ABSTRACT
It would appear to be widely held in this country and elsewhere in the world that Western society is facing moral crisis. Certainly some such view is apparent in the outbreaks of moral panic which seem to occur with increasing frequency - and which are, of course, milked by contemporary media and journalism for all they are worth. To be sure, moral panics have occurred throughout recorded history, and prophets portending final human descent into the troughs of Sodom and Gomorrah have always been at hand to incite them. It may therefore be that more recent instances of the phenomenon need to be seen in proper historical proportion - not as genuine visions of apocalypse now but as due at least in part to the overheated word-processors of contemporary news-hounds. I am not for a moment denying, of course, the horror of the anomie and twisted behaviour of some people in our society, as witnessed by recent news coverage - but such people, like the poor, are always with us and it may be doubted whether human nature as such is generally either less or more inclined to demonic extremes than formerly. Human nature being what it is, the lord of the flies and the heart of darkness are never far from it; but, then, neither are those other qualities that naturally incline humankind to acts of concern, charity and selflessness towards their fellows.
