We're all less compassionate and more rude, less interested in others, more self-centered and self-consumed, and less compromising (just consider Congress). Think broadly here, beyond crime and punishment, beyond shootings and beyond hometown, even beyond nation.
It's ironic given the high-tech information age, but we're simply less connected with one another, on a person-to-person, intimate level. Texting and Facebook do not promote intimacy; instead they seem to be encouraging self-absorption.
That is a change, and not for the better.
Andy Griffith and other 1950s shows may not reflect the full reality of those times, but how long has it been since we saw that level of neighbor-to-neighbor closeness? People routinely rushing to help someone who has dropped something, open doors for seniors and baby strollers? Who even notices seniors and strollers in this gadget-obsessed world? Even in the last 30 years there is less tendency to think about and consider effects on others before acting.
We have changed. We care less, or at least we pay less concentrated attention. Me, me, me. It may seem a stretch to some, but there is a logic in connecting this phenomenon with our more extreme reactions as a society to fearful stimuli. We have a weakened ability to see others as complicated and vulnerable as ourselves. A result of lessened intimacy with one another is a lack of understanding, compassion - yes, less hesitation to react with harshness.
Common teenage pranks or just-plain-stupid acts were always frowned upon, but now instead of taking a wayward youth home with a warning the first time, or punishing but with an eye to individual situation, we are quicker to arrest, prosecute and incarcerate, which can start a tumbling spiral more than it fixes one. That's not because of some independent shift in the system; it's because society demands it - society as a whole; this is about all of us.
We no longer feel as connected with one another, with "strangers" in our communities that once-perceived closeness is gone, so we fear others more and react in fear. Fear is unreliable. Ironically, such reactions breed more fear and distrust.
So it will take all of us to try to change, to become aware, to lift our heads from smart phones and iPads and interact, reconnect. Quality of life and happiness lie not bent over a screen but face-up, with each other. That - a renewed intimacy with one another and the sense of responsibility and care which go with it - is the best way we can feel and be safer.