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Thoughts on Changing Societal Values

I have just started writing again after many years away from it (life got in the way). As a result, I feel that I ought to start recording interesting thoughts that I have that could perhaps one day lead to something interesting in writing. I'm not planning to edit this as I go through: instead it is a sort of splurge of thoughts that have come out of a film I've just watched and subsequent discussion with my other half. I don't know whether any of the opinions herein will be offensive to anyone, so apologies if they are! Incidentally, I should perhaps note that I am talking about UK society here, and not the wider world.

I’ve just watched the film Belle and it started a discussion between Richard and I on the differences in societal values not only since the time portrayed in the film, but also in our lifetimes. For instance, the change in the Royal Family’s attitude to appropriate marital station: they realised the mistake that they made with Princess Diana and sensibly decided not to repeat it with William and Kate Middleton.

Having said that they made a mistake with Princess Diana, I do, however, believe very firmly that she was responsible for introducing to the Royal Family the ability to make that sort of decision. She brought with her a humanity that wasn’t there before; an ability to connect with the ordinary people. To be honest, it’s probably been the saviour of the Royal Family as an institution: they have a fine line to walk between being ‘royal’ enough to have a point and being ‘common’ enough to be understood by the people who would make the decision as to whether or not they should exist.

That particular societal pressure – to marry someone of appropriate station, that is – has obviously been a very long time in changing, as, I suppose, any societal norm would be. We also discussed the change in acceptance of interracial marriage, homosexuality and religious freedom, as well as the simpler matter of blasphemy and ‘bad’ language.

In terms of interracial marriage, we feel that in most quarters, a marriage between people of different races would no longer be something worthy of comment. Clearly, there will still be pockets of racism in which such a marriage would be considered entirely inappropriate, but across society as a whole, we think this pressure has been lifted. If it hasn’t quite reached that point yet, it won’t be very long before it has.

Likewise, prejudice against homosexuals: I believe that this is something that will completely disappear from society’s consideration in our lifetimes. That’s not to say that there will be nobody with a prejudice against homosexuality – those people will perhaps always exist – but that society as a whole will no longer hold that prejudice. Just as racial acceptance has become commonplace within the lifetime of our parents, so that now there are only isolated individuals who exhibit racist behaviour, yet when they were children the reverse was probably true: only isolated individuals wanted the removal of racial prejudice.

Religious freedom is slightly more complicated, because the mere practice of religion will naturally build boundaries between individuals. There will always be tensions between one major religion and another because it is an inescapable facet of the holding of religious beliefs that your beliefs will differ from someone holding the beliefs of a different religion. That being said, I believe that in my lifetime society will move to a position where it is acceptable for any individual to believe whatever they wish to believe. The conflicts and tensions between religious groups will still exist, but society as a whole will not attempt to influence religious choice.

As a final discussion point, the increased acceptance of blasphemy and ‘bad’ language is, I think, indicative of the general relaxation of societal sensorship on the individual. We are now freer than we have ever been – at least in the current civilisation – to having the freedom to do, say or think whatever we wish. Obviously, there are laws in place to ensure that such freedoms do not get out of hand, but in terms of societal pressure there is now very little that society says we cannot or should not do. Actually, thinking about it, even the societal pressure to look a certain way seems to have reduced in our lifetime. Perhaps by the time we die, there will be no societal pressure in any way: wouldn’t that be a fabulous thing to aspire to?!