i would agree with JtS re the world fifty years ago. Unlike Akenaton, the world that I grew up in was not a kindly or helpful one. Maybe in small, close knit communities that may have been the case but on larger yowns people had a tendency to mind their own business and condemnation of others, for either not being 'nice' people or for being too full of themselves was very common. I was a lonely child from a disfunctional family but, at that time, there was no system to detect the fact that I was struggling, and certainly no 'community' worth the name. I got pregnant at 17 - married the father and, by the time I was 22 was divorced with two small children. My neighbours looked on me, for the most part, as a threat to their own marriages - as if I might lure their husbands away - or as a low life, because I was divorced. There was very little friendliness or support and I raised my kids pretty much on my own until I remarried ten years later.

I would mention that SADs were much more prevalent in Victorian times and earlier, syphilis and ghonnorhea being much more common then, before the advent of penicillin. I wonder how many people suffered the results of chlamidia, without being aware of the fact? Nowadays there are more tests to check for these diseases and so we are more aware of them. Methods of treatment have also improved. Human beings have always had the tendency toward promiscuity, otherwise the oldest profession would have been redundant. However, it seems that now that women can also indulge without the high risk of pregnancy, this is considered to be a real problem. There is still a lot of hypocrisy in this world - that is one of the things that turned me away from organised religion in the first place.

For myself, I try to live and to treat other people in a way that I would want to be treated. If any action would be upsetting to me then I try to avoid behaving in that way. I don't always succeed and there are certain people to whom I find it difficult to apply that tenet, but I do try and use that benchmark. I'm not looking for a reward in the hereafter - I don't believe in heaven or hell - but just the feeling that I might have done something to make someone else a little happier is sufficient.