I’ve been thinking a lot about what’s been happening in our society of late. Mass shootings, Antifa violence and now, sexual predation. Despite what we’re being told in ten second sound bites, we don’t have a Gun problem or a Man problem. What we have is a Morality problem. In the late 70s and 80s, after the Hippies got haircuts, started wearing suits and ties and joined the Establishment, a phrase found its way into the cultural lexicon; “You can’t legislate morality”. The point was to firmly ensconce the so-called “sexual revolution” into the social fabric (like the song says, “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with”).
The trouble is that OF COURSE you can legislate morality. People have been doing it for as long as societies have existed. What are laws, other than moral and ethical codes of conduct? The foundation of the laws of Western Civilization and America are the last five of the Ten Commandments. Don’t murder, don’t cheat, don’t steal, don’t lie and don’t envy. This is not to say that you have to be religious to adhere to these ideas, but like it or not, the Judeo/Christian under girding is there.
The main thing that murder, cheating, stealing, lying and envy have in common is that they’re selfish. Interestingly enough, we’ve spent the past sixty or so years becoming increasingly self-absorbed. People have been encouraged to “find themselves”. Hucksters, gurus and charlatans have gotten rich selling self-help books, tapes and seminars. Social media has become the platform for “me-ism”. Every day in this forum, I see people seeking validation from relative strangers on the internet. Everyone seems to want to be told “you’re smart”, “you’re strong”, “you’re talented”, “you’re special”, “you matter”.
Couple this self-focused neediness and navel gazing with the idea that morality is relative, with no objective standard, and small wonder people turn predatory. I want/need/feel becomes the only standard. It should come as no surprise that after a half-century of encouraging people to indulge and serve only themselves, that people now are completely lacking in self-control.
As we’ve removed the moral guardrails from society, we’ve tried to replace them with legal ones. Since people can’t or won’t control their own behavior, we’ll control them with more laws. The trouble there is, that people who don’t recognize any moral authority higher than themselves don’t obey laws. Why should they? Who cares what some old dead guys wrote on some paper? YOLO, baby!
Amorality and lawlessness go hand-in-hand. People said that they wanted a society with no judgment, where morality is relative, ethics are situational, and whose only virtues are tolerance and equality. Well, we’re living the dream, now. Not pretty, is it. For those of you who hate America, and would like nothing better than to see her get her comeuppance (you know who you are), just be patient. This is what a dying civilization looks like.
All civilizations die the same way. Not by being overrun by barbarians, that comes later. But, by being consumed by their own decadence. They become victims of their own success. At the height of their powers, they’ve become so prosperous, so safe and strong, that they become indolent and selfish. They forget the values that brought them their success.
There’s a phenomenon known as “normalcy bias”. It’s the idea that things will progress as they always have, because they always have (within living memory, anyway). People are advocating for the abandonment of the very principles that gave us our success, but expect the success to continue. Couple that with a terminally bored, elitist and disconnected leadership, and collapse is assured. It’s always the jaded rulers who open the gates and let the Vandals in.
So, be of good cheer, America haters, Within a generation or so, America will join the other great civilizations of history on the ash heap. Just a few crumbling monuments and a cautionary tale in the history books. Never thought I’d live to see it.
One reply on “Guardrails”
I knew we were finished when returning Vietnam vets got spat on at the airports — and didn’t get flattened by anyone standing around watching.