The death of shame

In several recent posts on here I have mentioned the fact that the doorway to our building is being used by drug addicts as a nice place to shoot up the crap that they seem intent to destroy their lives with. Mrs Velkyal and I went to watch the football last night, and en route from our traditional pre-match drinks in Jama to the pub we watch the games in, Zlata Hvezda, we noticed the same vials and syringes in a passage through a building as we see most mornings when we go to work.

Mrs Velkyal remarked that perhaps it is not an increase in drug abuse in the city, but rather the fact that we are more aware of it - in the same way that when a woman is pregnant, all her acquiantances seem to get knocked up as well. While I can see the validity of her argument, hoping of course it is not some rather unsubtle hint that she wants to start a family already, I am not convinced.

When I arrived in the Czech Republic in 1999 it was still ok to smoke pot in public, indeed many pubs and clubs had an almost permanent funk in the air which has thankfully gone in these less permissive days. But it is only recently that I have seen people shooting up with any regularity, in broad daylight and with no sense of shame. Even this morning on my way to the metro station to come to work there were a couple of girls sitting on a bench in the park around the railway station quite openly prepared to take a hit.

I think what shocks me most about the junkies in our area is not the fact that they leave their rubbish lying around in the street, but rather that they have no sense of shame - indeed they almost flaunt their anti-social behaviour in the full knowledge that few people will comment or do anything. It was Dietrich Bonhoffer I believe who commented that the reason bad people win is because good people do nothing, and still that rings true today. While I wouldn't want to label the junkies as "bad" people per se, I do feel that in rejecting the norms of society they have forfeited their right to the protection and benefits of the state.

Our society has become so "rights" obsessed that we have forgotten the responsibilities inherent in the nature of society. In our well meaning attempts to create a safety net for the disfortunate in the welfare state, we have created a hammock for the lazy, the unscrupulous and the downright corrupt. Our culture is now one of abrogated responsibility and the enfeeblement of civil society, where good, ordinary people look the other way and expect the powers that be to solve their problems for them.