like that.
