Letters: Now some good emerges

Our society is different than it was 60 years ago, says a reader.

Bruce Bell's letter ('Good and evil trade places,' (October 17) is way off the mark. Inverted illogic makes not common sense.

His "much of our media has been infiltrated and become totally left-wing and secular" implies that the media was reputable when it was totally right-wing and religious. When was that? Before Martin Luther? Under Adolf Hitler? During the McCarthy era?

Are Mr Bell's "Judeo-Christian heritage and values" the same ones that gave us Crusades, witch-hunts, the Inquisition, Jewish pogroms, slavery, colonisation, indigenous genocide and endless warfare, culminating in two imperialist world wars fought over resources and markets using fearful weapons of mass destruction?

I suspect "these insidious ideologies [that] creep into our lives almost unnoticed" is actually Mr Bell's description of changes he personally doesn't want. Like what? Peace?

Truths he can't face perhaps? The natural evolution of humanity from oppression, repression and suppression to freedom, openness and receptivity?

I'll certainly address his questions.

1) Our society is different than it was 60 years ago. Some things are better, others may be worse. It depends a how we measure 'things'.

2) Single-income or one bread-winner households may be healthier for many people, especially when children are younger, but why should the sole bread-winner be the father? In fact, why should the single income be earned only by one working parent? Why not share parenting and working? Our society is apparently suffering terribly from a lack of father figures.

3) The entire population of children cannot be judged by the worst behaviour of a relative few. It appears children are less servile and compliant than they were 60 years ago. What was so desirable about submissive and compliant children? Children are perhaps less innocent and more 'worldly'.

We consider them 'consumers' from before birth. All of us adults, including Bruce Bell, are responsible for indoctrinating them post-partum into excessive consumer want, effectively stealing their childhoods to make our money.

4) Were male teachers "driven off," or did they voluntarily leave the profession?

5) Our suicide rate in 2013 was 11 per 100,000 population, trending downwards very slightly from 12 per 100K in 2012, down throughout the 2000s from highs of around 15 per 100K in the late-1990s.

The values we once called good actually contained much evil.

The values we now call good were once considered evil: feminism, racial equality, minority rights, protecting our environment, tolerance of ethnic, cultural, gender, sexual and religious difference, and thinking beyond the dogma of church doctrines inimical to life.

Perhaps Western Christendom is only being undermined insomuch as its foundations were rotten anyway.

WALLY HICKS
Kohukohu