Moral Dacay or Not?

Being a relively junior member of the forum, I apologize if this was a a previous thrad, but I have seen a number of members attribute various and asundry things as to the decline in the moral fiber of the country. My question to the forum is 1) has the country [USA] actually declined morally or just become more socially enlightened? and 2) if it has morally declined, what ae the reasons why?

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Why are the two mutually exclusive?

There are probably several thousand distinct things, all of which has led us to what we are today - I won’t call it “moral decline” because some things are better and others are worse, like always.

If you ask me what I would like to change first to have some positive influence on what we do have, I would love to see better parenting all acorss the board.


Yer pal,
Satan

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Depends on what you mean.

If you mean “is there bad sh*t happening that didn’t used to be a problem?” then the answer is yes.

If you mean it in the usual sense that “moral decay” is used (by bigots who need some reason to criticize gays, participants in premarital sex, “sodomites”, etc.), then my answer is a resounding “no”…

LOL, Satan, although our points of view tend to be somewhat diametrically opposed, I have throughly enjoyed reading your posts thru the threads in this forum. I probably should have expressed my thoughts first. I apologize, for the origional ommission.

As a politically moderate conservative, and a Christian, I hear many of my contempories decrying what they feel is a definate moral decay for the country. What I was looking for was an opinion from the more liberal minded among the forum members if they saw it in the same way.

IMHO, and admittedly speaking in broad generalities, I believe the country is in a moral decay when compared to the WWII generation. My hypothesis is as follows: The parents of the boomers having been raised during the depression, vowed their children would have it better than they. Thus we have a generation that was raised during the rise of the middle class during the fairly affluent(sp?)50’s and 60’s. The WWII generation lived in a world of absolutes…if you didn’t work, there was no food on the table…period. In other words, they had a greater sense of responsibility beat into then by virtue of necessity.

On the other hand, the boomer generation had it relatively easier. There wasn’t the gulf that separated the those who had versus those that had nothing [note I am being general]. Due to the condition in the population at large that the basic needs were being met and many of the boomers did not experience the deprevations of their parents, the old absolutes became somewhat passe’. The boomers began to question rather than accept by rote the old “standards”. Throw in the civil rights movement and the VietNam War with its rejection/disillusionment of the government by the young that we needed to be there and we have the birth of what I would call the me-first generation, or in broader terms, the idea that the needs of the individual comes before those of society at large.

Although in many cases this was not a bad thing, [I support civil rights], I believe that this generation has passed the extreme to generation X. We now have situational ethics, anything goes, and the attitude that the only thing that matters is what is important to me…MY RIGHTS…screw the rest of you!! This attitude appears to prevail whither it is in the best interests of society as a whole or not. Where there used to be a set of principles, society (IMHO) has given way to a vague idea of the freedom to find ones own way leaving the searcher to wander through the mists seeking the one niche out of the multitudes where there might be a hope of an anchor.

This has gotten long. I look forward to the other comments!

Actually I think America is better than ever, and only heading for improvement. Are we dealing with different problems than in the past? Of course. But often I think that because the media puts so much focus on a few bad apples, people think the entire batch is spoiled. Also, there were many problem in the past that no one brought their attention to. I mean, how many lynchings do we have today? I’ll bet that if you took today’s CNN to cover yesterday’s event, the past wouldn’t appear so rosy. But I suppose it’s only human nature to be nostalgic. After all, look at your life. What do you remember, birthdays anniversaries, spending time with friends, etc, or the mundane things like clipping your nails, taking a dump, sleeping and so on. Because what you remember are major things, the past seems better than the present. When we get older, we will probably look at things now differently. It’s a case of “Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.” However, if you really look at the present compared to the past, you realize that crime is down (which some say might be because of legalized abortion, but that’s another thread), the economy is up, and people have more freedoms today than they did in the past. Now some people credit these freedoms to moral decline, but I ask if it ain’t harming someone else -against their will- (we shouldn’t neglect the masochists) what’s it to you? After all, inter racial dating was considered a moral decline in the past. Why is improvement happening? I believe it has to do with the increase in freedoms. When people have freedoms, they can question the status quo and scrutinize it. If people have the freedom to try different things, society will keep what works and get rid of what doesn’t. You could say America is evolving.

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You can believe anything you wish. Let’s see how your beliefs hold up to facts.

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Are you suggesting that before or after there were groups of parents who wanted their kids to have it worse off than they did?

If not (and I am assuuming that you would not suggest such an insane thing), than this point is moot.

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You mean greater responsibility than when you had to hunt and kill your food? I think it is safe to say that one always had to work for one’s food in one manner or another.

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You sure are being general. So general, in fact, that I would like a citation to back this up. Or are we still in the realm of your opinion here?

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If we did not question and simply accepted “standards,” we would still be living in caves. I fail to see how questioning things is somehow better than accepting things because “they’ve always been done that way.”

To add a contemporary spin to your premise by using the time-frame you seem enamored with, I’ll bet that black people in this country are glad we “questioned” the attitudes and “standards” we had then.

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Let me get this straight here.

You are saying that wanting to get equal rights was selfish?

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Again with your beliefs…

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  1. “Anything goes”? I don’t see anarchy in the streets. I still see murder, rape and parking in a tow-away zone to be illegal and punishable offenses. Please show me some evidence of this “anything goes” mentality, please. If it’s so prevalent, you should be able to come up with a myriad of examples. I am waiting…

  2. Please show me examples of people putting “MY RIGHTS” ahead of that of society please? I would like to see this as well.

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A common claim of “conservative Christians” that rarely has any evidence to support it. I still don’t see any.

If you want my evidence that we’re better off in many ways, look no farther than the fact that far less people are starving on this planet. We have cures to diseases that are given away. People have far better qualities of life than evere before. We are mindful of the rights of people who are minorities, whether they are in a wheelchair, are another race or are another gender.

Any definition of morality has to mention these things, doesn’t it? And as such, there is plenty of evidence that we are MORE “moral” as a society than we ever have been.


Yer pal,
Satan

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Phil_15 said:

Which could reasonably be said of every generation since the beginning of time.

“What’s with all this ‘democracy’? What happened to the old virtues of absolute loyalty to the monarch? Now everyone is flailing about for leaders!”

"By God! Letting women have the right to vote! Why, back in my day, people knew their place in society! We’ll have anarchy in the streets before long, what with men and women now unsure of their roles in society…:

Morality constantly evolves; what we see as ‘right’ today would have been considered ‘wrong’ fifty years ago (Why should it be a sin for women to work? Or for a homosexual to be honest about his/her sexuality?), while things we see as ‘wrong’ today would have been considered ‘right’ fifty years ago (Why should we believe that negros are as capable as whites? Why should we allow people who have not found the Truth- Christianity, and specifically non-Catholic Christianity- any say in the affairs of our government?).

Does this mean we’re in ‘moral decay’? Well, I doubt that the new Internet economy would have occurred without the strong work ethic of millions of programmers. Our politicians are far less corrupt and immoral than those of eighty years ago (name one currently serving politician who was as corrupt as Boss Tweed. Name one currently serving politician who had absolute control of his/her local system as much as Richard Daley of Chicago did); any perception to the contrary is just a combination of historical ignorance and our modern investigative press. Are we less interested in what’s good for ‘society’? Tell that to all of the people who marched in the Million Whatever Marches of the last eight years.

I’m flailing here a bit because I don’t have any specific examples of decline or of morals that modern Americans lack. You can rail against ‘moral relativism’ all you want- and I’ll happily join you in such a rail- but that certainly isn’t the general opinion by which America moves.

Phil_15, if Jesus floats your boat, OK. however, God isnt everyone anchor, so please dont be so presumption tht anyone who dosent have your faith is “lost”

…but the problem is, the answer would be so vague as to be meaningless.

Phil_15 wrote:

Being a relively junior member of the forum, I apologize if this was a a previous thrad, but I have seen a number of
members attribute various and asundry things as to the decline in the moral fiber of the country. My question to the forum is 1) has the country [USA] actually declined morally or just become more socially enlightened? and 2) if it has morally declined, what ae the reasons why?

Okay, first off, how do you define morality? And once you have a definition, why choose THAT particular definition? As an example, say you choose Judeo-Christian morality. Now are you going to choose the morality that people like Friend of God use, or someone like Polycarp?

Next, how do you measure that morality? What scale? And can you give us some real world examples of the extremes of that scale.

Now use that scale to measure morality now, 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago and then 100 years ago. What method do you use to detirmine what the morality was like some 50, 75 and 100 years ago? Personal accounts? Newspapers? Court proceedings? And will those records contain enough information to make an accurate accounting of morality of the time?

So, you finally have all your data. Plug it into the appropriate see what comes up. I think the results will suprise you.

Honestly, if you can answers my questions seriously and objectively, I’d be very interested in seeing the results.

and I believe that the Internet may have a huge role in the continuing evolution of America. This free and civil exchange of ideas almost has to make people more tolerant of each other, or at the very least give them an idea of what “the opposition” is talking about.

Anyone interested in the supposed decay of the American family should read “The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap” by Stephanie Coontz.

As a former history student, this topic always amuses me. We can find moralists in nearly every era decrying the decay of society and the irresponsibility of youth.

of decrying the decay of society, this one about the supposed decline in the quality of public schools:

The Manufactured CRISIS: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools

by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle.

The Denver Post blurb says;

A few things: lower standardized tests scores explained as partially because of mainstreaming and lower drop-out rates.

Lower overall S.A.T. scores because of manipulation of statistics, and because not only the best students are going to college: lots more people are, and this speaks well of our public schools.

Comparisons between American high schools and European academic high schools often leave out the fact that the European kids in many countries who aren’t academically minded go to trade high schools; in the U.S. there aren’t separate trade high schools or separate scores or statistics for those students.

I guess that bad stuff makes good press and gets listened to far too often.

Spider Woman: or gets made up out of whole cloth.
Remember how, in the late '80’s/early '90’s, the refrain was “American kids can’t find the U.S. on the map!”? Absolutely true. Less than 50% of American students were able to correctly circle the U.S. on a map during a geography test.

Of course, what they didn’t tell you was that 98% of the students had identified the continental U.S., and that half of those students either forgot or misidentified Hawaii and Alaska. The stories always seemed to imply that half of Americans students were looking at, oh, Africa and trying to figure out if Madagascar was New England or Texas.
Then there was a beautiful Newsweek article I read in the early '90’s bemoaning U.S. kid’s scores on a certain test when compared with Japanese kid’s scores. In the next-to-last paragraph came the statement ‘Of course, the difference in scores may be in part that the U.S. chooses a proportional representation of its students to take the test, while Japan has only its top students take that test.’ I nearly screamed when I read that. ‘You’re saying that Japan’s best students are beating out our average students, and it’s some kind of crisis? Cripes, the best Kurdistanian students could probably beat our average students! What the hell does that prove?’

Hi Phil…people are not anymore or less moral than they have ever been. Some aren’t, some are, and some are right there in between.

Are you confusing morals with ethics? I haven’t looked at the definition of either but for me they are similar but not quite the same. When I think of morals I think of behaviors or actions that are of a little more personal nature and rooted primarily in Judeo/Christian beliefs. When I think of ethics, they can be personal too, but I think more of the code of conduct that we adopt when dealing with society as a whole. A guy who wouldn’t dream of cheating on his taxes, works hard for a living, is fair in his business practices, and has never stolen anything in his life…Would you call this guy ethical? I would. But what if he beats his wife, abuses his kids, and keeps 3 mistresses on the side. Is this guy a pillar of morality? I wouldn’t think anyone would define him that way.

So anyway, when you attempt to make the example that my generation and yours have been given things to easily and are now a bunch of selfish, jerks what exactly are you talking about? Or do you think we have broken down more in our personal morality? Or both?

Needs2know

As a person over 50, I think I may have something to contribute to this question. I also have one strong exception to take to Phil’s premise as restated.

What has declined in the last 50 years is a sense of propriety – there was a standard set of “things done” and “things just not done” to which all citizens, whatever their private mindset might be, gave public lip service to. This was replaced slowly and inexorably by a broader set of social values into which each person was forced to construct his own ethic to fit. To be sure, subscribing to a traditional set or a revision of the same such as conservative Christianity prescribed was still an option, but it was not the expected, proper thing to do. In short, we became a nation of Jews (this is not meant as a putdown; Chaim and Zev will know quite well what I mean) forced to accommodate our own ethical codes with a society that did not corporately subscribe to them.

Individual morals did not decline, for the most part. The corporate “moral values” (which were really standards of propriety, not conclusions from an ethics) did, but were well replaced by individual moral codes that were, for the most part, lived out by the people holding them.

To be sure, with the decline in corporate propriety came a far greater incidence of sociopathic behavior. Those who had not constructed a personal ethic other than a default “what benefits me” standard were at a greater freedom to exercise that than they had been. And, for whatever reason, the degree of violence became substantially worse than it had been. I do not think that there are more violent acts today than in the 1950s, but they are far more likely to receive press, and IMHO the individual acts appear to be more violent than they had been.

Sexual morality is actually higher today than in the past. People have thought through what they commit to and are public about it. The same amount of contra-propriety sex exists as existed then, but it is done in accord with personal ethics rather than furtively and with deniability.

I think the degree of business ethics and ethical consideration in government is actually quite a bit higher than it was back in the 1950s.

Now, to address one bit of phrasing of Phil’s:

Uh, I need clarification here. Are you citing three different things or equating these three? It sounds like the latter, based on the rest of your post, and I must say that I for one take exception, to the point of having deleted a flame, with that inference.

Situation ethics, as originally defined by Fletcher and as followed by good Christians (and Jews!) before and after him, consists in adopting as an absolute moral standard the two commandments propounded in the Torah which Hillel identified as a summary of proper behavior under the Law and which Jesus gave as the two commandments he demanded of every person who aspired to follow him. They serve as a sort of Constitution for moral behavior, with every ethical stricture which might be propounded required to be held up to them as determinative in each situation in which it might be applied, to determine if in that situation it fits the bill. Aspiring to live them out, as people as various as my eponymous saint, St. Francis, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. can testify, can be intensely difficult and may lead to martyrdom. But it is the only proper moral course for a Christian. Anything else is likely tolead to an antinomian moral vacuum on one hand and to a legalistic self-righteousness on the other. And they are commandments, not, as the evangelicals say, choices. “Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath?” Never mind the Fourth Commandment; what glorifies God and shows love for men?

I look forward to seeing your response, Phil.

“Moral decay” always sounds to me like the cry of the inattentive shepherd who has lost his flock. If followers of your sense and definition of morality are disappearing, perhaps it is time for you either take pride in your uniqueness or, if you require an appreciative audience, evolve.

As far as I can tell, there is no universal morality among men. There are many who believe that there is such a thing and work to make others see the world the way they do. Thus, ultimately, their efforts fulfill the assumptions of their beliefs. Of course, attempting to establish a universal morality requires a bit more effort than just shouting that there is such a thing.

Please feel free to convince me that you are right, strong and lively rather than telling me that I am wrong, weak and decaying. Jerk.

Phil15, you might want to check out The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Koontz. She more or less, in her book, discusses what you’re asking.

Short answer: There never were any “good old days,” they were just bad in a different way.