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upon the status and ident ity of the
victim.
On this basis, the theft of a valu–
able painting from an impersonal
museum may be viewed as a less
serious offense than half a bar of
chocolate stolen from the school
locker. And a purse stolen from a
busy housewife out shopping is
viewed nowhere near as serious as a
similar sum of money stolen from a
defenseless widow or pensioner.
What really distu rbs the authori–
ties- police chiefs, magistrates,
social workers, educators and the
like-is this added ominous fact:
children who don't actually commit
criminal acts, who don't vandalize
or steal themselves, no longer
regard such unlawful acts by others
as serious offenses.
Increasingly, children have an
almost complete lack of moral con–
sciousness either for their own
actions or the actions of others. Too
often the "11th commandment" is
simply-"Don't get caught!"
Today's children will be tomor–
row's adults. What a child accepts
as morally correct today will be the
standard of tomorrow's society.
The trend of youth today tends to
indicate where society is headed in
the future.
At the turn of the century the
whole Western world collectively
subscribed to a r igid social morali–
ty. Everyone knew the ru les and
April 1982
the punishment for breaking them.
Today's society is subject to an
almost continuously changing mor–
al standard. What is now accepted
as moral is no more than a code of
behavior based on social consensus.
As society's standards change, so
do belief and behavior.
For example, the pressure in the
United States to legalize marij uana
is largely due to a social morality
shared by those who say, "What
harm does it do to society?"
If
and
when the majori ty-or even the
h ighly vocal minority--can demon–
st rate that marijuana is now accept–
able to their society, legalizat ion
will follow.
Social morality has degenerated
into the do-what-you-like-as- long–
as-i t -doesn't-hurt-others att it ude
peddled by so many moral experts
and progressive churchmen.
But our act ions and those of our
ch ildren are hurting the whole of
society bot h indivi d ually and
nationally. Except in sorne commu–
nis t and Arab states most catego–
ries of criminal behavior are show–
ing rapid rises in virtually every
country. Maybe we should examine
why it is that certain regimes
are
able more or less to contain crimi–
nal activity.
The Chinese Method
T he Chinese have never tolerated
cr iminals. I n the West we would al!
probably think twice before t urning
over to the police a man we had
seen commit sorne petty crime. But
Chairman Mao's brand of morality
placed al! t he responsibil ity of
bringing criminals to justice firmly
on the people-not the S tate. Until
recently the Chinese citizen would
unhesitat ingly repor t the criminal
both for his own good and the good
of the communi ty. Since limited
Western reforms were introduced
after Mao's death, China too has
experienced increases in Western–
style crime.
Formerly the emphasis was
always placed on
deterring crimi–
nal action,
and it was this philoso–
phy that determined both the Chi–
nese moral code and social morali–
ty. As Britis h M.P., Andrew
Faulds, put it in
The Times:
"T he
[Chinese] emphasis [was] on hard
work,
responsibility to the commu–
nity and denial ofse/f."
The result
was a much lower crime rate by
Western standards.
Contrast this with shifting West–
ern standards. John March, former
assistant chairman a·nd counselor of
the British l nstitute of Manage–
ment, examined business ethics in a
paper presented to the Royal Socie–
ty of Arts in 1970 . "Everything we
stand for," he stated , " is being
challenged again and again....
It
is
an age when the young are savagely
questioning the values and habits of
The Chinese have not
tolerated criminals
(and this was true even
before the communist
takeover in the
1940s.) .. . The
responsibility of
bringing criminals to
justice [is] all firmly on
the people- not the
State.
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