7 ms·

Is There an Illusion of Moral Decline?

36 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

butWhen 3y ago
The only measure this can be relative to is human past, which included legal race and gender discrimination, forced incarceration for social nonconformity, nation state imperialism, and toxic industrial activity the past just pushed over seas to hide it not deal with it; and those are just a few highlights of the last 60-70 years When was this magic era of grander moral heights we’d be “declining” from? IMO rich people try to keep this meme viral as a social control device. Lament the potential threat to their figurative status as a decline in morality when the public is merely uninterested having their outputs expropriated to prop up some figuratively rich nobody
mbank 3y ago
Reading Hagakure (Japan, 1716) really helps putting things into perspective here: Even back then the author complained about moral decline. And in the author`s eyes the sad low point of this degeneracy is the trend that the young lords won't e Perform their beheadings themselves anymore...
- dmm 3y ago
  Maybe the Hagakure observations were correct and afterwards morality improved only to decline again in the 20th century. Or maybe his observations are irrelevant to a 20th century phenomenon.
  - atoav 3y ago
    I think it is normal for younger generations to try to differenciate themselves from the older ones. This differenciation necessarily puts the older generation into a situation where they have to question themselves or — the easier route — you don't do that and go all Seymour Skinner: "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong" and call it a day. Morals are a fluid thing. My Wehrmacht-serving grandfather for example would say talking about one's feelings is weak and therefore morally wrong and this was a common view in his generation. I would say talking about one's feeling is hard and not talking about them is a sign of a weak person. He fucked up his whole family by insisting to look strong, my father was strong by breaking with the morals of his father.
- local_crmdgeon 3y ago
  Potentially the mass murder, rape, and genocides of 20th century Japan were bad
- atoav 3y ago
  My grandfather (an actual nazi, who fought in the Wehrmacht on the eastern front) complained about us young people not wanting to go hunt with him (which had more to do with the man than with hunting). He complained about how his generation was strong men and how me and my small brother are corrupted by television and anything with a screen on it. His greatest fear was us becoming "verweichlicht" (literal translation: "softened"), being perceived as weak was one of the worst things for him. Yet he was the man that could never face what he did, never talk about what his real ideology was, he could never face how bad of a father and husband he was. In fact his eating disorders and his silence took 4 generations to heal. If only he could have faced his past and lived in the present, strong men — in my world — can do precisely that. The point is that generational differences exist and very often a simple "the young people do it different" will become a "the young people are morally corrupted" — because the alternative would be to face your own weaknesses and demons or question how your society has done things up to this point. Men being afraid to look weak (something that only bothers men that feel weak) is a huge driver of all kinds of problems, even today.
mimd 3y ago
This is a loaded topic but it's important to remember that moralities are a collection of ideas and actions, not a single entity, and so you can have improvements but also regressions all occurring at once.
gauddasa 3y ago
I was always in the impression that morality evolves. Hearing first time that it can increase or decrease because I always knew different eras in human history had their own problems. It is hard to compare ancient problems with modern problems.
atoav 3y ago
The thing with morals is that they are not worth a lot as they just express what a given slice of society at a given place/time deems morally right. If you really wanna dive into what is right and wrong you have to discuss ethics. It is for example about universally answering the question whether it is good/bad to give someone a bad time for having been born with some characteristics they couldn't influence. E.g. left handedness — is it okay to prevent left handers from using their left hand to do things? Probably not (yet, a while ago this was seen as morally right). The only argument people had against left handers was "it is weird" and the more it became clear that forcing left handers to be right handed can have severe consequences and that a certain percentage of the population is always left handed the clearer it became that it was wrong to try to change them. In that case the moral person is the one that "just follows the tradition" but ends up being spectacularly wrong. Always thing about the questions universally, e.g. are people born into this (do they have a choice), is there harm from them supressing what they are born into? Is there harm to others in them being themselves? Ethics will guide you towards a good answer, morals will not.
- vacuity 3y ago
  Your terminology is somewhat contrived, not least of all because people view the terms quite differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality While it is at times useful to recognize that people have different moralities, sometimes very different, you seem to suggest that people answer questions of right/wrong and moral decline in a way that can't really be "correct". That is, that moralities are subjective and ethics is objective. Every individual has their morality (perhaps not very developed yet) and that is that. We can't really verify universal truths around anything, unless mathematical in nature. What you call "ethics" isn't the objective truth of right/wrong, but just your perception of overlapping moralities. "Seen as morally right" by who? The majority? When did the sandhill shift to not oppressing left-handed people? If you want a semblance of objectivity, get every individual to agree to your answer (through words only). Maybe there are objective values and maybe some people have discovered some of them, but we'd never know unless we become gods, in a certain sense. I'm certainly not one, so I'll stick to agreeing and disagreeing with other people. Society is just a word used to describe how people interact with each other. There's no development of a morality from subjective to objective or vice versa in the engine of society. Why someone holds the morality they do can be a productive question, but at the end of the day, one person's morality is just that.
dangus 3y ago
> Now, in the suburbs, still they feel comfortable walking alone at night. Where does one walk in American suburbs?
BMc2020 3y ago
You notice that between 1940 and 2020: Church membership declined from 75% → 50% Premarital sex rate went from from 20% → 75% Trust in government went from 75% → 20% Prime-age-male-labor-force nonparticipation rate quadrupled from 3% → 12% Marijuana use went from 4% → 49%
- sneak 3y ago
  USA: intentional homicide 6.3/100k in 1940 to 5.0/100k in 2018 (-22%)
- hn_version_0023 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - rufus_foreman 3y ago
    I think you have proven what I take to be Steve Alexander's point, that the reason people consider moral decline to be an illusion is because they have abandoned the moral standards of the past. Whether you think it is good or bad that we have abandoned the moral standards of the past doesn't really affect his point.
    - logicprog 3y ago
      The thing is, we all already know that we have abandoned some of the moral standards of the past, and that those in the past would view us as immoral/sinful/degenerate/whatever. That's not actually a very interesting question or point at all. The interesting version of the moral decline question is whether there has been a decline in things we actually care about, which is why people react by trying to answer that question.
      - rufus_foreman 3y ago
        "The interesting version of the moral decline question is whether there has been a decline in things we actually care about" Who is "we"? I do care about church membership, the premarital sex rate, trust in government, the prime age male labor force nonparticipation rate and marijuana use. So, I'm not sure who "we" is here, but it isn't me.
realjhol 3y ago
No
FreshStart 3y ago
Moral decline is only ever important in economic troublesome times. Then it's mostly focused on herding the sexual non normative into one central religous scheme were there existence is then sanctioned and the threats removed, as long as they put force behind the upholding of social contracts/norms/whatever the religion values. Outcomes may vary wildly. It's how our species creates on demand law and order.. And it's also not a real justice system, rife with abuse (those without parents both are fed to these contract cults). It's also unavoidable, so one might as well make a synthetic version minimizing suffering. For more detailed evidence, just hit Peter up on the next pride parade. =)
- badpun 3y ago
  > Moral decline is only ever important in economic troublesome times. Adam Smith wrote that none of his theories, about free trade and specialization making everyone richer, could not work if the society was not moral enough. If everybody will cheat as soon as there's an opportunity to do it and get away with it, nobody can be trused and trade caeases to exist - and specialization and comparative advantage with it. So, morality is actually crucial for economic growth.
  - omniglottal 3y ago
    If anyone bases any assumptions on a phrase which depends on "if everyone...", then those assumptions are guaranteed to be wrong. Never will everyone do any one thing.
    - jstarfish 3y ago
      You're taking it way too literally. 100% participation rate is not the point. It could be 25%, it could be 51%. Once we get past a certain threshold of bad actors in the marketplace, trade is impossible. We don't know what the exact limit is, but we're best served keeping that number closer to 0 so we don't have to find out.

36 points by isaacfrond 3y ago

The only measure this can be relative to is human past, which included legal race and gender discrimination, forced incarceration for social nonconformity, nation state imperialism, and toxic industrial activity the past just pushed over seas to hide it not deal with it; and those are just a few highlights of the last 60-70 years When was this magic era of grander moral heights we’d be “declining” from? IMO rich people try to keep this meme viral as a social control device. Lament the potential threat to their figurative status as a decline in morality when the public is merely uninterested having their outputs expropriated to prop up some figuratively rich nobody

mbank 3y ago

Reading Hagakure (Japan, 1716) really helps putting things into perspective here: Even back then the author complained about moral decline. And in the author`s eyes the sad low point of this degeneracy is the trend that the young lords won't e Perform their beheadings themselves anymore...

dmm 3y ago
Maybe the Hagakure observations were correct and afterwards morality improved only to decline again in the 20th century. Or maybe his observations are irrelevant to a 20th century phenomenon.
- atoav 3y ago
  I think it is normal for younger generations to try to differenciate themselves from the older ones. This differenciation necessarily puts the older generation into a situation where they have to question themselves or — the easier route — you don't do that and go all Seymour Skinner: "Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong" and call it a day. Morals are a fluid thing. My Wehrmacht-serving grandfather for example would say talking about one's feelings is weak and therefore morally wrong and this was a common view in his generation. I would say talking about one's feeling is hard and not talking about them is a sign of a weak person. He fucked up his whole family by insisting to look strong, my father was strong by breaking with the morals of his father.
local_crmdgeon 3y ago
Potentially the mass murder, rape, and genocides of 20th century Japan were bad
atoav 3y ago
My grandfather (an actual nazi, who fought in the Wehrmacht on the eastern front) complained about us young people not wanting to go hunt with him (which had more to do with the man than with hunting). He complained about how his generation was strong men and how me and my small brother are corrupted by television and anything with a screen on it. His greatest fear was us becoming "verweichlicht" (literal translation: "softened"), being perceived as weak was one of the worst things for him. Yet he was the man that could never face what he did, never talk about what his real ideology was, he could never face how bad of a father and husband he was. In fact his eating disorders and his silence took 4 generations to heal. If only he could have faced his past and lived in the present, strong men — in my world — can do precisely that. The point is that generational differences exist and very often a simple "the young people do it different" will become a "the young people are morally corrupted" — because the alternative would be to face your own weaknesses and demons or question how your society has done things up to this point. Men being afraid to look weak (something that only bothers men that feel weak) is a huge driver of all kinds of problems, even today.

mimd 3y ago

This is a loaded topic but it's important to remember that moralities are a collection of ideas and actions, not a single entity, and so you can have improvements but also regressions all occurring at once.

gauddasa 3y ago

I was always in the impression that morality evolves. Hearing first time that it can increase or decrease because I always knew different eras in human history had their own problems. It is hard to compare ancient problems with modern problems.

atoav 3y ago

The thing with morals is that they are not worth a lot as they just express what a given slice of society at a given place/time deems morally right. If you really wanna dive into what is right and wrong you have to discuss ethics. It is for example about universally answering the question whether it is good/bad to give someone a bad time for having been born with some characteristics they couldn't influence. E.g. left handedness — is it okay to prevent left handers from using their left hand to do things? Probably not (yet, a while ago this was seen as morally right). The only argument people had against left handers was "it is weird" and the more it became clear that forcing left handers to be right handed can have severe consequences and that a certain percentage of the population is always left handed the clearer it became that it was wrong to try to change them. In that case the moral person is the one that "just follows the tradition" but ends up being spectacularly wrong. Always thing about the questions universally, e.g. are people born into this (do they have a choice), is there harm from them supressing what they are born into? Is there harm to others in them being themselves? Ethics will guide you towards a good answer, morals will not.

vacuity 3y ago
Your terminology is somewhat contrived, not least of all because people view the terms quite differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality While it is at times useful to recognize that people have different moralities, sometimes very different, you seem to suggest that people answer questions of right/wrong and moral decline in a way that can't really be "correct". That is, that moralities are subjective and ethics is objective. Every individual has their morality (perhaps not very developed yet) and that is that. We can't really verify universal truths around anything, unless mathematical in nature. What you call "ethics" isn't the objective truth of right/wrong, but just your perception of overlapping moralities. "Seen as morally right" by who? The majority? When did the sandhill shift to not oppressing left-handed people? If you want a semblance of objectivity, get every individual to agree to your answer (through words only). Maybe there are objective values and maybe some people have discovered some of them, but we'd never know unless we become gods, in a certain sense. I'm certainly not one, so I'll stick to agreeing and disagreeing with other people. Society is just a word used to describe how people interact with each other. There's no development of a morality from subjective to objective or vice versa in the engine of society. Why someone holds the morality they do can be a productive question, but at the end of the day, one person's morality is just that.

dangus 3y ago

> Now, in the suburbs, still they feel comfortable walking alone at night. Where does one walk in American suburbs?

BMc2020 3y ago

You notice that between 1940 and 2020: Church membership declined from 75% → 50% Premarital sex rate went from from 20% → 75% Trust in government went from 75% → 20% Prime-age-male-labor-force nonparticipation rate quadrupled from 3% → 12% Marijuana use went from 4% → 49%

sneak 3y ago
USA: intentional homicide 6.3/100k in 1940 to 5.0/100k in 2018 (-22%)
hn_version_0023 3y ago
[flagged]
- rufus_foreman 3y ago
  I think you have proven what I take to be Steve Alexander's point, that the reason people consider moral decline to be an illusion is because they have abandoned the moral standards of the past. Whether you think it is good or bad that we have abandoned the moral standards of the past doesn't really affect his point.
  - logicprog 3y ago
    The thing is, we all already know that we have abandoned some of the moral standards of the past, and that those in the past would view us as immoral/sinful/degenerate/whatever. That's not actually a very interesting question or point at all. The interesting version of the moral decline question is whether there has been a decline in things we actually care about, which is why people react by trying to answer that question.
    - rufus_foreman 3y ago
      "The interesting version of the moral decline question is whether there has been a decline in things we actually care about" Who is "we"? I do care about church membership, the premarital sex rate, trust in government, the prime age male labor force nonparticipation rate and marijuana use. So, I'm not sure who "we" is here, but it isn't me.

realjhol 3y ago

FreshStart 3y ago

Moral decline is only ever important in economic troublesome times. Then it's mostly focused on herding the sexual non normative into one central religous scheme were there existence is then sanctioned and the threats removed, as long as they put force behind the upholding of social contracts/norms/whatever the religion values. Outcomes may vary wildly. It's how our species creates on demand law and order.. And it's also not a real justice system, rife with abuse (those without parents both are fed to these contract cults). It's also unavoidable, so one might as well make a synthetic version minimizing suffering. For more detailed evidence, just hit Peter up on the next pride parade. =)

badpun 3y ago
> Moral decline is only ever important in economic troublesome times. Adam Smith wrote that none of his theories, about free trade and specialization making everyone richer, could not work if the society was not moral enough. If everybody will cheat as soon as there's an opportunity to do it and get away with it, nobody can be trused and trade caeases to exist - and specialization and comparative advantage with it. So, morality is actually crucial for economic growth.
- omniglottal 3y ago
  If anyone bases any assumptions on a phrase which depends on "if everyone...", then those assumptions are guaranteed to be wrong. Never will everyone do any one thing.
  - jstarfish 3y ago
    You're taking it way too literally. 100% participation rate is not the point. It could be 25%, it could be 51%. Once we get past a certain threshold of bad actors in the marketplace, trade is impossible. We don't know what the exact limit is, but we're best served keeping that number closer to 0 so we don't have to find out.