When we glance back over the past 50 years and assess how Ireland has developed as a society, it is quite shocking to compare the treatment of women then with now. And it isn’t such a long time ago. The empowerment and equal treatment of women should never have been a question but it was, and in some instances it still is.

Shockingly in many less-developed countries, the slavish second-class treatment of women continues. And for those men who continue to grunt disapprovingly to the very notion of equality, do they have daughters, sisters, a wife? I make this point because we live in times where there is a yearning for nostalgia. And we reach for tales of how we were God-fearing, simple, poor but happy, hard-working but glad-to-have-it type of people.

Would you really prefer the “good old days” of 20th century Ireland?

Yes, there were no drugs, we went to mass, made our own entertainment and so on. And life was precious and murder was rare. “Oh gosh,” we sigh “weren’t we better off back in the day?” But as we do, remember it was a time when the Church had us frightened into submission, when homosexuality was a crime, when families were ravaged by emigration and when women were treated horrendously both in the home and by society. So would you really prefer the “good old days” of 20th century Ireland?

However, while we have made sensible grown-up strides in liberating ourselves from the clutches of power and the darkness of child abuse, poverty, inequality and war, concurrently other incredibly frightening aspects of human behaviour have emerged. And I fear it’s crept up on us to the point of no return.

Murder, violence and depravity have reached epidemic proportions. I’m not one for hyperbole but for the first time in my 46 years on Earth, I find myself fearful of it all.

Yes, we can blame drink and drugs, but it runs deeper

Over Christmas for example, I witnessed frightening behaviour on the streets, out of control young men and women a danger to themselves, let alone others around them. And it wasn’t just drunken chip shop horseplay. Yes, we can blame drink and drugs, but it runs deeper. They’re but mere symptoms of a more profound problem.

The savagery of so-called gangland murders, the one-punch culture, knife crime and random attacks are all phrases and headlines accepted now as a mainstream part of our lexicon. As a father of two teenage children, I’m petrified.

I recently collected my daughter from a friend’s 18th birthday party which was a very civil and pleasant gathering supervised by the girl’s parents. As I waited outside to collect her, another group of teenagers arrived uninvited, chancing their arm. It was my daughter who answered the door and told them that the party was finishing. Thankfully, there wasn’t an issue. A few days later, young Cameron Blair was stabbed and died when he answered the door in a similar incidence at a house party in Cork.

Gardaí are struggling to keep up with this new style of anger and loutishness

The gangster Peaky Blinder way of life needs urgent attention. Gardaí are struggling to keep up with this new style of anger and loutishness. And so, just as we make great progress in allowing people freedom of expression, of exposing child abuse by church and State, of embracing equality and of liberating women, we’re being outflanked on the blind side by even more depressing issues regarding how we treat our fellow beings.

Polishing up

I passed one of those shoe shine stops you see in airports and posh hotels recently. They are an abominable anathema to human dignity. In this day and age, who in their right mind would happily want to sit up in public view to have their shoes shined by somebody else?