For a student of ethics and history, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's (JRF) consultations on social evils confirm the observation that every generation thinks that the past was a better place, and that its own time is one of crisis. Yet by almost any standard one cares to mention, contemporary Western liberal democratic societies offer greatly better lives for the great majority of people than was the case 50 or 100 years ago. In late Victorian London – whose streets swarmed with child prostitutes, where it was too dangerous to walk at night and abject poverty and suffering were a norm – life was much less pleasant, safe, civilised and well provided than it is now. I would not myself wish to be a woman in any other period of history or part of today's world, than in contemporary Western democracies. This fact alone, concerning half of humanity, should be evidence that the great majority in today's UK arguably live in some of the best times and places, from the point of view of individual human experience and opportunity.

This does not mean that there are no problems in contemporary society – far from it – but it does mean that they need to be put into perspective. There is always a risk that debate on these issues will be biased towards the opinions of those who feel exercised by their perceptions of what is wrong in society. This makes it a matter of the first importance that such perceptions should be put into context and examined. If public policy is determined by the attitudes of the more conservative and fretful members of society, who see bogeymen under the bed when none are there, the resulting distortions will be harmful. The social evils first expressed by a self-selected, concerned minority, are then inflated by the media, and finally acted on by governments wishing to placate manufactured ‘public opinion’. The skewed results, not infrequently, make matters worse rather than better.

Four debateable social evils

For that reason, I want to question and challenge some of the attitudes and views expressed in the JRF consultation, beginning with the four main evils identified.