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Is Society Really That Badly Off?


Lil Red

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I'm just wondering. Is society really any worse than other times in history where there was a perversion of morals going around? I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but what do you guys think?

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it just seems like maybe we go through cycles, ya know?

of perversion, then puritan, then perversion. with it slowly cycling through to the next one.

what do you think?

this can't be the first time in the history of the world that we've gone through a perversion of our morals and values.

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Thy Geekdom Come

History does go in cycles. I believe that very much.

What I find very interesting right now is that the European Union is supposed to be beating out the US. If it lasts, then the situation would be comparable to the Fall of Rome and the Rise of Constantinople.

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People are sinful all the time, so society is sinful all the time. I think we tend to see a glossed over version of the past, "back in the good old days, when people [i]cared [/i]about morals ..."

We also think of people in the past as having had it easier than we do today, as though they lived simple, uncomplicated lives and that's why they were able to be great, and create great things, and make lasting marks on history.

It is important to see that every age has its challenges, and every age has its heroes -- and they were heroes who lived imperfect lives in imperfect times. God has given us the tools to meet the challenges of our age, in the time and place in which we live. If we romanticize other times and other places too much, we can miss the great things to which God has called us where we live.

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cmotherofpirl

Human nature doesn't change - we all that tendency to sin.

What has changed is technology - we can sin on a much bigger scale, and hurt more innocent people. We are also much more open about our sinning.

The dissolution of societal values means that more and more people know less and less about right and wrong. The natural law in their hearts is mired in sensuality and me-ness on a scale unknown since the days of the decadent Roman empire.

Archbishop Sheen said the difference between now and the past is back in the day, bad men KNEW they were bad.

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I tend to think that one difference is that you used to be able to tell people they were wrong. That there was such a thing as right and wrong. Now, people have erased the notion of practical morality, and attempted to reduce natural law to mere opinion and preference. Which will, of course have disastrous results:

[b]"Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria." - Dr. Peter Venkman, [i]Ghostbusters[/i] [/b] :wacko:

Seriously, though, moral collapse always precedes societal collapse. Rome is the classic example, but there are other less obvious cases, like, ehm, the Incas, I think. Rome's moral collapse could have been brought about by the fact that their pantheon of gods were drawn to be just as immoral as they were, so there was no accountability. Now we remove our accountability by different types of moral anhestetic - now we separate ourselves from the moral consequences of our actions. The debate over wether or not a fetus is a human being is an example of this. We can claim it's not wrong if we convince ourselves it's not human. We rationalize our consciences to sleep.

Have we been this bad before? Possibly, but it used to be we didn't know how bad people were over the next hill, or the next country, or the ocean. But today, it's possible to log on to websites that catalogue's the sins of celebrities. We have become gluttons for scandal of every sort - sometimes if only to convince ourselves that there are people in the world worse than us. And as long as I look at someone else's sin, I'll never look at my own.

So I would say that we've created a world where it's easier to be more morally corrupt. But people have not changed much. There's just more ways we can fall into error.

...and I think I've said enough.

Cheers & God Bless!

Dave :)

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cantstopdancin9

Yea I agree with all of the above. I don't think it's so much that we do more bad things but that bad things are now "accepted". If that makes sense...

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[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Jun 24 2004, 11:57 AM'] Human nature doesn't change - we all that tendency to sin.

What has changed is technology - we can sin on a much bigger scale, and hurt more innocent people. We are also much more open about our sinning.

The dissolution of societal values means that more and more people know less and less about right and wrong. The natural law in their hearts is mired in sensuality and me-ness on a scale unknown since the days of the decadent Roman empire.

Archbishop Sheen said the difference between now and the past is back in the day, bad men KNEW they were bad. [/quote]
Yeah, what she and Fulton Sheen said.

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