With all that has been happening with celebrity bad behaviour, especially with the famed Hollywood girls, society has not actually lost its way or its priorities. It is a combination of things which is directly attributable to the rapidly changing nature of the world and everyone’s inability to deal with the new expectations, new freedoms and new responsibilities that are emerging from that change.

The world is in a massive state of transition, especially developing countries in the West, which have had to cope with the incredible rise in technology in such a very short time. The old order of thinking, the old expectations, the old boundaries and comfortable infrastructures relating to appropriate and acceptable behaviour are rapidly being eroded without anything which is universally acceptable slotting in their place. This is leading to a lot of insecurity for older folks, as the younger ones, armed with this new knowledge and innovative power, assert themselves and set their agenda; one which is causing anxiety for their parents who are not quite sure how to deal with it.

However, the young themselves are not yet equipped to set up this new order and need guidance too. Faced with such awesome responsibility without much help, many are rebelling against the uncertainty themselves, hence the seemingly strange and inexplicable behaviour of some of the ones in the limelight.

This has always been a world where parents taught their children, not the other way around. This is a new world where children are the experts, one where parents are anxious for their welfare but are not versed in new technology to use it to stem that anxiety.

In this insecure and lop-sided situation, where foundations like religion and the family are falling away, it is easier to question priorities, to hang on to outdated and irrelevant values, to condemn people for their behaviour when it seems inappropriate, or to wish for the good old days. But none of that reactionary behaviour is going to be of much help because no one can turn the clock back. One can only go with its time, and the focus on celebrities just now, for whatever reason, is what this time demands.

It must be accepted, once and for all, that if there is a new technological age that dictates a new kind of living, then everybody also needs a new mindset to go with it. You cannot use old solutions to new dilemmas. You have to acknowledge what is happening first, put away the fear and natural condemnation that is often felt with change and work out, individually and collectively, what the new age and innovations will mean for everyone and their children, and the best ways you can each react to them.

Hiding back in the past and knocking everything which does not align with the old ways of thinking is not an option. Such an attitude will solve nothing. It merely keeps everyone back there, fossilised and fearful with nowhere to go, stuck fast on the periphery of life as it rushes mockingly past everybody.

The priorities are already being sorted now, whether anybody likes them or not, by the new technology around. However, the fears you have are preventing you from acknowledging those priorities and working out how to use them to build a new way of living for the greater good.

All the badly behaving youngsters, including the celebrities, are reacting to a different time without set authority - a very insecure time but the only time ‘they’ know. The innovations of the modern age, the education for all and the freedom and independence men and women now possess are heralding a different kind of age where people are searching for new values, new meaning, new purpose and new answers to the best use of those freedoms.

This major transition, from one point of order, structure and gradual death to the current point of rebirth and rebuilding, will eventually settle down again, some years from now, with new ways of thinking and living.

Until such times, society is unable to help either because society itself, as the older folks know it, is also disintegrating. It is in a state of flux without signposts to guide it until the people understand the process better, feel more comfortable with its effects, and collectively decide what really matters and how it can be harnessed beneficially to give everyone new confidence and greater pride in their future.

This ride is about to get a lot more bumpy before it finally settles down!