Moral Panic

We are often told that wowsers are deluded in thinking that the moral behaviour of society is decaying at an accelerating rate these days. That is just uninformed moral panic, and really, nothing has changed much. We just read about bad things happening more because of increased media coverage, so there is nothing to worry about.
I hope all that is true.
But think of a few things that have happened lately:

• repeated examples of 12 year old children being threatened with knives by other 12 year olds.
• news reports of stabbings almost every day.
• half the sports reports seem to be about footballers being charged with rape, drug trafficking, glassing their girlfriends etc. Good old "drunk and disorderly" seems pretty tame these days.
• a campaign to introduce an MA15+ rating for video games, in order to allow violent video games to be imported and sold legally.
• 18,000 tickets have been sold for the first bout of the "Ultimate Fighting Championships" this Sunday at the ACER arena in Homebush. (http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/more-sports/ufc-fighters-building-up-to-showdown/story-e6frey6i-1225831970755). I once had the misfortune of seeing a few seconds of this on TV, and it is nothing like wrestling. I remember one man flat on his back with his head against the cage and covered with blood. The other fighter was sitting on him and pummeling his face. It looks like a regression to the barbarism of ancient Rome.
• Operation "Titstorm" has started, which involves hackers attacking the computers in the Australian Parliament. They are objecting to internet filtering, which is aimed at stopping content on the internet which is "refused classification" and would not be allowed in any newspaper or video screen, like child porn and extreme violence.
• binge drinking and attacks on police are in the news regularly.
• children and women are degraded in order to sell clothes. One of the few people campaigning against this is Melinda Tankard-Reist (http://www.collectiveshout.org/ )
• a study in the UK indicates children are feeling increasingly unhappy with life (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7197888/Children-feeling-unhappier-with-life.html ). The solution from the government there is to introduce "happiness lessons".

Is all this just a lot of nonsense and nothing to be worried about? I really, really hope so. I think the worry is that in all these cases, there are a lot of powerful forces driving society in the wrong direction, but not so much pushing in a healthier direction.