One of the striking features of recent decades in Australia and many Western countries has been the apparent contrast between a regnant ethical framework that highlights tolerance, and an increasingly punitive approach to law and punishment for lawbreaking.
Take, for two examples, the issues of violence in our cities, and the Kyle and Jackie O 'lie detector' incident. The ethics of tolerance suggests people should be able to choose for themselves how much they drink, when they drink, and how they profit from others' drinking. And it suggests that people are entitled to listen to what they want, and to profit from providing others with what they wish to hear.
But it simultaneously demands that people be harshly punished for acting violently when they are drunk, and for putting to air material which some people don't think that others should hear.
In assessing this contrast it may be helpful to look more broadly at the large gap that exists between the large principles or ideals by which we regulate human behaviour and the messy reality in which we violate these principles routinely. Contemporary culture has its ways of dealing with this gap. Christian understandings of it have historically been influential, and pose helpful questions.
In contemporary culture, moral beliefs are commonly held to be a matter of individual choice. Social codes are ideally decided democratically by common agreement. But transgressions of the social code are regarded as unforgivable. When people in showbiz act disrespectfully and young people act violently or lustfully, they must variously be hunted, shamed, sacked and jailed, if necessary indefinitely.
The way in which the media dramatise incidents that appear to breach moral codes is illuminating. The media expresses outrage at particular events, and asks a range of individuals to comment. Victims and their relatives, relatives or members of the same ethnic communities as the transgressors, ordinary people and authorities from child psychologists to prime ministers offer comment. They inevitably choose to be outraged.
So the moral principle is established and confirmed by majority and expert opinion. The media then demand harsher penalties in order to underline this triumph of the common will.
It appears that tolerance of individual choice with respect to moral principles does not lead to a relaxed society. It rather occasions anxiety that egregiously bad behaviour will white ant the foundations of a secure society. This anxiety is then discharged by