And another thing ... Of Nostradamus and nostalgia.

At the end of a long summer, I sit pondering the future.

Mercifully, Nostradamus got it wrong. The apocalypse he'd promised for July has failed to materialise. Which is a good thing since I don't think I was ready. But never mind.

On this, the sixtieth anniversary of the weekend World War II broke out, I've been flipping through the stacks of newspapers and magazines that invariably pile up in my flat and flipping my television dial to watch the countless wartime documentaries programmed for this weekend.

As you can imagine, the War still figures very big here in Britain.

In 1939, everybody knew it was coming but they didn't know when. So they continued building new homes in the suburbs and tending their children and their gardens until the bombs began to fall.

After the war came "the future" when all but a few cynics believed that they were well on their way to a wondrous, shiny, efficient, painfree and workfree future--despite the fact that in Eastern Europe, NATO and Soviet Russia kept gigantic nuclear arsenals permanently aimed at each other's throats.

In retrospect, the postwar era appears to have been one of remarkable calm, cheer, stability and tranquillity. And despite the war's social upheavals and the mutation of a once mighty empire into a vastly smaller and more unassuming commonwealth, Victorian values remained pretty much in place. In those days, there was unquestioning respect for authority as represented by royalty, politicians, soldiers, judges, doctors, clergy and police.

In fact, until the 1960s, this island was a remarkably unstressful place. Until then, nobody dreamed there was such a thing as nuclear waste or cancers transmitted through the air to unborn babies. There were no bombers, no muggers, no beggars, no cars blasting rap music, no graffiti and none of the multiform, ever-changing terrors we live with nowadays. Mass killers such as heart disease and cancer were kept tactfully in the closet. There was no fear of animal fats or salt, no government warnings on cigarette packages, no anorexia or bulimia, no AIDS, no CJD. There was no animal rights movement, no sexism, no gay pride, no political correctness. And the problems of youth seemed negligible, even laughable, compared to now.

The era of rampant and obnoxious egoism was yet to be born.

Sure, bad things happened then as now. There were floods, killer London smogs, the Korean war, Suez, the Manchester United air crash, the Notting Hill race riots, British soldiers murdered in Kenya and Cyprus, the Moors murders and the 116 children who died in the Aberfan coal tip. But, for the most part, it seemed that the tragedy and cruelty of the world happened elsewhere. And by silent consensus, virtually everybody played by the rules.

So when did it all begin to fall apart, I wondered? When did the bright, stainless steel future cease to beckon? When did cities, communities and families begin to collapse? The satire boom of the early 1960s that dealt repeated blows to all dignity and authority? The death of JFK? The advent of the 1960s youth culture of drugs, free-love and rebellion?

For a clue, I cite some of the stories I read this weekend.

The Sunday Times reveals the "triumphant" story of sixties pop icon Lulu ("To Sir with Love") who, after two failed marriages and a lot of psychotherapy, is planning a tv comeback. Why? "She's a survivor!"

Talk Magazine offers a tantalising piece on the "survival" of Hillary Clinton who says of husband Bill: "He is a very, very good man."

And The Daily Mail contains a huge spread on how Princes Charles, William and Harry are "surviving" two years after the death of Diana with a little help from Camilla Parker Bowles.

Don't know what the word means to you but to me, in 1990s jargon, "surviving" means simply an absence of suicide. It also suggests an absence of happiness and peace of mind. In the postwar boomer years, there was a mood of excited optimism, undampened by the spectre of mushroom clouds. Until the 1960s.

Since then, the mood has been one of increasing pessimism and nostalgia, a yearning for more orderly, elegant and genteel times.

So when did things begin to seriously fall apart?

Though I can't pinpoint a date on a calendar, it was the day that women en masse began to have sex before marriage. Which is precisely the day they began to lose their men. It was also the day that men en masse began behaving badly; that "commitment" became an issue; that families began to disintegrate and that the world became a more hostile, violent, disorderly, paranoid and heartbreaking place than ever before.

Sure, you can argue that men have always behaved badly. But they have only behaved badly insofar as the women in their lives have failed to civilise them.

Simply put, it is woman who civilises man. Every single time a woman has sex with a man, any man, before or without benefit of marriage, dishonour and incivility occurs. In doing so, not only does a woman betray herself and all other women but her man becomes less civil, however imperceptibly. Every single time. Without exception. Naturally, and as inescapably as the law of gravity, chaos ensues and happiness becomes impossible.

And I've got the stories to prove it.

Paula Adamick's column appears in Catholic Insight every other issue. She writes from London, England.