moral decay essay

Changing morals: we’re more compassionate than 100 years ago, but more judgmental too

Professor of Psychology, The University of Melbourne

PhD Candidate in Social Psychology, The University of Melbourne

Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne

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Nick Haslam receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Melissa Wheeler has engaged in paid and pro-bono consulting and research relating to issues of social justice, applied ethics, and gender equality (e.g., Our Watch, Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, National Association of Women in Operations). She has previously worked for research centres that receive funding from several partner organisations in the private and public sector, including from the Victorian Government.

Melanie J. McGrath does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Values such as care, compassion and safety are more important to us now than they were in the 1980s. The importance of respecting authority has fallen since the beginning of the 20th century, while judging right and wrong based on loyalty to country and family has steadily risen.

Our analysis, using the Google Books database and published in Plos One , showed distinctive trends in our moral priorities between 1900 to 2007.

How we should understand these changes in moral sensibility is a fascinating problem. Morality is not rigid or monolithic. Moral Foundations Theory , for instance, puts forward five moral grammars, each with its own set of associated virtues and vices.

purity-based morality, which is rooted in ideas of sanctity and piety. When standards of purity are violated, the reaction is disgust, and violators are seen as unclean and tarnished

authority-based morality, which prizes duty, deference, and social order. It abhors those who show disrespect and disobedience

fairness-based morality, which stands in opposition to authority-based morality. It judges right and wrong using values of equality, impartiality and tolerance, and disdains bias and prejudice

ingroup-based morality, which esteems loyalty to family, community or nation, and judges those who threaten or undermine them as immoral

harm-based morality, which values care, compassion and safety, and views wrongness in terms of suffering, mistreatment and cruelty.

People of different ages, genders, personalities, and political beliefs employ these moralities to different degrees. People on the political right, for instance, are more likely to endorse the moralities of purity, authority and ingroup loyalty. Those on the left rely more on the morality of harm and fairness. Women tend to endorse harm-based morality more than men.

We used these five moral foundations in our analysis. Put simply, our culture, at least as revealed through moral language in the books we read and write, is increasing the emphasis it places on some moral foundations and decreasing its emphasis on others.

Read more: The greatest moral challenge of our time? It's how we think about morality itself

Historical change in moral concepts

Moral psychologists know a lot about how people today vary in their moral thinking, but they have largely ignored how moral thinking has changed historically. As cultures evolve and societies develop, people’s ways of thinking about good and evil also transform. The nature of that transformation is a matter of speculation.

One narrative suggests our recent history is one of de-moralisation . On this view, our societies have become progressively less prudish and judgmental. We have become more accepting of others, rational, irreligious, and scientific in how we approach matters of right and wrong.

A contrary narrative implies re-moralisation . By this account, our culture is increasingly censorious. More things offend and outrage us, and the growing polarisation of political debate reveals excesses of righteousness and self-righteousness.

We wanted to find which of these stories best captured how morals have changed over time, and we used an emerging field of inquiry to do so – culturomics . Culturomics uses very large text databases to track changes in cultural beliefs and values. Changing patterns of language use over time may reveal alterations in how people have made sense of their world and themselves.

The most common platform for examining such cultural shifts is the Google Books database. Containing more than 500 billion words from 5 million scanned and digitised books, the database is a rich source of information on the rising and falling popularity of words.

Studies using English-language books, for example, have shown increases in individualist values, revealed through decreases in “us” and increases in “me”. Studies in Chinese-language books have shown similar declines in words associated with collectivist values in recent decades.

Read more: Google's vast library reveals the rising tide of climate-related words in literature

To date, there has only been one culturomic study of moral language . The researchers examined changes in the frequency of a set of virtue words such as “conscience”, “honesty” and “kindness” over the 20th century. As the de-moralisation narrative would predict, most of these words showed a significant decline in popularity, suggesting ideas of moral virtue became less culturally salient.

In our study , we explored changes in 20th century morality in greater depth. Each of the five foundations was represented by large, well-validated sets of virtue and vice words. We also examined changes in a set of basic moral terms such as “good”, “moral”, “righteous”; and “bad”, “evil”, and “wrong”.

We extracted the relative frequency of each word in a set for every year, standardised it so that the year in which this frequency peaked scored 100, and then averaged the words in the set. The trajectory of these averaged values over time reflects broad changes in the prominence of each form of morality.

Differently moral

We found basic moral terms (see the black line below) became dramatically scarcer in English-language books as the 20th century unfolded – which fits the de-moralisation narrative. But an equally dramatic rebound began in about 1980, implying a striking re-moralisation.

The five moral foundations, on the other hand, show a vastly changing trajectory. The purity foundation (green line) shows the same plunge and rebound as the basic moral terms. Ideas of sacredness, piety and purity, and of sin, desecration and indecency, fell until about 1980, and rose afterwards.

The other moralities show very different pathways. Perhaps surprisingly, the egalitarian morality of fairness (blue) showed no consistent rise or fall.

In contrast, the hierarchy-based morality of authority (grey) underwent a gentle decline for the first half of the century. It then sharply rose as the gathering crisis of authority shook the Western world in the late 1960s. This morality of obedience and conformity, insubordination and rebellion, then receded equally sharply through the 1970s.

Ingroup morality (orange), reflected in the communal language of loyalty and unity, insiders and outsiders, displays the clearest upward trend through the 20th century. Discernible bumps around the two world wars point to passing elevations in the “us and them” morality of threatened communities.

Finally, harm-based morality (red) presents a complex but intriguing trend. Its prominence falls from 1900 to the 1970s, interrupted by similar wartime bumps when themes of suffering and destruction became understandably urgent. But harm rises steeply from about 1980 in the absence of a single dominating global conflict.

What can we say about this?

The decades since 1980 can be seen as a period when moral concerns experienced a revival. What has driven this revival is open to speculation. Some might see the election of conservative governments in the US, UK and Australia at the start of this period as a pivotal change.

That might explain the rise of the typically conservative purity-based morality but not the even steeper increase in the typically liberal harm foundation.

Others might point to the rise of social justice concerns – or “political correctness” to critics – as the basis for the upswing in harm-based morality. The surge of harm language during early- and mid-century wartime may point to the late century rise being linked to the so called “culture wars”. Certainly, the simultaneous rise in conservative (purity) and left-liberal (harm) moralities since that time is a recipe for moral conflict and polarisation.

Read more: How we decide who and what we care about – and whether robots stand a chance

Our research has its limitations. Books are windows into only some aspects of culture. The population of English-language books is dominated by American and to a lesser extent British volumes, and we cannot isolate patterns specific to different English-speaking nations. The Google Books database does not allow us to examine changes in morality over the past decade.

Even so, this research points to some important cultural transformations. How we tend to think about matters of right and wrong is different now from how we once did and, if the trends are to be believed, how we will in the future.

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• Open access
• Published: 07 June 2023

The illusion of moral decline

• Adam M. Mastroianni 1 &
• Daniel T. Gilbert   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9865-4445 2  

Nature volume  618 ,  pages 782–789 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Human behaviour

Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining 1 , 2 . In a series of studies using both archival and original data ( n  = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Finally, we show how a simple mechanism based on two well-established psychological phenomena (biased exposure to information and biased memory for information) can produce an illusion of moral decline, and we report studies that confirm two of its predictions about the circumstances under which the perception of moral decline is attenuated, eliminated or reversed (that is, when respondents are asked about the morality of people they know well or people who lived before the respondent was born). Together, our studies show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced. This illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources 3 , the underuse of social support 4 and social influence 5 .

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The social fabric appears to be unravelling: civility seems like an old-fashioned habit, honesty like an optional exercise and trust like the relic of another time. Some observers 6 claim that “the process of our moral decline” began with the “sinking of the foundations of morality” and proceeded to “the final collapse of the whole edifice”, which brought us “finally to the dark dawning of our modern day, in which we can neither bear our immoralities nor face the remedies needed to cure them”. But as apt as this description of our times may seem, it was written more than 2,000 years ago by the historian Livy, who was bemoaning the declining morality of his fellow Roman citizens. From ancient to modern times, social observers have often lamented the ugly turns their societies have taken, and have often suggested that a recent decline in morality—in kindness, honesty and basic human decency—was among the causes 2 , 7 .

Why have so many different people in so many different times and places been convinced that their fellow citizens are now less moral than they once were? One possibility is that morality has, in fact, been declining worldwide for millennia—declining so steadily and so precipitously that people in every era have been able to observe that decline in the brief span of a human lifetime. The other possibility is that the perception of moral decline is a psychological illusion to which people all over the world and throughout history have been susceptible. We provide evidence for the latter possibility. First, we show that people in at least 60 nations do indeed believe that morality is declining, and that they have believed this for at least 70 years. Second, we show that people attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Third, we show that people’s reports of the current morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, which strongly suggests that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Fourth and finally, we describe tests of a simple psychological mechanism that can produce the illusion of moral decline and can predict some of the circumstances under which it will be attenuated, eliminated or reversed (for example, when respondents are asked about the morality of people they know well or people who lived before the respondent was born).

Do people perceive moral decline?

Morality refers primarily to people’s treatment of each other 8 , which ranges from the altruistic 9 to the barbaric 10 . But like most social observers, Livy was not remarking on the moral extremes—on the rare heroic deed or occasional heinous crime that few people ever perform or experience. Rather, he was remarking on the ways in which ordinary people behave in their daily lives. Do modern people, like Livy, believe that their contemporaries are less honest and kind than they used to be? Do they think their neighbours are less generous and less helpful, that their co-workers are more likely to treat each other disrespectfully and betray each other’s trust? Survey researchers have been asking people about their perceptions of changes in these everyday moral qualities since at least 1949, but the full corpus of relevant survey data has never been systematically assembled and analysed. We began by doing that.

In study 1, we searched the databases of major survey research providers (using search terms shown in the Supplementary Information ) and found 177 survey items that asked representative samples of a total of 220,772 US Americans if and how they thought other people’s morality had changed over time (Supplementary Table 1 ). These items were administered over a 70-year span from 1949 to 2019. Typical items included: “Do you think that over the last few decades our society has become less honest and ethical in its behavior, more honest and ethical, or has there been no change in the extent to which people behave honestly and ethically?” and “Right now, do you think the state of moral values in this country as a whole is getting better or getting worse?” (further methodological details can be found in the concluding method section as well as in the Supplementary Information ). On 84.18% of the items, the majority of participants reported that morality had declined. A linear model indicated that the proportion of participants who reported moral decline was not significantly influenced by the year in which the survey was administered, b  = 0.07, 95% confidence interval (CI) = [−0.11, 0.24], t (175) = 0.77, P  = 0.45, adjusted R 2  = −0.002, and the same model fit in a Bayesian framework indicated strong evidence of no effect (Bayes Factor of 0.04), which is to say that US Americans have been reporting moral decline at the same rate for as long as researchers have been asking them about it. (These and all tests we report are two-tailed).

Two more findings were noteworthy. First, participants in study 1 were more likely to perceive moral decline when they were asked about longer periods of time (for example, “the last decade”) than about shorter periods of time (“the last year”), b  = 0.57, 95% CI = [0.09, 1.05], t (43) = 2.42, P  = 0.02, adjusted R 2  = 0.10, which is precisely what one would expect if participants believed that morality has been declining continuously. Second, participants reported increases in morality when asked about a few specific issues on which social progress has clearly been made: for example, 59% of participants reported improved treatment of African Americans, 51% reported improved treatment of people with physical disabilities and 50% reported improved treatment of gay people. The fact that participants calculated moral decline cumulatively across time periods and acknowledged special exceptions to the general trend suggests that they were reporting well-considered beliefs, and not merely expressing some vague sense of despair about humanity. Indeed, in the Supplementary Information , we report an extra study (Supplementary study 3) showing that the perception of moral decline persists even when people are incentivized to respond accurately.

The perception of moral decline was not unique to US Americans. We resampled the databases of major survey research providers and found 58 survey items that asked a total of 354,120 participants in 59 nations other than the United States if and how they thought other people’s morality had changed over time (Supplementary Table 2 ). These items were administered over a 13-year span from 1996 to 2007. An analysis of these items showed that on 86.21% of the items, the majority of non-US participants reported that morality had declined. Indeed, the Pew Research Center surveyed citizens of 40 nations in 2002 (ref. 11 ) and 2006 (ref. 12 ) and, as Fig. 1 shows, in every one of those nations, the majority of participants reported that moral decline was at least a “moderately big problem”.

In every country surveyed by Pew in 2002 or 2006 (shown in red), the majority of participants reported that moral decline was at least a “moderately big problem”. Map created with MapChart.

The survey items we analysed in study 1 (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 ) used a wide range of question formats to ask participants over a wide range of decades about moral decline across a wide range of time periods, and they converged on a single conclusion: people all over the world believe that morality has declined, and they have believed this for as long as researchers have been asking them about it. Archival data are uniquely able to tell us how people in the past thought and felt, but they have limits. Some of the items we analysed asked participants for their perceptions of changes in “moral values” without specifying what those values were (for example, “Right now, do you think the state of moral values in this country as a whole is getting better or getting worse?”), some failed to specify the time in the past to which the present was to be compared (for example, “Compared to the past, are people today more or less friendly toward their neighbors?”) and some contained ambiguous wording that was not optimal for extracting accurate measures of people’s perceptions of moral decline (“Considering just the moral climate of the country today, do you feel things in this country are generally going in the right direction or do you feel things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track?”). In addition, all items asked participants questions about the presence or absence of moral decline rather than asking them to rate the level of morality of people in both the present and the past, which allowed us to compute the proportion of participants who perceived moral decline but not how much decline they perceived. We addressed these and other limitations of the archival data by conducting three original studies.

In studies 2a–c, we asked samples of US Americans to rate how “kind, honest, nice, and good” people were in 2020 (the year the studies were conducted), as well as in various other years that differed by study. Methodological details can be found in the concluding method section and in the Supplementary Information . As Fig. 2 shows, participants in study 2a ( n  = 698 respondents on Prolific), study 2b ( n  = 185 respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk) and study 2c ( n  = 347 respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk) perceived moral decline. Specifically, in study 2a, participants rated people as less kind, honest, nice and good in 2020 (mean ( M ) = 4.39) than in 2010 ( M  = 4.76, b  = −0.37, 95% CI = [−0.46, −0.28], t (1394) = −9.38, P  < 0.001, Cohen’s  d  = −0.50), or in 2000 ( M  = 4.91, b  = −0.52, 95% CI = [−0.62, −0.43], t (1394) = −13.23, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.71), and as less kind, honest, nice and good in 2010 than in 2000, b  = −0.15, 95% CI = [−0.25, −0.06], t (1394) = −3.85, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.21. We also conducted two direct replications of study 2a (one of which was preregistered; Supplementary Information ), which produced the same results.

The panels show the results of studies 2a (left panel), 2b (middle panel) and 2c (right panel). Opaque points represent means. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility. Error bars represent 95% CIs. Study 2a n  = 698, study 2b n  = 148 and study 2c n  = 347.

In study 2b, participants rated people as less kind, honest, nice and good in 2020 ( M  = 4.28) than in 2016 ( M  = 4.49, b  = −0.21, 95% CI = [−0.43, 0.006], t (735) = −2.87, P  = 0.047, d  = −0.33), in 2014 ( M  = 4.51, b  = −0.23, 95% CI = [−0.45, −0.01], t (735) = −3.14; P  = 0.02, d  = −0.37), in 2012: M  = 4.59, b  = −0.30, 95% CI = [−0.52, −0.09], t (735) = −4.16, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.48) and in 2010 M  = 4.66, b  = −0.37, 95% CI = [−0.59, −0.16], t (735) = −5.08, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.59). Participants in study 2b also rated people in 2018 as less kind, honest, nice and good than in people in 2010 ( b  = −0.26, 95% CI = [−0.48, −0.05], t (735) = −3.61, P  = 0.004, d  = −0.32). No other comparisons were significant (all P  > 0.05).

In study 2c, participants rated people as less kind, honest, nice and good in 2020 ( M  = 4.28) than in the year the participant turned 20 years old ( M  = 4.89, b  = −0.61, 95% CI = [−0.77, −0.45], t (675) = −9.21, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.72) and in the year the participant was born ( M  = 5.20, b  = −0.92, 95% CI = [−1.07, −0.76], t (667) = −14.27, P  < 0.001, d  = −1.08). Participants also rated people as less kind, honest, nice and good in the year the participant turned 20 years old than in the year the participant was born, b  = −0.31, 95% CI = [−0.47, −0.15], t (675) = −4.70, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.37.

In studies 2a–c, we also examined the effects of age, gender, race, education (1 = did not finish high school; 6 = graduate degree), political ideology (−2 = very liberal; 2 = very conservative) and parental status (0 = not parent; 1 = parent) on perceptions of moral decline using an exploratory linear regression. In study 2a, more conservative participants perceived more decline, b  = −0.18, 95% CI = [−0.27, −0.09], t (684) = −4.03, P  < 0.001. No other effects in study 2a were significant (all P  > 0.05). An additional exploratory one-sample t -test indicated that, although more conservative participants perceived more moral decline than did more liberal participants, more liberal participants perceived moral decline as well, M  = −0.35, 95% CI = [−0.47, −0.23], t (398) = −4.96, d  = 0.28, P  < 0.001, d  = 0.28. In study 2b, no other effects were significant (all P  > 0.05). In study 2c, more conservative participants perceived more moral decline than did more liberal participants, b  = −0.15, 95% CI = [−0.28, −0.12], t (329) = −2.15, P  = 0.03, but more liberal participants perceived moral decline as well, M  = −0.80, 95% CI = [−1.02, −0.58], t (159) = −7.23, P  < 0.001, d  = 0.57.

In study 2c, older participants perceived more moral decline than did younger participants, b  = −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.03, −0.004], t (329) = −2.61, P  = 0.01. No other effects were significant (all P  > 0.05). We further investigated the effect of age in study 2c by creating two moral decline scores: specifically, (1) we subtracted participants’ ratings of people in the year the participant was 20 years old from their ratings of people in 2020 and (2) we subtracted participants’ ratings of people in the year the participant was born from their ratings of people in 2020. An exploratory linear model indicated that older participants perceived more moral decline than did younger participants both compared to the year in which they turned 20 years old: b  = −0.02, t (320) = −3.30, 95% CI = [−0.03, −0.007], P  < 0.001, and compared to the year in which they were born: b  = −0.02, t (345) = −3.77, 95% CI = [−0.04, −0.01], P  < 0.001. Did older participants perceive more moral decline simply because they were considering longer periods of time? Yes. We created a measure of the annual rate of moral decline by subtracting the participants’ ratings of people in the year the participant was born from their rating of people in 2020, and then dividing that value by the participant’s age. We then fit an exploratory linear model with the perceived annual rate of moral decline as the outcome and age as a predictor. The main effect of age was not significant, b  = −0.0002, 95% CI = [−0.0005, 0.0002], t (345) = −1.05, P  = 0.29, and refitting the same model in a Bayesian framework provided strong evidence that perceived moral decline per year did not differ by age (100% of high-density interval (HDI) in the region of practical equivalence (ROPE)). In other words, younger and older participants did not report different annual rates of moral decline, which is to say that they reported different total amounts of moral decline only because they were reporting on moral decline across different numbers of years.

To what do people attribute moral decline?

People clearly perceive moral decline, but to what do they attribute it? There are two possibilities. The average morality of a population may decline between two points in time ( T 1 and T 2 ) because (1) individuals who are moral at T 1 are less moral when they reach T 2 (a phenomenon we refer to as ‘personal change’), and/or (2) older people who were alive at T 1 but who died before T 2 are more moral than younger people who were alive at T 2 but who were not yet born (or who were not yet adults and therefore not sampled) at T 1 (a phenomenon we refer to as ‘interpersonal replacement’). When the average morality of a population declines over very short time periods (for example, a day), the decline is probably the result of personal change (because very few people who were measured at T 1 were not also measured at T 2 ), and when the average morality of a population declines over very long time periods (for example, 200 years), the decline is necessarily the result of interpersonal replacement (because no human being lives for 200 years and therefore no one who was measured at T 1 was also measured at T 2 ).

So, what about moral decline over the intermediate time periods that participants in studies 2a–c were asked about? To which of these sources—personal change or interpersonal replacement—do people attribute such decline? In study 3 ( n  = 319 respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk), we asked a sample of US Americans to rate how “kind, honest, nice, and good” people were in 2020 (the year the study was conducted) and in 2005. Methodological details can be found in the Methods and in the Supplementary Information . Next, participants rated the morality of two exclusive subsets of this population. The first subset was people who were living adults in both 2005 and 2020. The difference between these ratings was a measure of participants’ perceptions of personal change between the 2 years. The second subset was people who were living adults in either 2005 or 2020, but not in both years. The difference between these ratings was a measure of participants’ perceptions of interpersonal replacement between the 2 years.

A paired samples t -test indicated that participants perceived moral decline, rating people as less kind, honest, nice and good in 2020 ( M  = 4.35) than in 2005 ( M  = 4.89), t (318) = −9.88, 95% CI = [−0.65, −0.44], d  = 0.55, P  < 0.001. To determine whether participants attributed this moral decline to personal change and/or to interpersonal replacement, we used linear regression to determine whether and how well participants’ perceptions of personal change and of interpersonal replacement predicted their perceptions of moral decline. Both measures significantly predicted participants’ perceptions of moral decline (personal change b  = 0.50, 95% CI = [0.40, 0.59], t (316) = 9.96, P  < 0.001; interpersonal replacement b  = 0.17, t (316) = 6.52, 95% CI = [0.12, 0.22], P  < 0.001; adjusted R 2  = 0.36). We refit the model to include age, gender, race, political ideology, education and parental status as covariates, and the effects of personal change and interpersonal replacement both remained significant (personal change b  = 0.50, 95% CI = [0.40, 0.60], t (304) = 9.87, P  < 0.001; interpersonal replacement b  = 0.18, 95% CI = [0.13, 0.23], t (304) = 6.71, P  < 0.001; adjusted R 2  = 0.38).

In short, participants in study 3 believed that morality had declined on average over a 15-year period, and they attributed that decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals over time and to the decreasing morality of successive generations 13 , 14 . The fact that people attribute moral decline to both sources may help explain why their perceptions of moral decline are so robust, appearing in study 3, in the archival data of study 1 and in the original data collected for studies 2a–c.

Is morality declining?

People believe that morality is declining. Is it? Societies keep (or at least leave) reasonably good records of extremely immoral behaviour such as slaughter and conquest, slavery and subjugation or murder and rape, and careful analyses of those historical records strongly suggest that these objective indicators of immorality have decreased significantly over the last few centuries 15 , 16 . On average, modern humans treat each other far better than their forebears ever did—which is not what one would expect if honesty, kindness, niceness and goodness had been decreasing steadily, year after year, for millennia. Although there are no similarly objective historical records of everyday morality—of how often people offer their seats to an elderly person, give directions to a lost tourist or help their neighbour fix a fence—there are subjective measures of such things.

Recall that in study 1, we examined people’s reports of moral change, which were obtained when survey researchers asked people to mentally compare the morality of people in the present to the morality of people at some point in the past and then report the direction of the difference. But, for decades, survey researchers have also been asking people to report directly on the moral values, traits and behaviours of themselves and their contemporaries in the present: “Were you treated with respect all day yesterday?” or “Would you say that most of the time people try to be helpful, or that they are mostly just looking out for themselves?” or “During the past 12 months, how often have you carried a stranger’s belongings, like groceries, a suitcase, or shopping bag?” (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4 ). If, as people all over the world claim, morality has been declining steadily and precipitously for decades, then people’s reports of current morality should also have declined over the years. Have they?

In study 4, we searched the databases of major survey research providers (using search terms listed in the Supplementary Information ) and found 107 items that were administered to 4,483,136 people across a 55-year span from 1965 to 2020, and that (1) asked participants to report on some aspect of current morality and (2) were administered at least twice, at times that were at least 10 years apart (Supplementary Table 3 shows the items). To determine whether people’s reports of the current morality of their contemporaries changed over time, we fit a linear model for each survey. The year of each survey was always entered as a predictor, and the outcome was always the average perception of current morality. Because these surveys generally had large samples—some with hundreds of thousands of participants—the significance of P values is not very meaningful, so we used R 2 values as a measure of effect size. To shed further light on the size of these effects, we also fit analogous models in a Bayesian framework.

The results of both analyses were clear: people’s reports of the current morality of their contemporaries were stable over time. On average, the year in which the survey was conducted explained less than 0.3% of the variance in responses, and in almost all cases it explained less than 1% (Supplementary Table 4 ). This result was confirmed by Bayesian analysis, which showed that 100% of the HDI was within the ROPE in all but one case, indicating that any changes over time were negligible at best. We repeated these analyses for data collected from non-US samples (33 samples, n  = 7,432,736) and found similar results: on average, the year in which the survey was conducted explained less than 0.2% of the variance in responses (all items and results for the non-US sample are listed in Supplementary Table 4 ). In short, studies 1–3 showed that when people are explicitly asked to assess moral change, they claim that morality has declined, but study 4 shows that when people are asked to assess the current morality of their contemporaries, their assessments do not change over time.

Could this be because words can change meaning over time? If residents of Los Angeles in both 1942 and 2022 described traffic as ‘heavy’, it would be a mistake to conclude that traffic had not actually increased. Words such as ‘heavy’ and ‘moral’ are inherently ambiguous, and if people adapt to changes in traffic or morality, then people in different decades may use the same ambiguous word to describe very different states of affairs. This is unlikely to be the case in study 4 because in addition to including a few items that measured traits and values with ambiguous terms such as ‘morality’, the dataset (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4 ) mainly contained items that measured specific and relatively unambiguous moral behaviours, such as “Within the past 12 months, have you been assaulted or mugged?” or “During the past 12 months, have you let a stranger go ahead of you in line?” Answers to specific and unambiguous questions such as these did not change over time. It seems rather improbable that people were less likely to allow strangers into a line in 2020 than in 2010, but that somehow in that 10-year span, the meaning of words such as ‘stranger’ and ‘line’ had changed in ways that masked that objective decline in kindness.

The subjective measures we analysed are not definitive, of course, but they strongly suggest that the widespread perception of moral decline is an illusion. Moreover, studies that use the rare objective measure of changes in everyday moral behaviour suggest the same thing. For instance, Yuan et al. 17 showed that rates of cooperation in the Prisoner’s Dilemma game have increased significantly between 1956 and 2017, and in the Supplementary Information , we report the results of a study (Supplementary study 3) showing that most people mistakenly believe that such cooperation has declined.

Why do people perceive moral decline?

The results of studies 1–3 suggest that people believe that morality has declined, and the results of study 4 suggest that this belief is illusory. If morality has not declined, then why do people think it has? Although there are surely many good answers to this question, we suggest that one of them has to do with the fact that when two well-established psychological phenomena work in tandem, they can produce an illusion of moral decline. First, numerous studies have shown that human beings are especially likely to seek and attend to negative information about others 18 , 19 , 20 , and mass media indulge this tendency with a disproportionate focus on people behaving badly 21 . As such, people may encounter more negative information than positive information about the morality of ‘people in general’, and this ‘biased exposure effect’ may help explain why people believe that current morality is relatively low. Second, numerous studies have shown that when people recall positive and negative events from the past, the negative events are more likely to be forgotten 22 , more likely to be misremembered as their opposite 23 , 24 and more likely to have lost their emotional impact 25 . This ‘biased memory effect’ may help explain why people believe that past morality was relatively high. Working together, these two phenomena can produce an illusion of moral decline. Specifically, biased exposure to information about current morality may make the present seem like a moral wasteland, biased memory for information about past morality may make the past seem like a moral wonderland and when people in a wasteland remember being in a wonderland, they may naturally conclude that the landscape has changed.

This ‘biased exposure and memory’ (BEAM) mechanism comports well with the results of the studies we have described, but it also makes at least two testable predictions. Specifically, the BEAM mechanism predicts that the illusion of moral decline should be attenuated, eliminated or even reversed when (1) people are exposed to a disproportionate amount of positive rather than negative information about the moral behaviour of others, as they are with their families, friends and associates, and (2) when people are asked about times for which they have little or no information in memory, such as in the years before they were born. In the Supplementary  Information , we provide a mathematical model of the BEAM mechanism and show how the model makes these two predictions, which we tested in studies 5a and 5b.

Study 5a ( n  = 283 respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk) tested the hypothesis that the illusion of moral decline is attenuated, eliminated or reversed when participants are asked to rate people in their personal worlds rather than people in general. As described in the Methods (and Supplementary  Information ), we began by measuring participants’ perceptions of (1) overall moral decline; (2) personal change among people in general and (3) interpersonal replacement among people in general. Then we measured participants’ perceptions of (4) personal change among people in their personal worlds and (5) interpersonal replacement among people in their personal worlds. We explained that the phrase ‘personal worlds’ referred to “all the people with whom you currently interact, in person or otherwise, in your everyday life. This probably includes friends, family members, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, etc.”.

We used one-sample t -tests to determine whether each of the measures described above differed significantly from zero. First, participants on average perceived moral decline: they believed that people in general were not as kind, honest, nice and good in 2020 as they were in 2005 ( M  = −0.36), t (282) = −6.04, 95% CI = [−0.48, −0.25], d  = 0.36, P  < 0.001. Second, participants believed that individuals in 2020 were not as kind, honest, nice and good as those same individuals had been in 2005, M  = −0.15, t (282) = −2.67, 95% CI = [−0.26, −0.04], d  = 0.16, P  = 0.008, and that younger people in 2020 were not as kind, honest, nice and good as older people were in 2005, M  = −0.44, t (282) = −5.82, 95% CI = [−0.59, −0.29], d  = 0.35, P  < 0.001. In other words, as in study 3, participants believed that morality had declined among individuals and between successive generations. These results are illustrated in Fig. 3 .

a – e , From left to right, this figure shows the perceived difference in morality of ( a ) people in general in 2005 and people in general in 2020 (overall) ( b ), people in general who were sampled both in 2005 and 2020 (personal change among people in general) ( c ), people in general who were sampled in 2005 or 2020 but not in both years (interpersonal replacement among people in general) ( d ), people in the participant’s personal world who were sampled both in 2005 and 2020 (personal change among people in personal world) and ( e ) people in the participant’s personal world who were sampled in 2005 or 2020 but not in both years (interpersonal replacement among people in participant’s personal world). Opaque points represent means. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility. Error bars represent 95% CIs. n  = 283.

Did participants believe the same things about people in their personal worlds? No. First, participants believed that the individuals who were in their personal worlds in both 2005 and 2020 had shown moral improvement over that period rather than moral decline, M  = 0.23, t (255) = 4.86, 95% CI = [0.14, 0.33], d  = 0.30, P  < 0.001. Second, although participants believed that the younger people who were in their personal worlds in 2020 (but not in 2005) were not as kind, honest, nice and good as the older people who were in their personal worlds in 2005 (but not in 2020), M  = −0.23, t (144) = −3.23, 95% CI = [−0.38, −0.09], d  = 0.27, P  = 0.002, this difference was smaller among people in their personal worlds than it was among people in general, t (144) = −2.56, 95% CI = [−0.40, −0.05], d  = 0.18, P  = 0.01.

To investigate the effects of demographic variables on the perception of moral decline, we fit the same exploratory model used in studies 2a–c. The outcome variable was participants’ perceptions of moral decline between 2005 and 2020. Older participants perceived more moral decline than did younger participants, b  = −0.02, 95% CI = [−0.03, −0.005], t (272) = −2.93, P  = 0.004, and non-parents perceived more moral decline than did parents, b  = 0.29, 95% CI = [0.02, 0.56], t (271) = 2.12, P  = 0.03, adjusted R 2  = 0.07. No other effects were significant (all P  > 0.05).

In short, participants in study 5a believed that morality had declined among people in general, but this effect was reversed (in the case of personal change) or attenuated (in the case of interpersonal replacement) among the people they personally knew. We hasten to note that there are surely many reasons why people might think differently about people in their personal worlds than about people in general and that the BEAM mechanism is, at best, just one.

Study 5b ( n  = 387 respondents on Amazon Mechanical Turk) tested the hypothesis that the illusion of moral decline is attenuated, eliminated or reversed when participants are asked to rate the morality of people in general in the years before the participant was born. Participants rated how kind, honest, nice and good people in general are or were at four points in time: in the current year (which was 2021), 20 years after the participant was born, the year the participant was born, 20 years before the participant was born and 40 years before the participant was born. We fit the same model and planned contrasts used in studies 2a–c. As in our previous studies, participants perceived moral decline among people in general in the years after the participant was born. Specifically, participants believed that people in general were (1) less kind, honest, nice and good in 2021 ( M  = 4.27) than they were in the year the participant was 20 years old ( M  = 4.96), b  = –0.68, 95% CI = [–0.85, –0.51], t (1513) = –10.07, P  < 0.001, d  = −0.75 and (2) less kind, honest, nice and good in the year the participant was 20 years old than they were in the year the participant was born ( M  = 5.13), b  = –0.18, 95% CI [–0.35, –0.01], t (1513) = –2.60, P  = 0.03, d  = −0.19. However, there was no evidence to suggest that participants perceived moral decline in the years before they were born. Specifically, there was no evidence that participants believed that people in general were (1) any more or less kind, honest, nice and good in the year the participant was born ( M  = 5.13) than they were 20 years before the participant was born ( M  = 5.14), b  = –0.01, 95% CI = [–0.17, 0.15], t (1506) = –0.16, P  = 0.87, d  = −0.01 and (2) any more or less kind, honest, nice and good 20 years before the participant was born ( M  = 5.14) than they were 40 years before the participant was born ( M  = 5.05), b  = 0.09, 95% CI = [−0.24, 0.04], t (1506) = −1.42, P  = 0.31, d  = 0.10. Equivalence tests using the ‘parameters’ package in R 26 indicated that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that participants’ ratings for 40 years before their birth and 20 years before their birth were equivalent (91.74% of HDI in ROPE, P  = 0.09; if anything, participants perceived moral improvement between these years), but that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that participants’ ratings for 20 years before their birth and the year of their birth were equivalent (100% of HDI in ROPE, P  = 0.003). In short, participants believed that moral decline began at about roughly the same time they appeared on Earth. These results are illustrated in Fig. 4 .

The figure shows the perceived morality of people in various years. Opaque points represent means. Transparent points represent individual observations jittered for legibility. Error bars represent 95% CIs. n  = 387.

To investigate the effects of demographic variables on the perception of moral decline, we fit the same exploratory model used in studies 2a–c. The outcome variable was perceived moral decline between the year of the participant’s birth and 2021. More conservative participants perceived more moral decline than did more liberal participants, b  = −0.33, 95% CI = [−0.45, −0.22], t (374) = −5.81, P  < 0.001, but a one-sample t -test indicated that more liberal participants perceived moral decline as well, b  = −0.46, 95% CI = [−0.64, −0.28], t (196) = −5.11, P  < 0.001, d  = 0.36. Although older participants perceived more moral decline than did younger participants, b  = −0.01, 95% CI = [−0.02, −0.003], t (374) = −2.60, P  = 0.009, this was because older participants were perceiving moral decline over a longer period of time. Indeed, the same analysis used in study 2c indicated no evidence that older and younger participants perceived different annual rates of moral decline between the year they were born and 2021, b  = 0.000005, 95% CI = [−0.0003, 0.0003], t (385) = 0.04, P  = 0.97, consistent with the results of study 2c.

Studies 5a and 5b show that when participants were asked to assess the morality of people about whom they had mainly positive information in memory (that is, people in their personal worlds) or about whom they had little or no information in memory (that is, people who lived before the participants were born), the perception of moral decline was attenuated, eliminated or reversed, just as the BEAM mechanism predicts. The illusion of moral decline is a robust phenomenon that surely has several causes, and no one can say which of them produced the illusion that our studies have documented. Studies 5a and 5b do not directly implicate the BEAM mechanism in that production but they do make it a viable candidate for future research.

Participants in the foregoing studies believed that morality has declined, and they believed this in every decade and in every nation we studied. They believed the decline began somewhere around the time they were born, regardless of when that was, and they believed it continues to this day. They believed the decline was a result both of individuals becoming less moral as they move through time and of the replacement of more moral people by less moral people. And they believed that the people they personally know and the people who lived before they did are exceptions to this rule. About all these things, they were almost certainly mistaken. One reason they may have held these mistaken beliefs is that they may typically have encountered more negative than positive information about the morality of contemporaries whom they did not personally know, and the negative information may have faded more quickly from memory or lost its emotional impact more quickly than the positive information did, leading them to believe that people today are not as kind, nice, honest or good as once upon a time they were.

Like all studies, ours have limitations. For example, studies 1 and 4 made use of archival data that were not collected for the purposes to which we put them and that were therefore less than ideal. For example, some of the items we analysed asked participants for their perceptions of changes in ‘moral values’ without specifying what those values were, some failed to specify the time in the past to which the present was to be compared, and some contained ambiguous wording that was not optimal for extracting accurate measures of people’s perceptions of moral decline. Moreover, all the items asked participants about the presence or absence of moral decline rather than asking them to rate the level of morality of people in both the present and the past. These limitations were addressed by studies 2a–c, but these studies had limitations of their own (for example, all participants were from the United States). And although studies 5a–b demonstrated the viability of the BEAM mechanism, they do not tell us whether it was the cause of the illusion of moral decline that our other studies documented.

With that said, the illusion of moral decline seems to be a robust phenomenon that may have troubling consequences. For example, in 2015, 76% of US Americans agreed that “addressing the moral breakdown of the country” should be a high priority for their government 27 . The United States faces many well-documented problems, from climate change and terrorism to racial injustice and economic inequality—and yet, most US Americans believe their government should devote scarce resources to reversing an imaginary trend. The belief that everyday morality is on the wane may also affect people’s interpersonal behaviour. For example, research shows that people are reluctant to seek the aid and comfort of those whom they do not know because they underestimate how willingly those people would provide it 4 , 28 , 29 . The illusion of moral decline may be one of the reasons people do not depend as much as they might on the kindness of strangers—an act that might well ameliorate the illusion itself. The illusion of moral decline may also leave people dangerously susceptible to manipulation by bad actors. Research shows that people are especially influenced by ‘dynamic norms’, which are perceived changes in customary ways of behaving 5 . If low morality is a cause for concern, then declining morality may be a veritable call to arms, and leaders who promise to halt that illusory slide—to “make America great again”, as it were—may have outsized appeal. Our studies indicate that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced. Achieving a better understanding of this phenomenon would seem a timely task.

In study 1, we conducted keyword-term searches of the Roper Center for Public Opinion iPoll Database, and manually searched the databases of the General Social Survey, Pew Research Center, Gallup, the American National Election Studies, the World Values Survey, the European Social Survey and the European Values Survey to locate survey items that asked participants if and how they thought other people’s morality had changed over time. In our analyses, we included all surveys that (1) used a representative sample of US American participants, and (2) explicitly asked participants about their perceptions of changes in values, traits and behaviours that have traditionally been taken as indicators of morality by a wide range of US Americans (for example, kindness, honesty, respect). We excluded from our analyses items that asked participants about their perceptions of special topics whose moral relevance either changed considerably over time (for example, men holding doors for women) or differed substantially across members of the population (for example, attending church). We also excluded items that asked participants about the morality of special subpopulations (for example, ‘Evangelicals’ or ‘the Wisconsin legislature’) rather than about all US Americans or about people in general. Further information, including search terms and all survey items included in study 1, can be found in the Supplementary Information . We also sampled our database for survey items administered to participants who lived outside the United States. Because there were fewer such surveys, we did not exclude surveys with non-representative samples, as we did with our US sample.

All original data collection in this and subsequent studies followed all ethical regulations and was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Harvard University.

Participants

We recruited a nationally representative sample of US American adults using Prolific, an online sample provider. This sample was constructed to represent the US American adult population in terms of gender, race and age. Because we did not know the size of the effect we were studying, we sought to make our sample comparable in size to the samples in study 1 by recruiting 1,000 participants. Nine-hundred and ninety-nine people (507 female, 487 male, 5 other, M age  = 45.74 years, 73% white, 13% Black, 7% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 1% other, 2% ‘more than one of the above’) were paid US$0.75 each for their participation.

Study 2a was conducted in 2020. After providing informed consent, participants confirmed their Prolific ID, per the site’s usage policy. They then read the following instructions: “Thanks! In this study, we’ll ask you how kind, honest, nice, and good people were at various points in time. If you’re not sure, that’s okay, just give your best guess”. Participants then rated how “kind, honest, nice, and good” people are today, were 10 years ago and were 20 years ago, using seven-point Likert scales with endpoints labelled ‘not very’ and ‘very’. As a consistency check, participants were then asked to recall whether they had given higher, equal or lower ratings to people today compared to people 20 years ago. Participants then answered some open-ended exploratory questions that asked them to explain the thinking behind their answers. Participants then answered some demographic questions (Supplementary Table 6 ). Embedded among these demographic questions was an ‘attention check question’ that instructed participants to select the option ‘other’ and to type the word ‘sky’. Finally, participants were compensated and dismissed.

One hundred and eighty-one participants failed the attention check embedded in the demographics and were excluded from all analyses. Another 120 participants gave answers to the consistency check question that were inconsistent with their previous answers; they were also excluded. This left 698 participants in all analyses (372 female, 322 male, four other, M age  = 46.37, 74% white, 12% Black, 6% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 2% more than one of the above). These exclusions do not meaningfully affect the results.

To analyse the data, we fit a linear mixed effects model using the lme4 package in R 30 , extracted P values using the lmerTest package 31 and calculated planned contrasts using the emmeans package 32 , using a Holm–Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons. The outcome was participants’ ratings and the predictor was the year of those ratings (one factor with three levels: 2020, 2010 and 2000). The model included a fixed effect of the year of each rating and a random intercept for each participant. For this and all models, we checked model assumptions by plotting the outcome variable, residuals and fitted values. All tests we report are two-tailed.

We powered study 2b to detect an effect of d  = 0.30 or larger, reasoning that this would be sufficient to detect effects similar to the effect we detected in Study 2a. Two-hundred and thirty-six people responded to an advertisement for a study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. To participate, respondents had to pass a three-item test that required them to know that (1) children in kindergarten are 3 or 4 years old, (2) a US American ZIP code is a series of five digits and (3) eating turkey is not associated with Halloween. Thirty-six respondents answered at least one of these three questions incorrectly and were not allowed to participate. The remaining 200 respondents (81 female, 119 male, M age  = 35.81 years, 72% white, 12% Black, 9% Hispanic, 6% Asian, 3% more than one of the above) were allowed to participate in the study in exchange for US$0.75.

After providing informed consent, participants followed study 2a’s procedure except they were asked about different years. Specifically, participants were first asked, “How kind, honest, nice, and good are people today?” and were then asked the same question for “two years ago”, “four years ago”, “six years ago”, “eight years ago” and “ten years ago”, in that order. All questions were answered using a seven-point Likert scale with endpoints labelled ‘not very’ and ‘very’. As a consistency check, participants then answered the following question: “When it comes to being kind, honest, nice, and good—are people more so today compared to ten years ago, less so today compared to ten years ago, or the same?” Participants were then asked to explain their answer in an open-ended question. Finally, participants were asked some demographic questions, as well as an attention check question that required them to select the option ‘other’ and to type the word ‘day’. Participants were compensated and dismissed.

Fifteen participants failed the attention check, and a further 37 participants failed the consistency check by giving an answer that was inconsistent with their scale ratings. The data from these participants were excluded from all analyses, leaving 148 participants (59 female, 89 male, M age  = 36.59 years, 75% white, 9% Black, 7% Hispanic, 5% Asian, 1% Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, 3% more the one of the above). These exclusions only meaningfully affect the results in one case, namely, that when all participants are included, the difference between 2020 and 2016 is not significant.

We fit the same model we fit in study 2a except that in this case the factor in the model had six levels (2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012 and 2010).

We sought to recruit a sample of people who varied widely in terms of age. As such, we created a survey with a quota of 50 participants in each of the following age groups: 18–24, 25–29, 30–34, 35–39, 40–44, 45–49, 50–54, 55–59, 60–64 and 65–69 years. This sample size gave us sufficient power to detect the effects we had detected in studies 2a and 2b. Respondents selected their age group on accessing the study, and once the quota for a group was reached, further respondents from that group were not allowed to participate. Respondents younger than 18 or older than 69 were not allowed to participate.

Respondents responded to an advertisement for a study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Respondents who accessed the survey before the quota for their age group was reached were asked to complete a three-item test of English proficiency and knowledge of US American culture. Specifically, they were required to demonstrate that they knew that (1) bell bottoms are not a type of footwear, (2) an RSVP is a required response to a wedding invitation and (3) a sign reading ‘out of order’ is best paired with an elevator. Three hundred and one respondents answered one or more of these questions incorrectly and were not allowed to participate. The remaining 484 respondents (225 female, 257 male, two other, M age  = 41.27 years, 72% white, 15% Black, 7% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 2% more than one of the above) were allowed to participate in the study in exchange for US$0.75.

Study 2c was conducted in 2020. Participants responded to an advertisement for a study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. After providing informed consent, participants reported how “kind, honest, nice and good” people are today. They then reported how “kind, honest, nice and good” people were when they (the participants) were about 20 years old, and at about the time they (the participants) were born. This was done by adjusting the wording of the subsequent questions on the basis of the participant’s age. For example, if the participant was between 30 and 34 years old, they were asked “How kind, honest, nice, and good were people about ten years ago?” and then “How kind, honest, nice, and good were people about 30 years ago?” If participants were under 25 years, they answered only the questions for today and when they were born. All questions were answered using a seven-point Likert scale with endpoints labelled ‘not very’ and ‘very’. As in previous studies, participants were then given a consistency check that required them to remember whether they had rated people today as more, equally or less moral compared to people in the year they were born. Participants then answered some further exploratory and demographic questions. Embedded among them was an attention check that required participants to select the option ‘other’ and type the word ‘apple’. Finally, participants were compensated and dismissed.

Twenty-eight participants failed the attention check and their data were excluded from all analyses. Seventy-three more participants reported an age at the end of the study that was inconsistent with the age group they selected at the beginning of the study and the data from these participants were also excluded from all analyses. An extra 64 participants failed the consistency check and data from these participants were also excluded from all analyses. The data from the remaining 347 participants (174 female, 172 male, one other, M age  = 42.57 years, 78% white, 9% Black, 7% Asian, 4% Hispanic, 2% ‘more than one of the above’) were included in all analyses. These exclusions do not meaningfully change the results.

We fit the same model we fit in study 2b except that in this case the factor in the model had three levels (today, the year the participant turned 20, the year the participant was born).

Respondents responded to an advertisement for a study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. As in study 2c, we sought to recruit a sample of people who varied widely in terms of age and that was large enough to provide sufficient power to detect the effects we had detected in studies 2a and 2b. We created a survey with quota of 150 for each of three age groups: 20–34, 35–49 and 50–64. Anyone younger than 20 or older than 64 was not allowed to participate. Respondents were asked to complete the same test of English language and US American culture as in study 2c. Four hundred and forty-four respondents (202 female, 242 male, M age  = 40.42 years, 77% white, 9% Black, 7% Asian, 5% Hispanic, 1% ‘more than one of the above’) provided informed consent and became participants in the study in exchange for US$0.75.

Study 3 was conducted in 2020. After providing informed consent, participants reported how “kind, honest, nice, and good” people are in the present (2020) and also “about 15 years ago” (about 2005) on seven-point Likert scales with endpoints labelled ‘not very’ and ‘very’ and then completed a consistency check that asked them to recall the answers they had just given. The difference between these two ratings was used as a measure of participants’ perception of moral decline between 2005 and 2020. Participants then answered the following questions using the same seven-point Likert scales: “How kind, honest, nice, and good are people who are currently between the ages of 35 and 95?”; “How kind, honest, nice, and good are people who are currently between the ages of 20 and 35?”; “Thinking again of people who are currently between the ages of 35 and 95, how kind, honest, nice, and good were they about 15 years ago?” and “About 15 years ago, how kind, honest, nice, and good were people who were then between the ages of 80 and 95?” Participants then answered some demographics questions, among which was embedded an ‘attention check question’ that instructed participants to select the option ‘other’ and to type the word ‘cloud’. Finally, participants were compensated and dismissed.

Forty-eight participants failed the attention check, and a further 15 participants reported an age at the end of the study that was inconsistent with the age group they reported at the beginning of the study. An extra 77 participants failed the consistency check. The data from all of these participants were excluded from all analyses, leaving 319 participants (154 female, 165 male, M age  = 41.02, 77% white, 8% Black, 8% Asian, 5% Hispanic, 1% more than one of the above). These exclusions do not meaningfully affect the results.

Calculating personal change and interpersonal replacement

We created a personal change score by subtracting ratings of 20–80-year olds about 15 years ago (in 2005) from ratings of 35–95-year olds in the present (2020). We created an interpersonal replacement score by subtracting ratings of 80–95-year olds about 15 years ago (in 2005) from ratings of 20–35-year olds in the present (2020). The descriptive statistics for people in general and each of the subgroups about which participants were asked are shown in Extended Data Fig. 1 .

Using a standard linear model, we entered participants’ personal change and cohort replacement scores as predictors, and the outcome was participants’ overall perception of moral decline between 2005 and 2020.

In study 4, we conducted keyword-term searches of the Roper Center for Public Opinion iPoll Database (using search terms shown in the Supplementary Information ), and manually searched the databases of the General Social Survey, Pew Research Center, Gallup, the American National Election Studies, the World Values Survey, the European Social Survey and the European Values Survey to locate survey items that asked participants questions about their own and other people’s morality. As in study 1, questions were considered relevant to morality if they asked about values, attitudes, traits and behaviours that we thought would be considered relevant to kindness, honesty, niceness and goodness by a wide range of US Americans. We included US samples only if they were nationally representative, but also collected non-representative samples if they were collected outside the United States to maximize non-US representation. The latter were analysed separately. To be included, each survey had to be administered at least twice, and the most recent administration could not be earlier than 2010. Further information, including search terms and all survey items included in study 4, can be found in the Supplementary Information .

We fit a linear model for each survey. The year of each survey was always entered as a predictor and the outcome was always the average perception of current morality. We used R 2 values as a measure of effect size. We fit Bayesian models using the Rstanarm package in R 33 and extracted the percentage of the 89% HDI that was contained in the ROPE, which was by default defined as ±0.1 standard deviations. We used the package’s default Markov Chain Monte Carlo and prior settings ( M  = 0, scale of 2.5).

As in study 2c, we sought to recruit a sample of people who varied widely in terms of age and that was large enough to provide sufficient power to detect the effects we had detected in previous studies. We created a survey with a quota of 50 participants in each of three age groups: 20–34, 35–49 and 50–64 years. Anyone who was either younger than 20 years or older than 64 years was not allowed to participate.

One thousand and twenty-one people responded to an advertisement for a study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. They completed the same test of English language and US American culture as in study 2c. Five hundred and twenty-one respondents answered at least one of the questions incorrectly and were not allowed to participate. The remaining 500 respondents (204 female, 293 male, three other, M age  = 37.74 years, 65% white, 24% Black, 7% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% American Indian or Alaska Native, 1% more than one of the above) provided informed consent and became participants in the study in exchange for US$0.75.

Study 5a was conducted in 2021. After providing informed consent, participants completed the same procedure as was used in study 2c, with two more questions. Specifically, participants rated how “kind, honest, nice, and good” people in general were 20 years before the participant was born and also 40 years before the participant was born. These years were adjusted on the basis of the age of the participant.

One hundred and seventy-nine participants failed the first attention check, and another 21 failed the second attention check. Another 15 participants reported an age at the end of the study that was inconsistent with the birth year they reported at the beginning. The data from all these participants were excluded from all analyses. The remaining 283 participants (139 female, 143 male, one other, M age  = 38.77 years, 78% white, 11% Black, 8% Asian, 2% Hispanic, 1% more than one of the above) were included in all analyses. These exclusions affect the results in a few cases. Specifically, when excluded participants are included, the overall perception of moral decline and personal change for people in general are not significant. All other effects remain significant.

We fit the same model we fit in study 2c except that the factor in the model had five levels (2020, the year the participant turned 20, the year the participant was born, 20 years before the participant was born and 40 years before the participant was born).

Because this study was a replication and extension of study 2c, we sought to collect a similar sample size to have the power to detect similar effects, and we used the same age quotas as in Study 2c. One thousand eighty-two people responded to an advertisement for a study on Amazon Mechanical Turk. Twenty-one of these opened the study but did not complete it. Five hundred and sixty people responded after the quota for their age group had been reached and were not allowed to participate in the study. Respondents who responded before the quota for their age group was reached completed the same three-item test of US American culture and English language used in study 2c. Twenty-three respondents answered one or more of these questions incorrectly and were not allowed to participate in the study. The remaining 499 respondents (225 female, 241 male, three other, M age  = 43.96 years, 78% white, 10% Asian, 5% Black, 4% Hispanic, 3% more than one of the above) were allowed to participate in the study in exchange for US$0.75.

Study 5b was conducted in 2021. After providing informed consent, participants completed the same procedure used in study 2c. They further rated people’s morality 20 and 40 years before the year that they were born.

Forty-four participants failed the attention check and their data were excluded from all analyses. Seven more participants reported an age at the end of the study that was inconsistent with the age group they selected at the beginning of the study and their data were also excluded from all analyses. Sixty-one more participants failed the consistency check and their data were also excluded from all analyses. The data from the remaining 387 participants (206 female, 178 male, three other, M age  = 44.04 years, 79% white, 11% Asian, 4% Black, 3% Hispanic, 2% more than one of the above) were included in all analyses. These exclusions affect the results in one case: when excluded participants are included, participants perceived moral improvement from 40 years before birth to 20 years before birth. All other effects remain the same.

We fit the same model we fit in study 2c except that in this case the factor in the model had five levels (the year 2020, the year the participant turned 20 years old, the year the participant was born, 20 years before the participant was born and 40 years before the participant was born).

Reporting summary

Further information on research design is available in the  Nature Portfolio Reporting Summary linked to this article.

Data availability

All materials and original data are available at https://osf.io/t83zy/ ( https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/T83ZY ). The data analysed in studies 1 and 4 are the property of the polling organizations that produced them and cannot be posted. Instructions for accessing these data are also available at https://osf.io/t83zy/ .

Code availability

The code necessary to reproduce all analyses is available at https://osf.io/t83zy/ , except for studies 1 and 4, which requires access to proprietary data.

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Acknowledgements

We thank P. Menon for her mathematical assistance, M. Vollberg for his coding assistance, D. Blumenthal for his assistance with data collection and F. Cushman, N. Epley, S. Pinker, R. Baumeister, A. Wood Brooks and T. Wilson for comments on the manuscript.

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Mastroianni, A.M., Gilbert, D.T. The illusion of moral decline. Nature 618 , 782–789 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06137-x

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Knowledge at Wharton Podcast

Technology and the decline of morality, july 14, 2017 • 29 min listen.

Former Hearst executive Eden Collinsworth explores the fluid lines of morality today in her new book.

• Public Policy

Author Eden Collinsworth talks about the fluid lines of morality today in her new book.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge at Wharton: What has changed significantly about morality that we’re going down the bad road more often than the good road?

Eden Collinsworth: It might be helpful to define the words “morality” and “ethics” because they’re often thought to be one and the same. Morality is a personal set of beliefs, and you could say that it’s the core of who we are as individuals. Ethics is expressed in terms of the expectations and the sanctions that are defined and enforced by a certain culture and society.

What’s completely confounding today is that the world has never been so interconnected, but what we forget is that the ethical positions or decisions or expectations occur within a given period of time in a certain cultural silo. That is why many of us are completely disconcerted by what we think is so obviously right and wrong when other people don’t believe that.

Quite honestly, the book that I’ve written was the result of living in China for a period of time … and they are simply operating with a different set of moral values. The perspective is not one from a Judeo-Christian sense of right and wrong. They’re far more philosophical and don’t believe that there’s any one way of being right, and there are very few ways of being wrong. Something as fundamental as what you expect from a business contract becomes extremely vague and amorphous even after you’ve signed it because there’s a belief that it’s a continuation of a dialogue and not the culmination of one.

This led me to contemplate whether my own values were at all germane or applicable any longer in America, as an American. I started to explore that question with a variety of other people in terms of the moral choices they’ve made. Some of them have upheld the moral status quo, others have been defiant. And I think a great deal has to do with the generational shift.

I was brought up with a certain set of moral standards and values by parents who believed that it was almost a rule book. My son, who is in his late 20s, is the result of a generation whose ethics have been shaped largely by the technological advances that occurred in his lifetime. There are a lot of external factors, but yes, things are really very different and far more morally flexible.

Knowledge at Wharton: The mindset of each generation is certainly different, but I would think morals would be something that would carry on through the generations.

Collinsworth: After spending a year exploring this topic, I think that we’re not necessarily born with ethics or morality. I think that a great deal of it is acquired. Some part of it has to do with skills. One of the people I interviewed in the United Kingdom is this brilliant neuroscientist. … She has underscored the fact that your brain is constantly evolving. The frontal lobes, which are the part of the brain that puts things in perspective and allows you to be empathetic, are constantly evolving.

“We’re not necessarily born with ethics or morality. I think that a great deal of it is acquired.”

But it is less likely to evolve and develop those skills if you are in front of a screen. In other words, those skills come into play when you have a face-to-face interaction with someone. You can observe facial gestures. You can hear the intonation of a voice. You’re more likely to behave moderately in that exchange, unless it’s a just a knock-down, drag-out fight.

Now, the average time spent in front of a screen is nine hours. My son grew up with a computer, but he did not grow up with social media. Even in his late 20s, he is different from somebody in their early 20s who had grown up curating their Facebook page, working Instagram and Twitter. That’s a demarcation that’s fairly obvious, and that has to do with technological changes that are not going to retreat. In other words, this is the deal.

Politics Impact on Decline in Morality

Knowledge at Wharton: What we’re seeing politically in this country and around the world does challenge the idea that morals and politics can work together.

Collinsworth: I would agree. But I think, like anything, it comes from the top. The fact remains that in America there is a president who has no qualms about, dare I say, lying. The word “lie” conveys not only a factual judgment but also a moral one. I come from a media background, so what is the obligation of a free press? I’ve also lived in countries where there is not a free press, China specifically. I am incredibly grateful as an American for a free press, which I believe holds [the excesses of] democracy in check. But what is the obligation? Is it to trust the public’s judgment? Or is it to present judgment to them?

As far as I’m concerned, a lie is a lie is a lie. And we normalize it by not calling him out. But we also are living in a society now that is far more comfortable believing something [just] because it’s the opposite of what somebody else believes. I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a little more heavy lifting, and I don’t know whether Americans have the appetite for that.

Knowledge at Wharton: It’s almost an expectation that you’re going to have lies coming at you, whereas 30 or 40 years ago there was an assumption of truth coming your way.

Collinsworth: That’s true. But my truth might be different than yours because I’m entrenched in certain beliefs. This is what I assumed was a political trend, and I must say that I’m incredibly relieved to see what’s happened in France. Not because I necessarily agree with the policies, but Emmanuel Macron, the new president, has come out of nowhere in a little over a year and he has now won a majority in Parliament.

Fifty percent of the parliamentarians have not had any experience in politics. He is completely determined to build a populous movement from the center rather than the extremes. I’m hoping that is a very positive sign of what might come and what might be embraced not only in America but also the U.K. and other countries that have become so polarized. I mean, you can’t open your mouth without being accused of any number of things, and it’s far more emotional than it is rational.

“My truth might be different than yours because I’m entrenched in certain beliefs.”

The Kardashians and a Decline in Morals

Knowledge at Wharton: You also take some time in the book to look at Hollywood as well, specifically the Kardashians.

Collinsworth: Yeah, that’s pretty weird. But you know what, I’m not of that generation. What one has to remember is that these are extremely shrewd business decisions [made by the Kardashian family]. Kim Kardashian is memorializing in every conceivable sense — on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, newsletters, traditional media — the most mundane aspects of her life on a day-to-day basis. But she’s charging for it.

In a larger sense, we should remember that just a few tech companies [control our digital life]. You think of the internet as this rather ephemeral, atmospheric opportunity to create communities and outreach and gather information, and it is all of those things. But it’s important to remember that it’s also owned by a few extremely lucrative tech companies.

These are businesses. These are publicly owned companies, and their first and foremost obligation is the return on investment. Now they’re being held to account on some degree, and they finally have admitted that they are more than simply content providers, so they should become responsible to a degree for patrolling or curtailing some content that’s very incendiary. But the point is that all of these are money-making ventures.

Knowledge at Wharton: The world of Kim Kardashian revolves around a lot of social media. I want to get your thoughts on what social media means to this discussion of morality.

Collinsworth: If you look at it just from a logistical perspective and focus in on something like Twitter — and this loops back to the issue of one’s ability to interact with people — Twitter basically has reduced communication to so many characters, so there’s no room for any subtlety. But more to the point, it’s very direct. What you see on Twitter, but also on Facebook, is often an angry response that ratchets up very quickly.

Part of this overall concern about what is happening is there is a diminution or lesser opportunity to build the skill set of how to deal with people. We are social animals, so something as simple as communicating has now become fraught with not only our polarized ideas, policies and politics, but also it is exacerbated by the way we communicate.

I read someplace that within a relatively short period of time, in less than five years, most people will be using their phones not to make phone calls but for text messages and internet connection. Even with the phone now, you’d just as soon text rather than actually hear somebody’s voice. It just is becoming a more stilted way of dealing with other people. I don’t think that it’s going to change. I think that’s the trend, so I think we have to learn to live with it and perhaps put it in perspective.

Knowledge at Wharton: You also get into the military a little bit. You had a conversation with a major general from the Air Force about elements they have to deal with regarding morality.

Collinsworth: Yes, that was really very interesting for me and quite compelling. I spoke to Gen. Michael “Buzz” Moseley, who under two presidents was chief of staff of the Air Force. We spoke about drone warfare because it falls very quickly into two ethical camps. One feels that it’s immoral and unethical to kill because it has to do with the ease by which you kill and the fact that you’re basically killing somebody from a bunker outside of Las Vegas or something. You follow this person around. There’s this rather weird intimacy where you’re tracking this person, getting to know their daily habits in order to isolate a moment where you can murder them, in effect.

The other side of the argument is that it is a more moral way of dealing with warfare. Gen. Moseley reminded me of the purpose of war, and that is why he feels very strongly that there’s nothing casual about making the decision to put boots on the ground or move into a military posture. He told me very directly that the purpose of war is to kill people and destroy property.

“When do you begin to forfeit your morals?”

He felt that technology finally has allowed warfare, most especially from the air, to become more moral because even though admittedly there is collateral damage, there is far less collateral damage when you’re focused on an individual rather than whatever the alternative is. Obviously, there’s been a long history of warfare from the air, including carpet bombing and so on, so it was interesting to hear that perspective.

These are issues one grapples with especially now. The question I have, which is unanswered by the way, is when do you begin to forfeit your own moral values — whether you call them Western values — and acknowledge that the enemy you’re fighting doesn’t share your values? I’ve lived in London for the last several years, and the last two months have been fairly gruesome [due to several terrorist attacks]. It’s a situation where the goal [of the attacker] is to kill as many innocent civilians as possible, usually in a vulnerable situation, often women and children.

So when do you begin to forfeit your morals [as a result]? Fortunately, I have not seen that happen. There are hate crimes on the rise but what I do see, not surprisingly, is the trend towards a willingness to forfeit civil liberties for security. Now in the U.K. and possibly elsewhere, the government will take a more aggressive position and attitude towards monitoring your personal communication online and on phones. … I think the government is just at its wit’s end. It’s been very stalwart. But its threshold of tolerance has really diminished considerably.

Knowledge at Wharton: You also talk towards the end of the book about birth and the moral questions surrounding it.

Collinsworth: Everything is relative. Here in the U.K., it is against the law to deliberately choose a gender. That’s where they draw the line. However, a three-person pregnancy, [or making babies using DNA from three people], is legal. That is illegal in America, but what is legal in America is choosing a gender. Those people in the U.K. who can afford it fly to a doctor in Chicago, and he will perform that procedure. In China, it’s against the law for a single woman to freeze her eggs. Women in China who could afford it fly to California and do just that.

A lot of it has to do with, whether right or wrong, your financial wherewithal. But it’s difficult to know where the line is drawn. I don’t want to get personal, but you volunteered that you support a certain procedure [IVF]. Would you then support the choice of a gender? It’s very, very personal. … The one thing that became extremely apparent to me is that [whatever issue we discuss like] reproductive rights, warfare, or others, technology will continue to hurl ahead as we argue both sides of the equation.

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Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay Essay

Despite having been written in the 19 th century, Harriet Jacob’s “ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” has attracted both positive and negative criticism due to its relevance in contemporary studies.

In this novel published in the early 1800s, Jacobs recorded her experiences on the horrors of being a female slave in America. While Jacob assumes an apologetic stance about the behavior of slaves, she still manages to highlight the plight and the perils of the persecuted race. In this novel, Jacob largely dwells on the issue of slavery, specifically the perspective of the female slave.

While Jacobs’ intentions were to tell the world what t is to be a female slave, she manages, to highlight other prevalent social ills that have bedeviled the human race through out history. Suffice to state that the perception of some of the issues highlighted through the novel has been affected by the passing of time. However, analyzing the novel in light of contemporary thinking shows the timelessness of the novel. Regardless of the varied perceptions there are a number of social ills that are intertwined with the theme of slavery.

It is impossible to refer to slavery without mentioning race relations. Slavery is perceived in relation to the master servant relations between the whites and the blacks. Furthermore, sexual perversion, parental negligence as well as general moral decadence cannot be discussed without considering the influence of slavery. Therefore, Jacobs uses slavery to illuminate the existence of societal ills such as moral decadence, racism, sexual harassment and parental negligence,

Harriet’s main intention of writing this book was to highlight the perils of slavery especially to women, yet through slavery, the negative effects parental irresponsibility are observed. Suffice to say that the term parental responsibility was conceived differently in the 19 th century America than it is today. In the 19 th century America, the perception of the term was heavily influenced by social relations, rather than paternity.

While the definition of parental negligence is taken in the 21 st century perception, the evidence is taken from Jacobs’ 19 th century occurrences. It is imperative to state that both the black slaves and the white masters, in today’s’ perception of the meaning of the phrase, would be equally accused of negligence of parental duties. Jacobs’ appeals to the reader to understand the peculiar pains the black parents go through implying that the blacks are as powerless (Mian 10).

Yet despite Jacobs appeal such powerlessness would still not excuse them from being accused of parental negligence in the 21 st century. As symbolized through Aunt Martha the fact that slave mothers allowed their children to be sold as slaves without much will to resist would be taken as gross violation of parental responsibilities in today’s democratic world.

Yet the whites too are not innocent of parental negligence. In “ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” Jacobs shows how rampant the whites neglected and even mistreated children born with the slaves. In today’s perception, such negligence is a social ill, yet it would not be as vivid as it is in “ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, if it is not taken Vis a Vis slavery.

Despite the fact that Jacobs recording of her recollection of slavery and the subsequent criticism of her works happens in different time in history, her works still manage to uncover gross moral decadence within the society. Again, the perception of moral decadence in this case is influenced by the 21 st century thinking.

Within Jacobs work, there exist various instances of what in today’s standards pass as gross violations of social codes of conduct. Yet the immorality within this society can only be uncovered through the evaluations of the effects of slavery. In modern day thinking a person is held responsible of promises made to other, regardless of the prevailing social relations. Yet, Mr. Sands, despite him being the friendliest of the slave owners, breaks promises made to his slaves.

While this may be excusable it is the way in which he sells his slaves including his children that would baffle many of the modern day moralists (Jacobs 145). In Jacob opinion, the slaves can be excused for stealing their masters’ corn, yet stealing by whatever standards is immoral. Yet within this argument, the concept of slave ownership cannot be lost on the readers. Back then, even through it was the norm to own slaves, no moral justification could be given for such acts of immorality.

The concept of slave ownership is founded on debased, insufferable treatment and objectification of the slaves. While the 19 th century reader may not appreciate the immorality of exchanging people for money, the 21 st first century readers sees this as the vilest form of human rights violations. Yet these forms of moral decay cannot be evaluated in isolation from slavery.

Despite the fact that sexual harassment has been treated as an immoral behavior, in Jacobs’ novel it can be isolated from other forms of immoral behavior since it is mostly implicit, rather than explicit. Yet sexual harassment cannot be seen perceived in isolation from slavery. Suffice to state that the victim of slave sexual torture is the women.

Jacobs perfectly attains the goal of portraying the horrors of sexual harassment by juxtaposing the treatment of male slaves against the female slaves. While the male slaves undergo physical torture such as burning freezing and flogging (Jacobs 109), the females slaves goes through a worse from of torture: sexual harassment. Female slaves are forced to have sexual encounters with their masters, who they hold in much despise (Jacobs 146).

McGlinn and McGlinn try to justify the slave’s owner tendencies to force their female slaves if they “would have healthier babies” (11). Yet such acts, like slavery and slave ownership, are a violation of individual rights to self determination. Amidst the debate of the horrors of sexual violence, it cannot be lost on the reader that slavery also plays a role in exposing the subject if women sexuality.

Jacobs refuses to be Narcom’s mistress and instead marries and has two children with Mr. Sands. Child argues that sexuality in this case portrays the reversal of power between the slave and the master (xxxvii). Thus in Jacob’s novel “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”, sexual violence cannot be isolated from slavery, since it is the tool with which the slave master use to propagate and impose themselves as superior to their slaves.

It is impossible to mention slavery without mentioning race relations. Jacobs perceive the issue of race in relation to the relationships between the blacks and white. In her analyzing, Jacobs presents the perception of both the white and the blacks about themselves and about each other. Despite her good attempt to show the differences in perception about inter racial relationships, she still manages to portray her own personal reflection on the issue of race, thus:

“Truly, the colored race is the most cheerful and forgiving people on the face of the earth. That their masters sleep in safety is owing to their superabundance of heart; and yet they look upon their sufferings with less pity than they would bestow on those of a horse or a dog”. (Jacobs 141).

While Child (xlv) argues that such sexual relations between the blacks and the whites are Jacobs’ attempts to bridge the racial gap, the above mentioned assertions by the author show that the blacks bore much of the suffering of this skewed relationship. Jacobs’s assertion thus contradicts Child’s claims since Jacobs sees race relation in terms of the persecutor versus the persecuted (48).

Jacobs argues that the black slaves despite their best efforts to be humane, still get persecuted, their “superabundance of heart” notwithstanding. Mian’s (18) argument comes closer than Childs in explaining race relations in the novel and claims that motherhood is Jacobs most effective way of bridging the gap between the two races.

However, within Mian’s argument the influence of slavery in highlighting other prevalent social ills emerge since she claims that “whether slaves or free, mothers are held in high esteem” (18). In view of Mian’s, Jacobs’ and Child’s argument it is thus clear that slavery illuminates racism as a social ill.

Jacob’s novel “ Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” is personal to some extent while still manages to be objective. Primarily, the author intends to give her won personal experiences as a slave woman. Jacob attains this through the juxtaposition of the treatment of the male slave to the psychological torture that the slave woman goes through.

While the novel centre of attention is slavery, other important issues are illuminated. In this regard it can be argued that the issue of slavery is the platform on which Jacobs highlights other prevalent societal ills.

Though unintentional, Jacobs presentation of her experience as a slave also exposes to the reader to the morass that is the sexual relationship between the slaves and their masters. Even though Jacobs relationship with Mr. Sands tries to portray the lighter side of inter racial sexual relationship, there are other instances through which this kin of relationship can only be termed as pervasive. Moreover, parental negligence is also depicted, and manifested through slavery.

The whites neglect children born with their black slaves, sometimes to the extent of selling those children to other slave owners. This highlights the fact that the white took social status as more important than parental responsibility. All these are manifestations of slavery. While Jacobs justifies immoral behavior by the slaves such as stealing, such kind of immorality is portrayed and manifested in relation to slavery.

Amidst the debate on slavery, it cannot be lost on the reader that race is of paramount importance in relation to the notion of slavery. Yet in this novel, it is the grotesque side of the relationship between the blacks and the white that dominates. At best the whites treat the blacks as mere object much to the consternation of the backs. Therefore through slavery, the general moral decadence within this society is underscored.

Works Cited

Child, Maria. Harriet A. Jacobs: Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written By Herself . John Harvard Library. 2009. Web.

Jacobs, Harriet. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl . (Electronic ed). 2003. Web.

Mcglinn Jeanne and James Mcglinn : A Teacher’s Guide To The Signet Classics Edition Of Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl. 2009. Web.

Mian, Naseem. Perversion of Motherhood in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl n.d. Web.

• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, December 7). Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-illuminates-societal-moral-decay/

"Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay." IvyPanda , 7 Dec. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-illuminates-societal-moral-decay/.

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IvyPanda . 2022. "Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay." December 7, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-illuminates-societal-moral-decay/.

1. IvyPanda . "Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay." December 7, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-illuminates-societal-moral-decay/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay." December 7, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/slavery-illuminates-societal-moral-decay/.

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Robert Clifton Robinson

Christian author, philosopher, & apologist | apologetics | christology | ecclesiology | eschatology | soteriology.

Home › America: a Christian Nation › America Abandons God › The Stunning Evidence Of America’s Moral Decline

The Stunning Evidence Of America’s Moral Decline

By Robert Clifton Robinson on November 2, 2020 • ( 0 )

The essay depicts the events that have taken place since 1962, when prayer was removed from American schools. Beginning with this crucial date, we follow the events that have taken place during the last 58 years which have lead our nation along a consistent path towards moral decline.

This Essay Lists 101 Crucial Events Of American History Since 1962, That Demonstrates The Moral Decay Of The United States of America

Does morality matter? Is it important how the people of a nation live? Is it progressive to be inclusive of all lifestyles that people demand? Can the moral fiber of a nation be so eroded that the entire system will eventually collapse? Surprisingly we find that many great civilizations before America have followed the same course the United States is currently on and they no longer exist as a nation today.

“ As I have looked back across the ruins and landmarks of antiquity, I have been stunned by the parallels between those societies and our own…Three important trends demonstrate moral decay. They are the “rise in immorality,” the “decay of religious belief,” and the “devaluing of human life.” ~Jim Nelson Black Ph.D,  When Nations Die.[a]

The God who created all that exists and birthed America as a nation, has given us the right to choose our destiny. He said that if we choose to live our lives in righteousness and set ourselves apart from the evil and practices of nations that came before us who have failed and fallen, He will bless us as a nation and a people. If we continue with the course we are on now, as our cities and streets are filled with lawlessness, rebellion, civil unrest, hatred, and the rapid spread of evil across our land, we will perish.

The Presence of Evil

The abiding question “If God exists, why does He permit evil in the world?” is obvious. This is the world we have chosen for ourselves. In the beginning, the earth was a place of sublime perfection. Evil did not exist, and man lived upon this planet in peace and absolute joy. This was until man decided that he would no longer have God as the ruler of his life. From the moment Adam determined to disobey God and experience the knowledge of good and evil, he has chosen evil over good ever since.

The Lord has given us a period of time, during our life, to make our own decisions about what we will believe and how we will live. There is a time in which God will bring all the acts of men under His complete rulership. Those who have submitted themselves to God’s chosen King, Jesus Christ, will rule and reign with Him. Those who have refused to obey the gospel and receive Jesus as their King will be excluded from all of the good things God has planned for this earth and all human beings. ⁠[1]

A person who possesses true wisdom will hear these principles and conform themselves into what God has commanded. A truly intelligent person will understand that God is abundant in love, exercising great kindness and mercy. He is also just, and He will punish all sin and rebellion. ⁠[2] We know these things are true because He has declared these standards to us throughout 3,500 years of scripture, which He has preserved for us to the present day.

A secondary answer to the question of evil’s presence in this world is the fact that satan is described as a “ruler” of this world. He draws all those who will not receive Jesus, to receive him instead. Those who are not serving Jesus are described by God as serving the devil.

For you are the children of your father the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does. He was a murderer from the beginning. He has always hated the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, it is consistent with his character; for he is a liar and the father of lies .[ 3]

Jesus said that satan is “ the ruler ” of this world:

Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.[ 4]

Paul said that satan is the god of this world:

Whose minds the god of this world has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.[ 5]

When Jesus died and was raised to life on the third day, He won the right to redeem the earth and be her rightful ruler. This rulership will not take place until after the seven-year Tribulation, when Jesus returns with His church. At that time, the Lord will set up a kingdom of righteousness on the whole earth for one thousand years. Until that time, satan has been permitted a limited rulership. When we see suffering and evil, we should remember that it is the devil who is responsible for much of the catastrophes and suffering people experience on the earth. Those who are not in a personal relationship with God remain under the control of the devil, and they are guaranteed no protection by God.

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do .[ 6]

Only those who have come into the family of God, through a new relationship with Jesus Christ, are guaranteed protection by God against the devil. Though the Lord does allow satan some limited access into the lives of those who love God, He will not allow satan to destroy anyone who has given their entire heart to Jesus.

We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him. We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one.[ 7]

If you would like to see what the earth will be like when the Lord rules over the lives of men, see the chapter: Establish a Kingdom . When Jesus rules the world from Jerusalem, the earth will be at peace, and no one will hurt or kill. This will be an absolute dominion in which no opposition to Jesus’ righteous authority will be permitted. The Lord will rule under a Theocracy, where co-rulership is determined by the faithfulness of those who have served Jesus before the Rapture occurs. People who have been faithful over a little , during the time preceding Jesus’ return to earth, will be given greater authority during the Millennium, when His kingdom begins.

And he said to him, “Well done, good servant; because you were faithful in a very little, have authority over ten cities. ”[ 8]

This kingdom will restore the earth to its former glory of complete righteousness, where there will be no suffering, pain, or death.

Why Bad Things Happen:

Often, people who do not understand God question how He can allow so much suffering in the world, or permit natural disasters and accidents to take so many lives. What we should consider is that most of the world has rejected God and His claim upon their lives. When bad things happen to people and they blame God, they really should blame themselves. It was the introduction of sin into the world after Adam’s rebellion, that caused the evil and suffering we see throughout history.

Adam had dominion over the earth in a perfect world. The moment he disobeyed God, he lost his dominion of the world to satan. Since that time, the whole world has remained under the dominion of satan. This is why the world is filled with evil, sin, suffering, and death: satan, who is the god of this world , has blinded the minds of those who don’t believe.[ 19]

When a Nation Forgets God

One of the stunning developments that has gone largely unnoticed in the secular world is the massive movement away from faith in God and the Bible. Today the United States is no longer a nation that contains a majority of people who believe in and follow Jesus Christ. After decades of secular humanism in our colleges and universities, the resulting graduates, who now permeate American society, no longer have the Christian faith of our forefathers.

This is seen most clearly in the rapid changes that have taken place in America since 1962.

The Constitution of the United States guarantees freedom for all people, irrespective of who a person is or what they believe. The Constitution does not provide protection for perversion or those who act in ways that are in opposition to the laws of nature.

In a secular society where the citizens of a nation do not believe in God, the normalization of immorality are perfectly legitimate. If, however, a nation is founded upon the belief that God has called its people to honor Him and live according to a righteous standard that is different from the rest of the world, a rise in immorality, the decay of religious belief, and the devaluing of human life, should not take place.

The History of the United States, Proves That A Moral People Was The Goal of the Founders

Notice the specific language of the opening text from the Declaration of Independence:

“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. ”

In this one sentence, the founding fathers forcefully declared why they must separate themselves from Great Britain.

“ The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God ”

These eight words expressed a complete manner of Law and of life.

This statement in our founding document declares an agenda, a widespread movement that has specific beliefs. The source for this statement was “ Blackstone’s Commentary on the Law .” Blackstone’s Commentary was the law book used for many years before the American Revolution took place. Blackstone’s was the primary text book in law schools all over the world until 1920.[ 20]

Bar exams were taken from this book. The Supreme Court has quoted from Blackstone’s several times in its opinions. Blackstone’s Commentary on the Law was considered as the final authority regarding all issues of human law.

The Bible As The Basis For All Human Laws

Blackstone’s gives us the meaning of these eight words that we find in the Declaration of Independence:

“ Man considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely and dependent being.

And consequently, as a man depends absolutely upon his maker for everything, it is necessary that in all points conform to his makers will, this will of his maker is called the Law of Nature.

This law of nature being co-equal with mankind and dictated by God Himself, is of course superior to any other. It is binding to all the globe, all countries and at all times. No human laws are of any validity if contrary to this. This then is the Law of Nature, it is the law of God expressed through His creation.

If our reason were always clear and perfect, the task would be pleasant and easy. We would need no other guide but the law of nature. Every man now finds the contrary in his own experience, we find that our reason is corrupt and our understanding is full of ignorance and error. This has given manifold occasion for the benign interposition of divine providence which has been pleased at sundry times and diverse manners to discover and enforce His laws by an immediate and direct revelation. The Doctrines thus delivered, we call the revealed or the divine law and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures.

The Scriptures are the laws of the God who created Nature. The men who framed the Constitution of the United States took their direction for the laws of America from these basic principles.

Upon these two foundations—the laws of nature and the law of revelation—depend all of human laws. This is to say, that no human laws can be allowed to contradict the laws of nature.” ⁠[21]

This means that the framers of the Constitution and the men who signed the Declaration of Independence believed that all of our laws in the United States of America came from God and from His Word, as found in the Bible. The Founders of the United States of America believed that man does not have the right nor the capacity to institute any other laws outside of God’s law.

This legal phrase in Blackstone’s commentary on the law (the laws of nature’s God) explains the entire thought process behind why the United States of America was founded from the beginning.

A Secular Nation?

It is a common error amongst those who are uninformed, that the United States was founded as a secular nation. In fact, when we examine the hundreds of thousands of founding documents for the nation, we find that the entire purpose for our break with Britain was to become a Christian nation, under the God of the Bible.

King George III of Britain had declared that when he spoke, it was with the voice of God. It was with this belief that he felt that Britain had the right to dictate to the people of the new land of America, that their obedience was to the king of England and his laws only.

The motto of the American Revolution declared that they would have “No King but King Jesus.” Benjamin Franklin frequently stated during the revolution against Britain: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

The entire purpose of our war with Britain and the seeking of our independence was to secure laws for our nation based upon the laws of God, and to exist as people who are governed according to the dictates of the Bible. Notice the specific text in the introduction to the Declaration of Independence:

“ When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, 1. the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that 2. all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 3. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That 4. whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

• The basis of law for the United States is “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
• These laws are created for all men, and come to us from God as our Creator.
• In order to institute these laws that come from God, government is established.
• When any government becomes destructive in not following the laws of God, the people have the right to abolish that government and start a new government.

The purpose of this Declaration of Independence was necessitated because of the actions of the king of England, who said that he was acting in the place of God and had the right to institute laws himself. The war that took place between the newly-formed nation of America, and Britain, was to establish a new government based upon the laws of God, and not those of a king nor any man.

The framers of the Declaration of Independence stated that our rights, which would be a part of the new nation they were founding, came to all men by their “Creator.” Further stating, these rights are “self-evident.” These men believed that the God of the Bible exists and He is the source of all creation. They believed that the entitlement of liberty and freedom from government oppression and tyranny were rights bestowed to the citizens of America by God. They declared that this fact is self-evident—meaning that God’s existence and His intention to make men free is clear, obvious, and manifested by the existence of the universe itself. It was because they believed in the God of the Bible, that they took the laws of America from the laws of nature and nature’s God.

It really could not be any clearer than has already been stated in the most famous of all American founding documents—The Declaration of Independence. The founding fathers were primarily Christian men, who believed in God and were seeking to found a nation that could enjoy the freedoms God intended for all people. For this reason, the laws that make up the Constitution came from the basic principles of God’s law, as found in the Bible. If we examine the laws God has declared for mankind, we see that the laws of the United States closely parallel what God has ordained for all people.

There are thousands of other documents from the founding fathers that further define the purpose for our nation’s original purpose. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence is the most familiar language that many people have seen for themselves. If we just read the text of this document and let their words define, for themselves, the purpose for this declaration, it is clear that the United States of America was founded upon Christian principles, with its laws coming from the Bible—the laws of God.

“ I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as satisfied that it is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament.” ⁠[22]   ~Benjamin Rush, Signer of the Declaration of Independence.

“In the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Savior. The Declaration of Independence laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” ⁠[23] ~John Quincy Adams, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

The United States was founded upon the belief that God has called us as a nation and that our liberty was given to us from God. If we remove our conviction that God is the source of our nation, and begin to act in ways that are contrary to His laws, we will experience His wrath.

[C]an the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? – that they are not to be violated but with His wrath? ⁠[24] ~Thomas Jefferson

To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. All efforts made to destroy the foundations of our Holy Religion ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation… in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom… Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government – and all the blessings which flow from them – must fall with them. ⁠[25] ~Jedidiah Morse

“ If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under .” ⁠[26] ~Ronald Reagan

The Bible is clear that no nation exists apart from the sovereignty of God and no people may remain free unless they believe in and honor God.

… The Most High rules in the kingdom of men, Gives it to whomever He will, And sets over it the lowest of men .’[ 27]

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.[ 28]

When Israel abandoned God, over the process of 490 years, they slowly saw the effects of their abandonment in their nation. The enemies of Israel began to attack their cities. The financial prosperity of the nation declined. Lawlessness increased, and people began to do what was right in their own eyes rather than what God said was right.

As a result, the nation began to decline; and eventually, God removed His total protection over the nation, resulting in Israel and Judah being taken captive by their enemies.

In 605 B.C., the Babylonians defeated the Egyptians during the Battle of Carchemish. This military conquest ended the domination of Palestine by Neco, Pharaoh of Egypt. This event was controlled by the Lord as a part of His sovereign power over the governments of men.

Judah, in her abandonment of God, was ready for judgement. Through the prophet Jeremiah, we see that God had prepared King Nebuchadnezzar as His instrument to exact judgment against His people.

And afterward,” says the LORD, “I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, his servants and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence and the sword and the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those who seek their life; and he shall strike them with the edge of the sword. He shall not spare them, or have pity or mercy.”[ 29]

When God calls a nation into existence, He also controls whether or not they remain in existence. Just as Israel abandoned God and eventually lost their nation, so also will the United States lose her right to exist if she abandons God.

A Timeline Illustrating The Moral Decline Of The United States

Our abandonment of God, as a nation and people, began in 1962 when prayer in school came under criticism.[ 30]

1962: The end of school prayer. In Engle v. Vitale, the Supreme Court reinterpreted the First Amendment’s protection of religion as a right of free exercise because of complaints from parents. The following is the prayer that parents objected to: “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country. Amen.”[ 31]

1962: A change in the national abortion law is advocated by the American Law Institute.

1963: The national debt for the United States is $306 Million dollars, the GDP is $645 million. In 2015, the national debt will grow to over 18 Trillion dollars.

1963: A Lower Court rules that the Bible is no longer allowed in public schools. In Abington v. Schempp, the court determined that no school board or state law had the right to require students to read Bible scriptures at the start of the school day.

1963: The Supreme Court rules that prayer is not allowed in school. Madalyn Murray O’Hair founds “The American Atheists.” In Murray v. Curlett, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 in favor of abolishing school prayer and Bible reading in public schools.

1965: Homosexual activists picket the White House and Pentagon. In San Francisco, gay activists conduct the first gay drag ball. The first gay community center opens in San Francisco.

1965: Griswold v. Connecticut; the U.S. Supreme Court established that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed homosexuals the right to privacy, though this right is not explicitly stated in the Constitution.

1966: Time Magazine declares that “God is Dead.”

1967: The first gay campus group is formed at Columbia College in New York City.

1967: The Summer of Love begins in San Francisco. One hundred thousand young people celebrate free love with no regard for the consequences.

1967: The addition of sociology and social psychology curriculum is placed into public schools.

1969: A Gallup poll reveals that 68% of Americans believe that premarital sex is wrong and 21% said that it is not. In 2009, forty years later, 32% stated that premarital sex is wrong and 60% declared that it is socially acceptable.

1972: The topic of abortion is discussed on the sitcom, Maude; Beatrice Arthur has an abortion.

1973: Feminist leader Gloria Steinem declares, “By the year 2000 we will, I hope, raise our children to believe in human potential, not God.”

1973: In the Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, abortion becomes legal in all states.

1976: Parents and spouses are no longer included in the decision to have a baby aborted. Any teenager may have an abortion without the knowledge or approval of their parents. A wife may abort her baby without her husband’s approval.

1976: The Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds to pay for abortions.

1977: The Hyde Amendment is amended due to objections from the ACLU, to include pregnancies that were the result of rape or incest.

1980: In Stone v. Graham, the Ten Commandments are no longer allowed in any state or federal building.

1981: Arkansas passes a law requiring that Creation must be taught alongside Evolution in public schools. The Supreme Court determines that this law is unconstitutional. Evolution only is taught in public schools.

1984: The first domestic partner law is enacted in Berkeley, California.

1986: California grants the first lesbian couple joint adoption rights.

1986: All restrictions on abortion are removed in a majority decision: Thornburg v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

We kill millions of unborn children each year for the sake of convenience or as an irresponsible form of birth control. 32 Only one in ten of all abortions performed worldwide are done to save the life of the mother or in the case of a rape. 33 The other nine children are murdered for the sake of convenience because of the selfishness and sinful acts of human beings.

1987: The Gay and Lesbian Caucus of the National Education Association is established.

1987: The life of Jesus Christ is mocked in the movie, “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Martin Scorsese received an Oscar nomination for Best Director.

1989: Seinfeld airs for the first time on NBC. This television production has a dramatic impact on American culture. The primary theme of Seinfeld defines human life as meaningless or irrational. The characters on Seinfeld have little regard for issues of morality.

1989: Denmark is the first country to legalize same-sex marriage.

1991: The first lesbian kiss is seen on network television.

1992: The Supreme Court rules that a graduation prayer violates the “Establishment Clause” of the Constitution. This was that prayer: “O God, we are grateful for the learning which we have celebrated on this joyous commencement … we give thanks to you, Lord, for keeping us alive, sustaining us and allowing us to reach this special, happy occasion.”

1993: The first laws are enacted that protect LGBT students in public schools.

1994: The first school prom for gays is held in Los Angeles.

1995: National Police in Manila, Philippines discover a plot by Ramzi Yousef to blow up a dozen U.S. airliners while they were flying over the Pacific.

1995 : April 19, Timothy McVeigh kills 168 people and wounds 680, by use of a domestic terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

1997: Ellen DeGeneres “comes out” publicly as a lesbian in an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She later appears on the cover of Time magazine.

1997: Bill Clinton is the first U.S. President to address a gay organization during the Human Rights Campaign.

1997: New Hampshire and Maine enact gay rights laws.

1998: Will and Grace premiers on NBC, which features a homosexual with frequent references to gay sex.

1998: Usama Bin Laden issues a “fatwa,” commanding every Muslim to kill Americans, both military and civilian, wherever they can be found in the world.

1998: America’s President, Bill Clinton, has sex in the oval office with Monica Lewinski. Many other affairs are discovered, yet he leaves office with a 65% approval rating.

1999: April 20, Columbine High School Massacre. Two high-school seniors—Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris—kill 12 students, 1 teacher, and themselves; 21 are injured.

2000: Vermont passes HB847, legalizing Civil Unions for same-sex couples.

2000: AL Qaeda uses a motorboat in Yemen, filled with explosives, to blow a hole on the side of the USS Cole, killing seventeen American sailors.

2000: George W. Bush is elected the forty-third President of the United States, and takes office in January 2001.

2001: Al Qaeda terrorists attack the Twin Towers in New York City, killing 2,977 Americans, by hijacking four fully-fueled jetliners. The United States government launches the “War on Terror.”

2003: Lawrence v. Texas, the Supreme Court voids state sod­omy laws by extension and invalidates sodomy laws in thirteen other states, making same-sex activity legal in every U.S. state and territory.

2003: Renee Doyle, President of “EdWatch”; The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH); and the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that “religious traditionalists are mentally disturbed.”

2005: Hurricane Katrina kills 1,833 people, in one of the most deadly storms in U.S. History.

2006: Richard Dawkins, “atheist with a mission,” attacks Christianity in his book, The God Delusion.

2008: Barack Hussein Obama is elected the first black President of the United States. He was the most liberal member of Congress in the history of the United States.

2008: The National debt of the United States is $10 billion, 25 million; the GDP is $14 billion, 843 million.

2009: A Gallup poll reveals that just 32% say premarital sex is wrong and 60% say that sexual relationships between consenting adults—married or not—is acceptable.

2009: Newsweek magazine announced “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” on its cover. Newsweek, April 14, “The End of Christian America.”

2009: A Rasmussen report describes 88% of Americans as believers in the person known in history as Jesus Christ. 82% believe Jesus Christ was the Son of God who came to earth and died for our sins. 79% percent of Americans believe that Jesus rose from the dead. Despite claims to follow Christ, Christians do not go to the voting booths and support the issues that those who believe the Bible should endorse.

2010: A record of 44.7 million people receive food stamps.

2011: National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy reports that 80 percent of evangelical Christians, from the age of twenty to twenty-nine, have had premarital sex.

2012: Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, endorses same-sex marriage in an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.

2012: Barack Obama becomes the first president in United States history to openly support all forms of homosexuality, gay rights, gay adoptions, and civil unions.

2012: Democrats remove God from their Party platform as well as all references to God during the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

2012: July 20, a mass shooting by James Holmes occurred inside the Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, killing 12 people and injuring 70 others.

2012: Hurricane Sandy is the second most costly storm in U.S. History, at 68 billion dollars; 285 people died.

2012: December 14, Adam Lanza kills 20 school children and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. History.

2014: The national debt grew beyond $18 trillion on December 15, 2014. The nation’s debt, now greater than the economic output of the entire country.

2015: June 26, The Supreme Court of the United States makes same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states.

2015 : Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S., the Supreme Court ruled that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

2015: October 1, Christopher Harper-Mercer, a 26-year old who was enrolled at the school, fatally shot an assistant professor and 9 students in a classroom; 9 others were also injured. After the shooter was wounded, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. This was the deadliest in Oregon’s modern history.

2015: December 2, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, a married couple living in the city of Redlands, killed 16 people and seriously injured 19 in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. Farook was an American-born U.S. Citizen. Malik was a Pakistani-born lawful permanent resident of the United States.

2015: June 28, The national debt of the United States is 18 trillion, 284 billion. The GDP is 16.77 trillion.

In the year 2015, there were 325 deaths by mass shooting. Source: Gun Violence Archives.[ 34]

It is important to notice the increasing natural disasters, national debt, and attacks by enemies—foreign and domestic—as America’s morality, corruption, and disregard for God increases.

2016 : June 12, Omar Mateen killed 49 people and injures 58 members of the LGBT community at the Pulse nightclub.

2016 : November, Donald Trump elected president of the United States, Mike Pence, vice president.

2016 : Dozens killed in Oakland Warehouse Fire.

2017 : Fort Lauderdale airport shooting. Hollywood International Airport in Broward County, Florida, on January 6, 2017, near the baggage claim in Terminal 2. Five people were killed, six others injured. Approximately 36 people were injured during the resulting panic.

2017 : January, Donald Trump becomes the 45th President of the United States, Mike Pence, Vice President. Opposition Democrat party begins investigation into Trump Collusion with Russia, later proven a hoax, fabricated by people seeking to remove President Trump from office.

2017 : May, President Trump fires FBI director James Comey, starting the Mueller investigation.

2017: Relations between the U.S. and the U.N. and North Korea strain after the country tested missiles in various places.

2017 : August, Hurricane Harvey makes landfall in the United States, flooding broad swaths of Texas and Louisiana and causing tens of billions of dollars of damage, making it one of the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history.

2017 : September, Hurricane Irma makes landfall in Florida and causes tens of billions of dollars of damage. Irma also wrecks the Caribbean Islands.

2017 : September, Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico as a Category 5 hurricane, killing hundreds and knocking out the island’s power.

2017:   October, A gunman opens fire at a Las Vegas Strip during an outdoor concert, killing 58 people and injuring 546. The deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history.

2017 : November, Gunman Devin Patrick Kelley killed 26 people and wounded 20 others before killing himself. This was the deadliest mass shooting in Texas history and the deadliest shooting in an American place of worship in modern history.

2018 : February, A gunman kills 17 people and injures 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

2018 : January, transgender individuals are allowed to join the United States military.

2019 : January, Pete Buttigieg becomes the first openly gay presidential candidate from a major political party.

2019 : January 25th, the longest government shutdown in American History (December 22nd, 2018 -January 25th, 2019), 35 days.

2019 : January 30th, a large portion of the United States struck by a polar vortex. The city of Chicago reached a record low temperature of 27 degrees below zero. This continued for fifty-two straight hours.

2019 : February 22nd, Singer R. Kelly charged with ten counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse for incidents taking place from 1998.

2019 : April 27, A gunman kills one and injures three in a California Synagogue. The suspect is white supremacist John Timothy Earnest, who was 19 years old at the time.

2019 : May 31, a city employee for Virginia Beach entered a municipal building with a gun and kills 12 people.

2019 : June 14, one person died and two more were injured after a gunman entered a Costco in Southern California.

2019 : August 3, 23 people are killed and another 23 are injured in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

2019 : August 4,   A gunman opened fire on a bar in Dayton, Ohio,   killing nine people and injuring another 27.

2019 : August 10, Financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is found dead in his prison cell under mysterious circumstances. His death was declared a suicide by hanging, although the ruling is widely disputed.

2019 : September 24, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announces the House of Representatives would begin an impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump. After 48 million dollars, and nearly two years, Trump was not found to have violated any laws.

2019 : December 18, The U.S. House of Representatives impeaches President Donald J. Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors, though no evidence was ever presented by the Democrat members that any crime had been committed.

2020 : January 21, — The first patient in the United States is diagnosed with coronavirus.

2020 : February 5, by a majority vote, the United States Senate acquits Donald Trump of charges related to the Trump-Ukraine scandal.

2020 : March 11, the Coronavirus is declared a global pandemic, leading to a global shut-down.

2020 : February 26, six people are killed in a mass shooting in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before the perpetrator killed himself.

2020 : May 25, George Floyd, an African-American man living in Minneapolis, was killed during an arrest. Subsequently, protests and riots ensued.

2020 : June 15 — In the case Bostock v. Clayton County, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited employment discrimination against LGBTQ people, on the grounds that any such discrimination must necessarily be based on the sex of the victim, which is expressly prohibited by the statute

2020 : October 2, — President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are diagnosed with COVID-19. The President is taken to Walter Reed hospital on Friday, October 2, 2020. President Trump fully recovers in just three days, leaves the Walter Reed Hospital on Monday, October 5, 2020. The President was treated with eight drugs: Dexamethasone, Remdesivir, Regeneron, Zinc, Vitamin D, Famotidine , Aspirin.

2020 :   November 02, 2020, 01:58 GMT: United States Coronavirus Cases: 46,809,252, Deaths: 1,205,194, Recovered: 33,749,374.[ 36]

2020 : Presidential Election, November 3, 2020 (Update posted after the results).

If we follow the chain of events from 1962 to 2020, we see a gradual departure from conservative moral values upon which the United States was founded, to a progressive political and moral set of values. This change precipitated a marked decline in the quality of life for all Americans, and began a gradual increase in violent gun crimes, increase in immorality, and led to a global pandemic that affected American much greater than any other nation.

Why would we expect God to protect our nation from terrorists, violence, and a global pandemic when we have repeatedly stated that we don’t want Him in our public schools, our government, and our personal lives?

Our children cannot pray in school. The Ten Commandments have been systematically removed from all government buildings. We have killed more than 62 million unborn since 1973, for the sake of convenience. We accept that people may live perverse lifestyles that deteriorate and diminish the institution of marriage, which was created by God, in order to be tolerant and politically correct. We say nothing, do nothing, because we don’t want to be seen as hateful or prejudiced.

The Parallel Between Israel and America

There is a stunning similarity between the birth of Israel as a nation and the birth of the United States. It is certain that had the United States not come into being and become a strong supporter of Israel before 1948, Israel would not have been able to come back into their own land and become a nation once again after 2,000 years.

Israel and the United States were set apart by the Lord to be His special people. Israel was chosen to be the line of descendants who would bring the Messiah into the world. America was chosen by God to be the people who would spread the good news of the Messiah’s arrival and offer of salvation to all people.

It is interesting that after the death of King David, the nation of Israel was split into two nations: Israel in the south; and Judah in the north, including the city of Jerusalem.

After only 200 years the nation of Israel was divided, and fell to foreign enemies. Judah followed 290 years later, when Nebuchadnezzar took the nation captive.

The United States is following the precise same course of Israel, and we have only been in existence for 244 years.

40 is the number of judgement. 6 is the number of man, incomplete, lacking. 40 X 6 = 240

The United States, in entering its 245th year as a nation:

Can the United States be exempt from God’s judgment, as we have now continued in the same direction that Israel and Judah have followed?

With the Supreme Court decision to make gay marriage the law of the land, it is certain that America’s future is on course for destruction. God is the author of marriage. As such, only He has the right to set the boundaries for marriage, not the governments of men.

And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man. And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.”   Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh . ~Genesis 2:21

God created and ordained marriage between a man and a woman. Man and human society may have changed over the years, but God has not changed. When man alters God’s law and allows that which He has defined as an “abomination,” there will be consequences.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination .[ 37]

What Jesus Said About Same-Sex Relationships

An Intercessor is Needed

Would God allow a nation He called into existence to be exempt from His judgement if that nation abandons Him? As America has determined that God is no longer a part of our nation’s conscience, will He continue to allow our country to exist as a free and prosperous people? As we have endorsed and allowed the corrupt social morals that He has said His people should not participate in, will He continue to protect us from foreign enemies?

Israel was called into existence under similar circumstances to those of the United States. She was protected, and prospered, because her people loved and honored God. When the nation abandoned the Lord, He gave the nation and people of Israel over to their enemies. The Lord removed His hand of protection and caused the nation to suffer economic collapse, and brought in a foreign nation to take away their freedom and their country.

Our nation and people have entered into a perilous time of history. If we do not return to God, it is certain that we will cease to exist as a nation. We need an Intercessor —someone who will bring us, as a nation, to the very throne of God and seek Him on our behalf. We need national repentance from our sins, as a nation, and a return to the ideals of righteousness. When any nation turns from God and begins to live according to the dictates of their own heart, it is just a matter of time before that nation collapses.

If we examine the early history of America, we see that our nation came into existence because our people wanted to worship God without interference from government. We wanted to live with the ability to build lives, and prosper, without the tyranny of a king. The men who are responsible for the beginning of this nation understood that God had allowed us to exist and would continue to bless our nation, only if we continue to honor the Lord. This was true of Israel, and it is true of every nation that has existed on the earth.

We pray for America and our people, that we will return to our God and the spiritual heritage we received from men who birthed this nation as a moral and righteous nation.

[a]  Jim Nelson Black Ph.D,  When Nations Die, page 187. Jim Nelson Black  is senior analyst with Sentinel Research Associates and former executive director of The Wilberrforce Forum in Washington, DC.

1 Matthew 25:34 Then the King will say to those on His right hand, “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

Matthew 25:41 “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, ‘Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels:

2 2 Timothy 4:1 I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at His appearing and His kingdom:

3 John 8:44 44 (NLT)

4 John 12:31

5 2 Corinthians 4:4

6 John 8:42-44

7 1 John 5:18-19

8 Luke 19:17

9 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2013

10 1Corinthians 15:21 For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.

1Corinthians 15:22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

1Corinthians 15:45-47 And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual. 47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.

11 — 1 Timothy 2:5

12 Isaiah 53:12e

13 Luke 23:34

14 John 17:9

15 John 17:12-21

16 Hebrews 7:24-25 (RCR)

17 Hebrews 4:15-16

18 1 John 5:19

19 2 Corinthians 4:4 (NLT)

20 A Summary of the Constitutional Law of England: being an Abridgment of Blackstone’s Commentaries . By the Rev. Dr. J. Trusler, 1788, 12mo ; 228 and index. “Everything in Blackstone necessary for the general reader is here comprised … and nothing omitted but what is peculiarly adapted to the profession of a lawyer.” (Advertisement.)

The Commentaries of Sir W. Blackstone, Knight, on the Law and Constitution of England, carefully abridged in a new manner, and continued down to the present time , by Wm. Curry 1796, 8vo; viii. contents, 566. 2nd edit. 1809. Consists of selections of the most essential parts in the words of the author.

Commentaries on the Law of England, principally in the order, and comprising the whole substance, of Commentaries of Sir W. Blackstone . [By J. Addams], 1819, 8vo.

An Abridgment of Blackstone’s Commentaries . By  John Gifford  [pseud. i. e. Edward Foss], 1821, 8vo. See No. VI.

An Abridgment of Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England, in a series of Letters from a Father to his Daughter, chiefly intended for the Use and Advancement of Female Education . By a Barrister at Law, F.R., F.A., and F.L.S. [Sir E. E. Wilmot], 1822, 12mo; viii. 304.

21 Because the acts committed between same sex couples are not natural (for the purpose of their bodies), according the what God defines as “Natural,” our nation should not endorse the marriage of same-sex couples.

22 Benjamin Rush, Letters of Benjamin Rush, L. H. Butterfield, editor (Princeton, New Jersey: American Philosophical Society, 1951), Vol. I, p. 475, to Elias Boudinot on July 9, 1788. Signer of the Declaration of Independence; surgeon general of the continental army; ratifier of the u. s. constitution; “father of american medicine”; treasurer of the u. s. mint; “father of public schools under the constitution”

23 John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of the Town of Newburyport at Their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1837 (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), pp. 5-6

24 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia: Matthew Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, pp. 236-237

25 Jedidiah Morse, A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America, Delivered at Charlestown, April 25, 1799, The Day of the National Fast (MA: Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1799), p.9

26 Ronald Reagan, “Remarks at a Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas,” The American Presidency Project, August 23, 1984 (at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=40282 )

27 Daniel 4:17

28 Romans 13:1

29 Jeremiah 21:7

30 List based in part from the work of David Fiorazo, (2013-11-11). ERADICATE – Blotting Out God in America (Kindle Locations 6075-6078). LIFE SENTENCE Publishing. Kindle Edition.

31 Engel v Vitale

32 A 2004 study by the Guttmacher Institute reported that women listed the following amongst their reasons for choosing to have an abortion:

74% Having a baby would dramatically change my life

73% Cannot afford a baby now

48% Do not want to be a single mother or having relationship problems

38% Have completed my childbearing

32% Not ready for a(nother) child

25% Do not want people to know I had sex or got pregnant

22% Do not feel mature enough to raise a(nother) child

14% Husband or partner wants me to have an abortion

13% Possible problems affecting the health of the fetus

12% Concerns about my health

6% Parents want me to have an abortion

1% Was a victim of rape

less than 0.5% Became pregnant as a result of incest.

33 A detailed study from 27 different nations, including the United States:

25.9% Want to postpone childbearing.

21.3% Cannot afford a baby

14.1% Has relationship problem or partner does not want pregnancy

12.2% Too young; parent(s) or other(s) object to pregnancy

10.8% Having a child will disrupt education or job

7.9% Want no (more) children

3.3% Risk to fetal health

2.8% Risk to maternal health

Total: 98.3% of all abortions are for convenience or as a method of birth control.

1.Bankole, Akinrinola; Singh, Susheela; Haas, Taylor (1998). “Reasons Why Women Have Induced Abortions: Evidence from 27 Countries”. International Family Planning Perspectives 24 (3): 117–27, 152.

2.Finer, Lawrence B.; Frohwirth, Lori F.; Dauphinee, Lindsay A.; Singh, Susheela; Moore, Ann M. (September 2005). “Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives”. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health 37 (3): 110–8.

34 Source: http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/query/2bde9dc6-f32c-46b2-b091-cefb1073fae5/map

35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_history_ (2010%E2%80%93present)

36 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

37 Leviticus 18:22

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Categories: America Abandons God , America: a Christian Nation , First Amendment , Freedom of Religion , Freedom of Speech , Gay Marriage and Same-Sex , Las Vegas Massacre , Natural Disasters and God , Parkland Florida Shooting , Prayer For America , Robert Clifton Robinson , Second Amendment , Second Amendment , Sexual Immorality , The Founding Fathers , The Founding of America , The Las Vegas Massacre , The U.S. Constitution , Wall of Separation

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How America Got Mean

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations are growing up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world.

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This article was featured in One Story to Read Today, a newsletter in which our editors recommend a single must-read from The Atlantic , Monday through Friday. Sign up for it here.

O ver the past eight years or so, I’ve been obsessed with two questions. The first is: Why have Americans become so sad? The rising rates of depression have been well publicized, as have the rising deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide. But other statistics are similarly troubling. The percentage of people who say they don’t have close friends has increased fourfold since 1990. The share of Americans ages 25 to 54 who weren’t married or living with a romantic partner went up to 38 percent in 2019, from 29 percent in 1990. A record-high 25 percent of 40-year-old Americans have never married . More than half of all Americans say that no one knows them well. The percentage of high-school students who report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” shot up from 26 percent in 2009 to 44 percent in 2021.

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My second, related question is: Why have Americans become so mean? I was recently talking with a restaurant owner who said that he has to eject a customer from his restaurant for rude or cruel behavior once a week—something that never used to happen. A head nurse at a hospital told me that many on her staff are leaving the profession because patients have become so abusive. At the far extreme of meanness, hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently. Same with gun sales. Social trust is plummeting. In 2000, two-thirds of American households gave to charity; in 2018, fewer than half did. The words that define our age reek of menace: conspiracy , polarization , mass shootings , trauma , safe spaces .

We’re enmeshed in some sort of emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis, and it undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy. What is going on?

Over the past few years, different social observers have offered different stories to explain the rise of hatred, anxiety, and despair.

The technology story: Social media is driving us all crazy.

The sociology story: We’ve stopped participating in community organizations and are more isolated.

The demography story: America, long a white-dominated nation, is becoming a much more diverse country, a change that has millions of white Americans in a panic.

The economy story: High levels of economic inequality and insecurity have left people afraid, alienated, and pessimistic.

I agree, to an extent, with all of these stories, but I don’t think any of them is the deepest one. Sure, social media has bad effects, but it is everywhere around the globe—and the mental-health crisis is not. Also, the rise of despair and hatred has engulfed a lot of people who are not on social media. Economic inequality is real, but it doesn’t fully explain this level of social and emotional breakdown. The sociologists are right that we’re more isolated, but why? What values lead us to choose lifestyles that make us lonely and miserable?

The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. Our society has become one in which people feel licensed to give their selfishness free rein. The story I’m going to tell is about morals. In a healthy society, a web of institutions—families, schools, religious groups, community organizations, and workplaces—helps form people into kind and responsible citizens, the sort of people who show up for one another. We live in a society that’s terrible at moral formation.

Read: American shoppers are a nightmare

Moral formation, as I will use that stuffy-sounding term here, comprises three things. First, helping people learn to restrain their selfishness. How do we keep our evolutionarily conferred egotism under control? Second, teaching basic social and ethical skills. How do you welcome a neighbor into your community? How do you disagree with someone constructively? And third, helping people find a purpose in life. Morally formative institutions hold up a set of ideals. They provide practical pathways toward a meaningful existence: Here’s how you can dedicate your life to serving the poor, or protecting the nation, or loving your neighbor.

For a large part of its history, America was awash in morally formative institutions. Its Founding Fathers had a low view of human nature, and designed the Constitution to mitigate it (even while validating that low view of human nature by producing a document rife with racism and sexism). “Men I find to be a Sort of Beings very badly constructed,” Benjamin Franklin wrote , “as they are generally more easily provok’d than reconcil’d, more dispos’d to do Mischief to each other than to make Reparation, and much more easily deceiv’d than undeceiv’d.”

If such flawed, self-centered creatures were going to govern themselves and be decent neighbors to one another, they were going to need some training. For roughly 150 years after the founding, Americans were obsessed with moral education. In 1788, Noah Webster wrote, “The virtues of men are of more consequence to society than their abilities  ; and for this reason, the heart should be cultivated with more assiduity than the head .” The progressive philosopher John Dewey wrote in 1909 that schools teach morality “every moment of the day, five days a week.” Hollis Frissell, the president of the Hampton Institute, an early school for African Americans, declared, “Character is the main object of education.” As late as 1951, a commission organized by the National Education Association, one of the main teachers’ unions, stated that “an unremitting concern for moral and spiritual values continues to be a top priority for education.”

The moral-education programs that stippled the cultural landscape during this long stretch of history came from all points on the political and religious spectrums. School textbooks such as McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers not only taught students how to read and write; they taught etiquette, and featured stories designed to illustrate right and wrong behavior. In the 1920s, W. E. B. Du Bois’s magazine for Black children , The Brownies’ Book , had a regular column called “The Judge,” which provided guidance to young readers on morals and manners. There were thriving school organizations with morally earnest names that sound quaint today—the Courtesy Club, the Thrift Club, the Knighthood of Youth.

Beyond the classroom lay a host of other groups: the YMCA; the Sunday-school movement; the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts; the settlement-house movement, which brought rich and poor together to serve the marginalized; Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which extended our moral concerns to include proper care for the natural world; professional organizations, which enforced ethical codes; unions and workplace associations, which, in addition to enhancing worker protections and paychecks, held up certain standards of working-class respectability. And of course, by the late 19th century, many Americans were members of churches or other religious communities. Mere religious faith doesn’t always make people morally good, but living in a community, orienting your heart toward some transcendent love, basing your value system on concern for the underserved—those things tend to.

Arthur C. Brooks: Make yourself happy—be kind

An educational approach with German roots that was adopted by Scandinavian societies in the mid-to-late 19th century had a wide influence on America. It was called Bildung , roughly meaning “spiritual formation.” As conceived by Wilhelm von Humboldt, the Bildung approach gave professors complete freedom to put moral development at the center of a university’s mission. In schools across Scandinavia, students studied literature and folk cultures to identify their own emotions, wounds, and weaknesses, in order to become the complex human beings that modern society required. Schools in the Bildung tradition also aimed to clarify the individual’s responsibilities to the wider world—family, friends, nation, humanity. Start with the soul and move outward.

The Bildung movement helped inspire the Great Books programs that popped up at places like Columbia and the University of Chicago. They were based on the conviction that reading the major works of world literature and thinking about them deeply would provide the keys to living a richer life. Meanwhile, discipline in the small proprieties of daily existence—dressing formally, even just to go shopping or to a ball game—was considered evidence of uprightness: proof that you were a person who could be counted on when the large challenges came.

Much of American moral education drew on an ethos expressed by the headmaster of the Stowe School, in England, who wrote in 1930 that the purpose of his institution was to turn out young men who were “acceptable at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck.” America’s National Institute for Moral Instruction was founded in 1911 and published a “Children’s Morality Code,” with 10 rules for right living. At the turn of the 20th century, Mount Holyoke College, an all-women’s institution, was an example of an intentionally thick moral community. When a young Frances Perkins was a student there, her Latin teacher detected a certain laziness in her. She forced Perkins to spend hours conjugating Latin verbs, to cultivate self-discipline. Perkins grew to appreciate this: “For the first time I became conscious of character.” The school also called upon women to follow morally ambitious paths. “Do what nobody else wants to do; go where nobody else wants to go,” the school’s founder implored. Holyoke launched women into lives of service in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. Perkins, who would become the first woman to serve in a presidential Cabinet (Franklin D. Roosevelt’s), was galvanized there.

Read: Students’ broken moral compasses

These various approaches to moral formation shared two premises. The first was that training the heart and body is more important than training the reasoning brain. Some moral skills can be taught the way academic subjects are imparted, through books and lectures. But we learn most virtues the way we learn crafts, through the repetition of many small habits and practices, all within a coherent moral culture—a community of common values, whose members aspire to earn one another’s respect.

The other guiding premise was that concepts like justice and right and wrong are not matters of personal taste: An objective moral order exists, and human beings are creatures who habitually sin against that order. This recognition was central, for example, to the way the civil-rights movement in the 1950s and early 1960s thought about character formation. “Instead of assured progress in wisdom and decency man faces the ever present possibility of swift relapse not merely to animalism but into such calculated cruelty as no other animal can practice,” Martin Luther King Jr. believed. Elsewhere, he wrote, “The force of sinfulness is so stubborn a characteristic of human nature that it can only be restrained when the social unit is armed with both moral and physical might.”

At their best, the civil-rights marchers in this prophetic tradition understood that they could become corrupted even while serving a noble cause. They could become self-righteous because their cause was just, hardened by hatred of their opponents, prideful as they asserted power. King’s strategy of nonviolence was an effort simultaneously to expose the sins of their oppressors and to restrain the sinful tendencies inherent in themselves. “What gave such widely compelling force to King’s leadership and oratory,” the historian George Marsden argues, “was his bedrock conviction that moral law was built into the universe.”

A couple of obvious things need to be said about this ethos of moral formation that dominated American life for so long. It prevailed alongside all sorts of hierarchies that we now rightly find abhorrent: whites superior to Blacks, men to women, Christians to Jews, straight people to gay people. And the emphasis on morality didn’t produce perfect people. Moral formation doesn’t succeed in making people angels—it tries to make them better than they otherwise might be.

Furthermore, we would never want to go back to the training methods that prevailed for so long, rooted in so many thou shall not s and so much shaming, and riddled with so much racism and sexism. Yet a wise accounting should acknowledge that emphasizing moral formation meant focusing on an important question—what is life for?—and teaching people how to bear up under inevitable difficulties. A culture invested in shaping character helped make people resilient by giving them ideals to cling to when times got hard. In some ways, the old approach to moral formation was, at least theoretically, egalitarian: If your status in the community was based on character and reputation, then a farmer could earn dignity as readily as a banker. This ethos came down hard on self-centeredness and narcissistic display. It offered practical guidance on how to be a good neighbor, a good friend.

And then it mostly went away.

The crucial pivot happened just after World War II, as people wrestled with the horrors of the 20th century. One group, personified by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, argued that recent events had exposed the prevalence of human depravity and the dangers, in particular, of tribalism, nationalism, and collective pride. This group wanted to double down on moral formation, with a greater emphasis on humility.

Another group, personified by Carl Rogers, a founder of humanistic psychology, focused on the problem of authority. The trouble with the 20th century, the members of this group argued, was that the existence of rigid power hierarchies led to oppression in many spheres of life. We need to liberate individuals from these authority structures, many contended. People are naturally good and can be trusted to do their own self-actualization.

A cluster of phenomenally successful books appeared in the decade after World War II, making the case that, as Rabbi Joshua Loth Liebman wrote in Peace of Mind (1946), “thou shalt not be afraid of thy hidden impulses.” People can trust the goodness inside. His book topped the New York Times best-seller list for 58 weeks. Dr. Spock’s first child-rearing manual was published the same year. That was followed by books like The Power of Positive Thinking (1952). According to this ethos, morality is not something that we develop in communities. It’s nurtured by connecting with our authentic self and finding our true inner voice. If people are naturally good, we don’t need moral formation; we just need to let people get in touch with themselves. Organization after organization got out of the moral-formation business and into the self-awareness business. By the mid‑1970s, for example, the Girl Scouts’ founding ethos of service to others had shifted: “How can you get more in touch with you ? What are you thinking? What are you feeling?” one Girl Scout handbook asked.

Schools began to abandon moral formation in the 1940s and ’50s, as the education historian B. Edward McClellan chronicles in Moral Education in America   : “By the 1960s deliberate moral education was in full-scale retreat” as educators “paid more attention to the SAT scores of their students, and middle-class parents scrambled to find schools that would give their children the best chances to qualify for elite colleges and universities.” The postwar period saw similar change at the college level, Anthony Kronman, a former dean of Yale Law School, has noted. The “research ideal” supplanted the earlier humanistic ideal of cultivating the whole student. As academics grew more specialized, Kronman has argued, the big questions—What is the meaning of life? How do you live a good life?—lost all purchase. Such questions became unprofessional for an academic to even ask.

Read: The benefits of character education

In sphere after sphere, people decided that moral reasoning was not really relevant. Psychology’s purview grew, especially in family and educational matters, its vocabulary framing “virtually all public discussion” of the moral life of children, James Davison Hunter, a prominent American scholar on character education, noted in 2000 . “For decades now, contributions from philosophers and theologians have been muted or nonexistent.” Psychology is a wonderful profession, but its goal is mental health, not moral growth.

From the start, some worried about this privatizing of morality. “If what is good, what is right, what is true is only what the individual ‘chooses’ to ‘invent,’ ” Walter Lippmann wrote in his 1955 collection, Essays in the Public Philosophy , “then we are outside the traditions of civility.” His book was hooted down by establishment figures such as the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.; the de-moralization of American culture was under way.

Over the course of the 20th century, words relating to morality appeared less and less frequently in the nation’s books: According to a 2012 paper, usage of a cluster of words related to being virtuous also declined significantly. Among them were bravery (which dropped by 65 percent), gratitude (58 percent), and humbleness (55 percent). For decades, researchers have asked incoming college students about their goals in life. In 1967, about 85 percent said they were strongly motivated to develop “a meaningful philosophy of life”; by 2000, only 42 percent said that . Being financially well off became the leading life goal; by 2015, 82 percent of students said wealth was their aim.

In a culture devoid of moral education, generations grow up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world. The Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith and a team of researchers asked young adults across the country in 2008 about their moral lives. One of their findings was that the interviewees had not given the subject of morality much thought. “I’ve never had to make a decision about what’s right and what’s wrong,” one young adult told the researchers. “My teachers avoid controversies like that like the plague,” many teenagers said.

The moral instincts that Smith observed in his sample fell into the pattern that the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre called “emotivism”: Whatever feels good to me is moral. “I would probably do what would make me happy” in any given situation , one of the interviewees declared. “Because it’s me in the long run.” As another put it, “If you’re okay with it morally, as long as you’re not getting caught, then it’s not really against your morals, is it?” Smith and his colleagues emphasized that the interviewees were not bad people but, because they were living “in morally very thin or spotty worlds,” they had never been given a moral vocabulary or learned moral skills.

Most of us who noticed the process of de-moralization as it was occurring thought a bland moral relativism and empty consumerism would be the result: You do you and I’ll do me. That’s not what happened.

“Moral communities are fragile things, hard to build and easy to destroy,” the psychologist Jonathan Haidt writes in The Righteous Mind . When you are raised in a culture without ethical structure, you become internally fragile. You have no moral compass to give you direction, no permanent ideals to which you can swear ultimate allegiance. “He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how ,” the psychiatrist (and Holocaust survivor) Viktor Frankl wrote, interpreting a famous Nietzsche saying. Those without a why fall apart when the storms hit. They begin to suffer from that feeling of moral emptiness that Émile Durkheim called “anomie.”

Expecting people to build a satisfying moral and spiritual life on their own by looking within themselves is asking too much. A culture that leaves people morally naked and alone leaves them without the skills to be decent to one another. Social trust falls partly because more people are untrustworthy. That creates crowds of what psychologists call “vulnerable narcissists.” We all know grandiose narcissists—people who revere themselves as the center of the universe. Vulnerable narcissists are the more common figures in our day—people who are also addicted to thinking about themselves, but who often feel anxious, insecure, avoidant. Intensely sensitive to rejection, they scan for hints of disrespect. Their self-esteem is wildly in flux. Their uncertainty about their inner worth triggers cycles of distrust, shame, and hostility.

“The breakdown of an enduring moral framework will always produce disconnection, alienation, and an estrangement from those around you,” Luke Bretherton, a theologian at Duke Divinity School, told me. The result is the kind of sadness I see in the people around me. Young adults I know are spiraling, leaving school, moving from one mental-health facility to another. After a talk I gave in Oklahoma, a woman asked me, “What do you do when you no longer want to be alive?” The very next night I had dinner with a woman who told me that her brother had died by suicide three months before. I mentioned these events to a group of friends on a Zoom call, and nearly half of them said they’d had a brush with suicide in their family. Statistics paint the broader picture: Suicide rates have increased by more than 30 percent since 2000, according to the CDC.

Sadness, loneliness, and self-harm turn into bitterness. Social pain is ultimately a response to a sense of rejection—of being invisible, unheard, disrespected, victimized. When people feel that their identity is unrecognized, the experience registers as an injustice—because it is. People who have been treated unjustly often lash out and seek ways to humiliate those who they believe have humiliated them.

Lonely eras are not just sad eras; they are violent ones. In 19th-century America, when a lot of lonely young men were crossing the western frontier, one of the things they tended to do was shoot one another. As the saying goes, pain that is not transformed gets transmitted. People grow more callous, defensive, distrustful, and hostile. The pandemic made it worse, but antisocial behavior is still high even though the lockdowns are over. And now we are caught in a cycle, ill treatment leading to humiliation and humiliation leading to more meanness. Social life becomes more barbaric, online and off.

If you put people in a moral vacuum, they will seek to fill it with the closest thing at hand. Over the past several years, people have sought to fill the moral vacuum with politics and tribalism. American society has become hyper-politicized.

David Brooks: America is having a moral convulsion

According to research by Ryan Streeter, the director of domestic-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, lonely young people are seven times more likely to say they are active in politics than young people who aren’t lonely. For people who feel disrespected, unseen, and alone, politics is a seductive form of social therapy. It offers them a comprehensible moral landscape: The line between good and evil runs not down the middle of every human heart, but between groups. Life is a struggle between us, the forces of good, and them, the forces of evil.

The Manichaean tribalism of politics appears to give people a sense of belonging. For many years, America seemed to be awash in a culture of hyper-individualism. But these days, people are quick to identify themselves by their group: Republican, Democrat, evangelical, person of color, LGBTQ, southerner, patriot, progressive, conservative. People who feel isolated and under threat flee to totalizing identities.

Politics appears to give people a sense of righteousness: A person’s moral stature is based not on their conduct, but on their location on the political spectrum. You don’t have to be good; you just have to be liberal—or you just have to be conservative. The stronger a group’s claim to victim status, the more virtuous it is assumed to be, and the more secure its members can feel about their own innocence.

Politics also provides an easy way to feel a sense of purpose. You don’t have to feed the hungry or sit with the widow to be moral; you just have to experience the right emotion. You delude yourself that you are participating in civic life by feeling properly enraged at the other side. That righteous fury rising in your gut lets you know that you are engaged in caring about this country. The culture war is a struggle that gives life meaning.

Politics overwhelms everything. Churches, universities, sports, pop culture, health care are swept up in a succession of battles that are really just one big war—red versus blue. Evangelicalism used to be a faith; today it’s primarily a political identity. College humanities departments used to study literature and history to plumb the human heart and mind; now they sometimes seem exclusively preoccupied with politics, and with the oppressive systems built around race, class, and gender. Late-night comedy shows have become political pep rallies. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily during the pandemic because people saw a virus through the lens of a political struggle.

This is not politics as it is normally understood. In psychically healthy societies, people fight over the politics of distribution: How high should taxes be? How much money should go to social programs for the poor and the elderly? We’ve shifted focus from the politics of redistribution to the politics of recognition. Political movements are fueled by resentment, by feelings that society does not respect or recognize me. Political and media personalities gin up dramas in which our side is emotionally validated and the other side is emotionally shamed. The person practicing the politics of recognition is not trying to get resources for himself or his constituency; he is trying to admire himself. He’s trying to use politics to fill the hole in his soul. It doesn’t work.

The politics of recognition doesn’t give you community and connection, certainly not in a system like our current one, mired in structural dysfunction. People join partisan tribes in search of belonging—but they end up in a lonely mob of isolated belligerents who merely obey the same orthodoxy.

If you are asking politics to be the reigning source of meaning in your life, you are asking more of politics than it can bear. Seeking to escape sadness, loneliness, and anomie through politics serves only to drop you into a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination. Sure, you’ve left the moral vacuum—but you’ve landed in the pulverizing destructiveness of moral war. The politics of recognition has not produced a happy society. When asked by the General Social Survey to rate their happiness level, 20 percent of Americans in 2022 rated it at the lowest level —only 8 percent did the same in 1990.

Read: What the longest study on human happiness found is the key to a good life

America’s Founding Fathers studied the history of democracies going back to ancient Greece. They drew the lesson that democracies can be quite fragile. When private virtue fails, the constitutional order crumbles. After decades without much in the way of moral formation, America became a place where more than 74 million people looked at Donald Trump’s morality and saw presidential timber.

Even in dark times, sparks of renewal appear. In 2018, a documentary about Mister Rogers called Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was released. The film showed Fred Rogers in all his simple goodness —his small acts of generosity; his displays of vulnerability; his respect, even reverence, for each child he encountered. People cried openly while watching it in theaters. In an age of conflict and threat, the sight of radical goodness was so moving.

In the summer of 2020, the series Ted Lasso premiered. When Lasso describes his goals as a soccer coach, he could mention the championships he hopes to win or some other conventional metric of success, but he says, “For me, success is not about the wins and losses. It’s about helping these young fellas be the best versions of themselves on and off the field.”

That is a two-sentence description of moral formation. Ted Lasso is about an earnest, cheerful, and transparently kind man who enters a world that has grown cynical, amoral, and manipulative, and, episode after episode, even through his own troubles, he offers the people around him opportunities to grow more gracious, to confront their vulnerabilities and fears, and to treat one another more gently and wisely. Amid lockdowns and political rancor, it became a cultural touchstone, and the most watched show on Apple TV+.

Even as our public life has grown morally bare, people, as part of their elemental nature, yearn to feel respected and worthy of respect, need to feel that their life has some moral purpose and meaning. People still want to build a society in which it is easier to be good. So the questions before us are pretty simple: How can we build morally formative institutions that are right for the 21st century? What do we need to do to build a culture that helps people become the best versions of themselves?

A few necessities come immediately to mind.

A modern vision of how to build character. The old-fashioned models of character-building were hopelessly gendered. Men were supposed to display iron willpower that would help them achieve self-mastery over their unruly passions. Women were to sequester themselves in a world of ladylike gentility in order to not be corrupted by bad influences and base desires. Those formulas are obsolete today.

The best modern approach to building character is described in Iris Murdoch’s book The Sovereignty of Good . Murdoch writes that “nothing in life is of any value except the attempt to be virtuous.” For her, moral life is not defined merely by great deeds of courage or sacrifice in epic moments. Instead, moral life is something that goes on continually—treating people considerately in the complex situations of daily existence. For her, the essential moral act is casting a “just and loving” attention on other people.

Normally, she argues, we go about our days with self-centered, self-serving eyes. We see and judge people in ways that satisfy our own ego. We diminish and stereotype and ignore, reducing other people to bit players in our own all-consuming personal drama. But we become morally better, she continues, as we learn to see others deeply, as we learn to envelop others in the kind of patient, caring regard that makes them feel seen, heard, and understood. This is the kind of attention that implicitly asks, “What are you going through?” and cares about the answer.

I become a better person as I become more curious about those around me, as I become more skilled in seeing from their point of view. As I learn to perceive you with a patient and loving regard, I will tend to treat you well. We can, Murdoch concluded, “grow by looking.”

Mandatory social-skills courses. Murdoch’s character-building formula roots us in the simple act of paying attention: Do I attend to you well? It also emphasizes that character is formed and displayed as we treat others considerately. This requires not just a good heart, but good social skills: how to listen well. How to disagree with respect. How to ask for and offer forgiveness. How to patiently cultivate a friendship. How to sit with someone who is grieving or depressed. How to be a good conversationalist.

These are some of the most important skills a person can have. And yet somehow, we don’t teach them. Our schools spend years prepping students with professional skills—but offer little guidance on how to be an upstanding person in everyday life. If we’re going to build a decent society, elementary schools and high schools should require students to take courses that teach these specific social skills, and thus prepare them for life with one another. We could have courses in how to be a good listener or how to build a friendship. The late feminist philosopher Nel Noddings developed a whole pedagogy around how to effectively care for others.

A new core curriculum. More and more colleges and universities are offering courses in what you might call “How to Live.” Yale has one called “Life Worth Living.” Notre Dame has one called “God and the Good Life.” A first-year honors program in this vein at Valparaiso University, in Indiana, involves not just conducting formal debates on ideas gleaned from the Great Books, but putting on a musical production based on their themes. Many of these courses don’t give students a ready-made formula, but they introduce students to some of the venerated moral traditions—Buddhism, Judeo-Christianity, and Enlightenment rationalism, among others. They introduce students to those thinkers who have thought hard on moral problems, from Aristotle to Desmond Tutu to Martha Nussbaum. They hold up diverse exemplars to serve as models of how to live well. They put the big questions of life firmly on the table: What is the ruling passion of your soul? Whom are you responsible to? What are my moral obligations? What will it take for my life to be meaningful? What does it mean to be a good human in today’s world? What are the central issues we need to engage with concerning new technology and human life?

These questions clash with the ethos of the modern university, which is built around specialization and passing on professional or technical knowledge. But they are the most important courses a college can offer. They shouldn’t be on the margins of academic life. They should be part of the required core curriculum.

Intergenerational service. We spend most of our lives living by the logic of the meritocracy: Life is an individual climb upward toward success. It’s about pursuing self-interest.

There should be at least two periods of life when people have a chance to take a sabbatical from the meritocracy and live by an alternative logic—the logic of service: You have to give to receive. You have to lose yourself in a common cause to find yourself. The deepest human relationships are gift relationships, based on mutual care. (An obvious model for at least some aspects of this is the culture of the U.S. military, which similarly emphasizes honor, service, selflessness, and character in support of a purpose greater than oneself, throwing together Americans of different ages and backgrounds who forge strong social bonds.)

Those sabbaticals could happen at the end of the school years and at the end of the working years. National service programs could bring younger and older people together to work to address community needs.

These programs would allow people to experience other-centered ways of being and develop practical moral habits: how to cooperate with people unlike you. How to show up day after day when progress is slow. How to do work that is generous and hard.

Moral organizations. Most organizations serve two sets of goals—moral goals and instrumental goals. Hospitals heal the sick and also seek to make money. Newspapers and magazines inform the public and also try to generate clicks. Law firms defend clients and also try to maximize billable hours. Nonprofits aim to serve the public good and also raise money.

In our society, the commercial or utilitarian goals tend to eclipse the moral goals. Doctors are pressured by hospital administrators to rush through patients so they can charge more fees. Journalists are incentivized to write stories that confirm reader prejudices in order to climb the most-read lists. Whole companies slip into an optimization mindset, in which everything is done to increase output and efficiency.

Moral renewal won’t come until we have leaders who are explicit, loud, and credible about both sets of goals. Here’s how we’re growing financially , but also Here’s how we’re learning to treat one another with consideration and respect; here’s how we’re going to forgo some financial returns in order to better serve our higher mission .

Early in my career, as a TV pundit at PBS NewsHour , I worked with its host, Jim Lehrer. Every day, with a series of small gestures, he signaled what kind of behavior was valued there and what kind of behavior was unacceptable. In this subtle way, he established a set of norms and practices that still lives on. He and others built a thick and coherent moral ecology, and its way of being was internalized by most of the people who have worked there.

Politics as a moral enterprise. An ancient brand of amoralism now haunts the world. Authoritarian-style leaders like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping embody a kind of amoral realism. They evince a mindset that assumes that the world is a vicious, dog-eat-dog sort of place. Life is a competition to grab what you can. Force is what matters. Morality is a luxury we cannot afford, or merely a sham that elites use to mask their own lust for power. It’s fine to elect people who lie, who are corrupt, as long as they are ruthless bastards for our side. The ends justify the means.

Those of us who oppose these authoritarians stand, by contrast, for a philosophy of moral realism. Yes, of course people are selfish and life can be harsh. But over the centuries, civilizations have established rules and codes to nurture cooperation, to build trust and sweeten our condition. These include personal moral codes so we know how to treat one another well, ethical codes to help prevent corruption on the job and in public life, and the rules of the liberal world order so that nations can live in peace, secure within their borders.

Moral realists are fighting to defend and modernize these rules and standards—these sinews of civilization. Moral realism is built on certain core principles. Character is destiny. We can either elect people who try to embody the highest standards of honesty, kindness, and integrity, or elect people who shred those standards. Statecraft is soulcraft. The laws we pass shape the kinds of people we become. We can structure our tax code to encourage people to be enterprising and to save more, or we can structure the code to encourage people to be conniving and profligate. Democracy is the system that best enhances human dignity. Democratic regimes entrust power to the people, and try to form people so they will be responsible with that trust. Authoritarian regimes seek to create a world in which the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Look, I understand why people don’t want to get all moralistic in public. Many of those who do are self-righteous prigs, or rank hypocrites. And all of this is only a start. But healthy moral ecologies don’t just happen. They have to be seeded and tended by people who think and talk in moral terms, who try to model and inculcate moral behavior, who understand that we have to build moral communities because on our own, we are all selfish and flawed. Moral formation is best when it’s humble. It means giving people the skills and habits that will help them be considerate to others in the complex situations of life. It means helping people behave in ways that make other people feel included, seen, and respected. That’s very different from how we treat people now—in ways that make them feel sad and lonely, and that make them grow unkind.

This article appears in the September 2023 print edition with the headline “How America Got Mean.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Home / Essay Samples / Literature / The Great Gatsby Symbolism / Social Stratification and Moral Decay in ‘The Great Gatsby’

Social Stratification and Moral Decay in 'The Great Gatsby'

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