An act of violence outside a nightclub in Dublin ended another life tragically and senselessly this week. How many more young people like Brian Murphy will have to die before we are disturbed, not just briefly and in passing, but at a level which prompts deeper questions about the kind of society we have become?
I did not know Brian, but I know his parents and sisters, and it is almost beyond comprehension that this loving and close-knit family should have been devastated in this way. Details are still sketchy, but it appears that some sort of rivalry escalated until it became lethal. I was struck, however, by one phrase used in news reports on the day after his death. Garda referred to it as an "isolated incident".
By what reckoning is it an isolated incident? The telephones on RTE Radio 1's Liveline programme hummed all summer with a litany of similar events; unprovoked assaults, scuffles which suddenly turned viciously aggressive, muggings, beatings. Far from being an isolated incident, it is part of a disturbing trend.
By coincidence, a few days before Brian's death I was at a gathering of adults who work with young people. One of them was a man who has been involved for many years with summer courses. This man has dealt with teenagers for two decades, but admitted that this summer he was deeply troubled by the level of wanton destructiveness which he witnessed among some of the students.
He was stunned by these young people's blank incomprehension of the antisocial nature of their activities and by how oblivious they seemed to the effects of their behaviour on other people. Worse still, many, though not all, of the parents seemed more concerned with blaming others for their child's wrongdoing. Far from accepting responsibility or attempting to challenge and change their child's behaviour, they attempted to obfuscate and deny the seriousness of their child's actions.
In our snobbery, we associate this with areas of poverty, but these were not deprived children, but some of the most privileged teenagers in the country, who attend select and sought-after schools in south-side Dublin. Yet these teenagers vandalised and dismantled both public and private property, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage. When confronted with their actions, effectively they shrugged and implied that money would fix the damage, so what was the problem?
The expression, knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing, might have been coined for them.
More serious than property damage was the systematic, orchestrated bullying which led to one youngster being seriously beaten. A small core group was behind almost every incident, and resisted every attempt to make them realise the seriousness of what they were doing.
Bullying and destructiveness is not new. What is new is how widespread it is, and the obvious feelings of impunity which those who perpetrate such acts have. New, too, is the degree of parental indifference.
It would seem absolutely basic that parents should be easy to contact while their children are away from home - but no. Those who run summer courses have reported occasions when a child became ill or was in trouble of some kind, but no parent was to be found, for the simple reason that they were out of the country on holiday.
These parents left no contact number, nor did they nominate any other adult who would be capable of taking responsibility while they were gone. It defies belief that any parent should be so casual, but apparently it happens.
THERE is a malaise among the middle-classes, a deadly mix of affluence and indifference which means that children are indulged in every way possible materially, but a solid grounding in basic values is absent. How else do you explain teenagers who seem incapable of understanding the nature of right and wrong and who sneer in derision at those who try to explain it to them?
It is important not to exaggerate the degree of the problem. Most parents still care for their children and struggle to do their best for them. However, the degree of damage which is done by those who do not care in this way for their children extends far beyond the family circle.
The man of whom I spoke earlier who runs summer courses had another perceptive comment to make. The majority of teenagers present were sane and sensible and would not dream of indulging in the kind of vicious behaviour which came so easily to some, but none was willing to alert the adults to what was going on, or to shout stop.
That morality is a matter of personal choice has become an increasingly pervasive philosophy. The greatest crime is to impose your morality on another, or to judge someone whose beliefs or actions do not accord with yours. In that atmosphere, common standards of behaviour cannot be taken for granted or maintained.
To challenge others' behaviour contradicts the idea that morality is purely private, so few are willing to do that. That reflects a change in the wider society. We can wring our hands and moan about what has happened to young people, but a better question might be, what has happened to us?
This generation of parents is the first to be unsure of its role. Character formation seems to have been dropped from the job description. An authoritarian way of being a parent disappeared almost overnight, and I for one am not sorry to see it go, but what has replaced it? Many parents seem fearful of setting any boundaries or incapable of enforcing them if they do set them.
Parenting is a labour-intensive job. Quality time is a myth. Quality time happens within huge swathes of quantity time, and not to a schedule. Yet our whole society seems hell-bent on making it as difficult as possible for parents to do a good job, by demanding both parents work outside the home, and often long hours as well.
Excellent parents sometimes still have troubled children, but for the most part, we reap what we sow in parenting. A crucial part of that process is spending enough time with our children to spot their signs of distress early on, but that needs support from the wider society, too.
It is completely naive to believe that young people will somehow have the ability to resist temptation, to be sensible about alcohol and other drugs and to postpone sexual activity in a society which sends them ambivalent messages about all those things.
Adults are particularly ambivalent about alcohol, probably because most of us have been plastered out of our skulls on occasion. Perhaps that is why we are so willing to accept the ludicrous fact that alcohol abuse is a routine element of many young people's social lives. We have one of the youngest ages of experimentation with drugs and alcohol in Europe, yet we adults seem paralysed and helpless in the face of such realities.
Recent tragic events have shown us the frightening price paid by some families for our paralysis.
bobrien@irish-times.ie