TraderMark's  Instablog

Litter is annoying, but in the grand scheme of a society that has traded personal responsibility for blame transfer, it is little more than a pointer to a deeper malaise: the corrosion of deference in our schools, the abandonment of manners on our streets and, yes, the death of respect for civility and integrity. We are close to the point where ethical behaviour is regarded as an affliction to be pitied, a loser's burden.

In a piercing summary of what has gone wrong, Britain's Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, concludes: "Concepts like duty, obligation, responsibility and honour have come to seem antiquated and irrelevant. Emotions like guilt, shame, contrition and remorse have been deleted from our vocabulary, for are we not all entitled to self-esteem? The still, small voice of conscience is rarely heard these days. Conscience has been outsourced, delegated away."

Indeed it has. Individual wrongdoings are, increasingly, an issue not for those concerned, but the state, which dishes out rights in return for unquestioning obeisance. In place of self-restraint, we have installed an all-embracing culture of grievance. Culprits have learnt to claim victim status.