Early in the New Year I was walking along my favourite tree-lined shady path hugging the creek. When I rounded a bend, I noticed ten or so teenagers splashing and yelling in the murky, contaminated water.
As I passed, I was then assailed by the most obscene abuse and then threatened with assault when I chose to ignore their shouts.
When I returned home, more angry than shaken, I sat on our veranda and wondered about the state of the world and the year ahead.
I then noticed in the adjacent park another group of slightly younger, cycling youths surrounding and menacing a boy who was practising kicking a rugby conversion goal.
I had seen the boy before, and it was obvious he had special needs, quite uncoordinated and really struggling to even kick the ball properly.
This modern Lord of the Flies scene saw the posse grab the ball and the boy then scrambled unsuccessfully trying to retrieve it. He was becoming more agitated as the taunting became louder. I yelled angrily and the riders reluctantly retreated, and the boy shuffled home in tears.
I know global warming poses an existential threat to mankind, but I cannot help feeling that we are also experiencing a global and local escalation in hatred.
The First World War was never the war to end all wars. Humanity has done its best to destroy our planet, not only developing weapons of mass annihilation, but poisoning our seas, waterways and atmosphere.
On a micro level, whether it be on the roads, politics, social media or playgrounds, there is a growing hostility and intolerance. The Bondi massacre exemplified the hatred simmering beneath the thin skin of the body politic.
I used to be a disciple of Marx, Kant and Teilhard de Chardin, three philosophers who were convinced that human evolution would ultimately lead to an earthly paradise, populated by more enlightened and peace-loving human beings, where the colour of one’s skin, adopted religion, nationality and birthplace would be irrelevant.
Hobbes warned us that civilisation would quickly regress to savagery with the breakdown of humanising socialisation agents like the family, the church, our schools, the state and the media.
Now, more and families are dysfunctional, the church has lost its authority under the cloud of an epidemic of child sexual abuse, and schools are afraid to teach ethics.
Politicians are too busy posturing and fighting, and the media have too great a stake in the status quo to be change agents.
Recent University of Melbourne research revealed that almost 40 per cent of Australian boys support violent extremist ideologies while more than a third have misogynistic attitudes towards women.
This crazy and growingly hostile world of ours will not change unless we can convince our children to eschew those values which have corrupted and divided us.
As we begin another school year, our only hope will be our teachers, who will hopefully not only instil in our children a love of learning, but also inculcate a set of values which will challenge the prevailing cancerous ideology which is destroying our society.
I know it isn’t fair to assign teachers with such a burden, but where else will our children be exposed to values such as compassion, tolerance and the commitment to building a more convivial, fairer and kinder world?
Families and churches traditionally carried that responsibility. Now teachers must step into the breach, the last bastion, before we descend into the homo homini Iupus dystopia, forewarned by Hobbes, Orwell and Huxley.
