Progress has been made towards a more caring and compassionate society, writes Palmerston resident George Broad.
The Otago Daily Times report about murderer Gareth Smither being denied parole (ODT, 11.5.16) hit me at a tender spot.
I don't usually read murder reports in the news, and readers can find their passions aroused by the gory details.
We can also smugly feel superior to the sort of people who perpetrate such crimes.
We can demand police work harder if they are slow at finding the murderer.
This at times leads to police making a case against the wrong person.
Some of us can indignantly demand longer sentences for those who are caught, though there is no evidence murderers are discouraged by longer sentences.
I try to avoid such useless and counterproductive emotions.
In this case, I felt for the mother of the young lady so brutally killed in Dunedin in 1997.
She has attended every parole hearing but one since the killer was jailed.
She commented "He's still got the same problems he's had since day one. I still don't really sleep at night since this happened to my daughter''.
How can we bring relief to such a mother?
How can any of is feel totally safe from the fear that her experience could happen to us tomorrow?
We can take some pride that as a nation we in New Zealand are better off than most countries in this respect, thanks to those who have worked in our history to build a more caring and compassionate society.
We have at times led the world in such progress, starting from the earliest European settlers who came determined to live in a society more free and caring than they left.
After experiencing economic depressions in the 1880s and the 1930s we elected a Liberal government from 1890 and a Labour government from 1935 which made notable progress.
Such gains ebb and flow but seem likely to continue.
Good news can be found in Otago University Emeritus Professor James R. Flynn's book Intelligence and Human Progress.
He packs into this small book powerful evidence that educated and developed nations have made substantial gains in the general levels of intelligence and caring compassionate behaviour.
It is understandable many feel the opposite is true, as much of our daily news is bad.
Stephen Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature looks back further and shows levels of human violence in relation to our population have been reducing since civilisation started.
A small percentage of humans appear to be psychopathic or sociopathic and have great difficulty controlling their inner demons.
We have reason to be grateful that most of us have learned and are learning better.
