by Chris Torgersen

Created on: June 19, 2009

Since time immemorial, a common complaint in every society - usually heard from those old enough to remember when days were different - has been that morals are decaying. It's easy enough to find articles written two or three generations ago, complaining about the decadence of rock music or jazz or ragtime. To judge by these complaints, the world must have been much more morally sound hundreds or thousands of years ago, since people have been complaining for at least that long about moral decay.

In truth, morals simply change. The rules of society change. We do not become more or less moral; as a society, we adopt new sets of morals. However, though society's morality changes relatively quickly, the morality of individuals is rather static. A person who has been taught at an early age what right and wrong are will generally grow up to believe the same things are right and wrong, even if society has moved on. That individual will interpret the shift as a move away from morality. Actually, it is only a move away from his or her morality.

Once upon a time in Europe, it was considered sinful to charge interest on debts. Citing Biblical references, collection of fees on debts was considered highly sinful (note that many Muslims still believe this). In Dante's Inferno, usurers, as anyone who charged interest was known, occupied the seventh circle of hell beside blasphemers and sodomites. Nowadays, we have a society that is built in part upon the very concept of lending money for fees. Far from seeing it as a sin, most of us consider making money in such ways to be a worthwhile goal and desirable occupation. Did we become less moral? I would argue no. We simply changed as a society.

The rules governing societies are based upon crises societies face. Most rules can be readily traced back to a critical reason for emerging. The oldest taboos, such as murder, have clear negative ramifications for society if they are permitted, which is how they become taboos. More recent ones, such as abusing children and animals, have come about as society has evolved.

However, the rules themselves often outlive the reasons for their emergence. As these rules change to account for new needs (as they constantly do), those who are used to working under the old rules will often see the change as a negative; after all, they were brought up to do something in a certain way for what they felt was a good reason. Such biases run deep, even when rationales for them have long since faded.

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