what is at the heart of moral decay? what are the factors that are intensifying selfishness, bad manners.....?

Question

....envy greed etc.

is rapacious capitalism one?

or is t.v rotting peoples morality?

what about the influence of seedy squalid newspapers?

are we giving our kids the wrong type of education?

what about scandal/gossip mags that make people compare themselves unfavourably with what the rich and famous have got.

is advertising becoming more pernicious, and making us feel like we never have enough of the good things in life.

are banks fanning the corruption with their easy lending rules, turning youngsters into me me me..now now now impatient selfish people?

something has obviously been having a corrosive effect down the decades to make recent generations less considerate...surely it is not beyond our brightest minds to discover exactly what.

if it is a combination of the above...ie many causes...what can we do to reverse the trend?

Answer 1

It is a combination. the major contributor to all of it is one basic thing. Personal Responsiblity. Very few people it seems are able to take complete responsiblity for their lives.

The trend through the decades is that personal responsiblity erodes under anonymity.

As towns became cities, when it was impossible for one man to know all his neighbors, it became easier and easier to blame "them, They, and those ones" for all the faults , wrongs, and just plain bad events in his life.

As we have grown new ways to stay anonymous the deeds we commit grow more heinous in an attempt to justify such things, we declare if I didn't do it mysterious "someone" else would have.

We have lost much of the capacity of responsiblity.

Answer 2

I see both valid and fallacious responses to your question.

I liked your idea of "pernicious advertising." Ad campaigns often have little or no morality to them; they serve only to create a hunger/need for a product. It's the black side of capitalism. Narcissism is certainly a goal of advertising; it's all about the "me" and how to make "me" identify emotions like "sexy" to inanimate objects.

Truehartc is dead on target with the concept of instant gratification.

And I agree with CT that the education system does not deserve the blame. Teachers are not some evil, subversive agents that are neglecting to teach your children certain concepts.

Thomas R is correct that personal responsibility is a big factor; something that is taught to us by our parents - or not.

One element I tend to observe are parents more focused on careers and material acquisition and less on the time and care needed to raise their children.

TV is not necessarily a "villian" either; there are both valuable and worthless programs on it; it is up to the parent to decide which are viewed.

I don't know what the overall percentages really are, but I suspect that there are as many intelligent papers/periodicals as there are worthless ones. Again, it's sort of an open market. It's not like any one agency can "direct" people's reading/viewing habits. THAT would be a form of religious control, and I reject that as much as censorship.

Within my lifetime, I have see the creation of portable phones, and how this was eventually marketed into the idea that EVERYONE just had to HAVE one. People are walking and driving with these devices literally stuck to the side of their heads, as if they REALLY need to be that much in contact with the rest of the world. It just lends itself to that whole "me" concept.

In general, through advertising and basically wanting to "keep up with the Jone's," we have become a society where a lot of the people are just more self-centered and oblivious to common courtesies.

"Reverse" the trend? I'm not sure that at this point any one "solution" will fit the general society, not to mention who would even implement such a "solution."

I think it comes right down to the parents on an individual basis; teaching their children the value of things like "personal responsibility," being on time, good study habits, compromise, benevolence, basic courtesies, the relative value of material things, etc.

It all starts with the child....

Answer 3

Here are a few thoughts to consider:

1. a cultural grooming (in varius ways) to want/expect/"need" instant gratification

2. a cultural iconization which grooms and accepts individual narcissim

In the case of (1), it influences everything from impatience to a revised moral code (yes, once people start cutting corners to get from A to B and start insisting on 'results now,' the end results change, the view of what they should be shifts, etc).

In the case of (2), it's a society where we nurture narcissism over "healthy" images and goals.

Your q begs for more 'root analyis,' though, doesn't it? Multiple historical factors come into play. One factor inevitably seems to root in WW II, when the perception of women as workers changed. By the '60s, we couple the 'women are capable of working' theory with 'women should be allowed to work' theory. This impacted the above factors because we soon made serious jumps in logic ---- we didn't have a liberation in which couples said "Hey, let's get ideal jobs and be supportive of one another!" but a situation in which 2-incomes became a desirable norm, inflating the scales economically and necessitating that 'average' families 'benefit' from a 2-income model. THAT promoted a crisis --- now singles were challenged to even consider having the same kinds of assets as couples. Let's see... 2-income norms changed the sense of what was luxury vs what was expected; 2-income families changed ideas about what was necessary (for example, faster foods became necessary, as did different cleaning tools - all accommodating a 2-busy [pardon the pun] family); the role changes confused rather than enhanced the parenting dynamics (instead of two parents 'capable' of discipline and career role modeling, you got two tired ones) ... I could go on. Slowly this led to greater erosions in peoples' minimized expectations (ironically minimized after they soooo set themselves up to make maxmium demands of everything touched or bought).

This can even be 'traced' to problems in the educational system. Example: People wanted the gratification of the degree, so more simply embraced the idea of college. Simultaneously, we put more on teachers (since parents' energies were drained and they were helping less with some basics) and students weren't grasping the basics so well. So, the high school diploma has, in some respects come to mean less, the college diploma less, and so on. We didn't take a stand on expectations before 'the college diploma became the high school diploma of today.'

Stressed by all of these demands, people can 'care less' and be less likely (even if motivated) to find time, energy, and money to assist in reform.

Looking at your final question ("How do we reverse the trend?"), I think it's all about passing on better attitudes. I'm not going to pretend this doesn't sound hokey, but it's about having more positive attitudes with others. A simple change in the way we process impatience (the cornerstone bad habit of those used to instant gratification) will provide dividends, for example. Likewise, an attitude shift to embrace values and not shallow needs (!) will improve everything from peoples' driving (lose the cell phone, my life is more important than your chitcat) to education.

Sound like chicken and egg ("How to do that in a morally decayig society?") dilemma? Well, (a) take a stand for strong values, and (b) work on educating others. Whether you're in a role model position as a teacher or librarian or coach ... or you're a concerned mentor in a volunteer system ... it's affecting change with attitudes.

Best wishes to you in satisfying your sense of understanding and desire for progress. People too often take status quo for granted and aren't motivated to see positive change as possible. The reality is, we can make the choices which improve our world.

Answer 4

I'd say most of those things- I don't think education is a problem, if you ask teachers they're doing the same hard work as ever. I'd add to your list reduction in censorship (internet social sites, cable TV, console games which offer negative influences) and I have to say the decline of the church in people's lives. Whether you're religious or not, you might agree that church comes with a moral code that binds communities and gives people hope. Mummies and daddies should stop drinking so much of that naughty alcohol (they'd have given it up for Lent in the past), spend more time playing with baby, eat their greens and stop being so me me me!

Answer 5

those examples all seem rather cliched to be honest. id stop and think are people in general realy becoming less moral?

sure people watch alot of tv, but most of it is moraly pretty nutral, sure people are aquizitive, but then that helps people live and be content in the type of society we have. Do you honestly think that morality today is in a poorer shape overall than it was in, for example the time of the crusades? or the inquisition?

I take your point that there are alot of very unplesant trends in the way life is lived in europe and america, but i dont think that people, esspecialy young people today are any more moraly bankrup than any one else in history.

Answer 6

Materialism of the parents

and a public school system that teaches to the least common denominator and squashes any ideals that would threaten our government workers (ie TEACHERS) paychecks and high standards of living

Answer 7

You could have found a similar commentary in Roman times, every generation thinks the worlds going to hell and harks back to some mythical better time.

Answer 8

Very good question I often think to myself why can't everyone be more like me caring, considerate, and full of compassion for his fellow man.See how I have helped many many people with there questions since I joined this site.God bless everyone of us.

Answer 9

Natural progession........ Each generation has been progressivley worse than the one before it, the younger the generation the more liberal, rebelious they are seen to be this will continue until we destroy ourselves/ our planet.

If you dont agree just think about it, you dont understand/ like your childrens music, influences etc just as your parents didnt like yours and their parents didnt like theirs.

Answer 10

Repent of sin. That fixes everything all the time.