Aboodi Shabi

I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and think that some of the causes are to do with a lack of discipline, a lack of responsibility, and a lack of community.

And, the other night, in my insomniac hours on a trip to Singapore, I mulled over what I might do if I were Cameron.

How about:

1) Declare a state of emergency – and admit that we, as a society, have got a lot of things wrong, especially in how we treat young people;

2) Bring back, immediately, national service – not necessarily military – but a (minimum) year-long, compulsory, “boot-camp” for 16 or 18 year olds, to learn that life is not just about getting what they want, that life is also about responsibility to a wider community, of which they are a part, where they learn the value of service and contribution. There are plenty of socially useful tasks that could accompany such service. Give people a sense that they have something to give, a sense of purpose.

3) Support the above with plenty of public education about community taking priority over the individual.

4) Make all public role models, politicians, the police and judiciary, and the media, accountable to a council of elders (eg House of Lords), and force them to comply with the same standards of contribution to community.

What, overall, I think is needed is a more paternalistic approach – all this hatred of “the nanny-state” and focus on the individual, as well as the prioritising of individual over community good, have created a culture where no-one gives a shit, and no-one is willing to take authority any more.

Although I profess to be (very) left-wing, there is something that the right used to have which was a belief in the importance of discipline and community. That’s been jetisoned in the pursuit of quick profit in the last fifty years or so.

People, I think, only act so selfishly and (self-)destructively because they feel, rightly or wrongly, that the world has little to offer them. We’ve been selling people a fake dream for the last fifty years or so. No wonder there’s so much nihilism around.

Of course, there are other problems to address, but I do think we have to change at the root, and that change will take a generation.

There are no quick fixes here.