Evil’s a strong word, and a word that seems to belong to another era. Does any of the behaviour of modern British society cause enough misery that it deserves to be called a Social Evil?

When this popped up it made me think … hard.

I suppose quite a few things might be considered “evil” but what differentiates a social evil from just any old evil? It sems too easy to slip into thinking abut evils in either totally abstract terms (such as poverty, war, disease) or list current preoccupations such as terrorism or street crime. Some might even be tempted to ascribe the term social evil to specific groups – there’s always been one marginalised group, Teddy boys, Mods, skinheads, punks, new-age travellers or hoodies to name but a few from the time-line.

If you re thinking about what epitomises social evil for you, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation want to know about your thoughts. They have a very simple response form which they’d really like you to complete, anonymously . It’ll be interesting to see how they analyse the results! See www.socialevils.org.uk/

If you want to be a bit less anonymous, you can always copy your response as a reply to this post and let off a bit of steam about what you thin are social evils in the UK today.

I tagged along and arriving a few minutes early noticed that there was an increasing number of people standing and strolling around, just like people do – tourists, office workers, etc. Quite a few had iPods plugged into their ears. Again, this is totally normal.

More people kept arriving. At a few seconds to 6.46, a countdown was started then, at zero, almost everyone turned up their music and started dancing (OK, we did too). A great and enthusiastic time was had by all then 30 minutes later the party dissolved again.

A few tourists were left looking rather bemused by the best part of 1000 people dancing to the apparent silence.

What particularly interests me is the mashup of social networking going on here:

• the mix of electronic viral connections through the phones, Skype, MySpace, sites such as www.dontstayin.com and word of mouth,
• the fact that real people actually came together in one location for a communal activity (and the synchronisation of the start was an important element),
• the almost complete lack of direct face-to-face communication (everyone having ear-buds jammed in their heads),
• the fact that everyone was dancing, as much “together” as they would be in a club, but to their own chosen tune,
• the way that the mob evaporated away at the end
• by 11 today (16 hours later) there are 773 pictures of the event at: http://www.dontstayin.com/uk/london/st-pauls-cathedral/2007/jul/19/event-131750

I wonder what parallels and lessons it holds for us about how we might engage people in collaborative learning and how we connect with each other in the 21st century.