4 Answers

  1. Let's imagine some civilization at the initial stage of its development. Naturally, this is an urban civilization, since the rural one will either develop into an urban one or not at all. The city is at least an administrative, commercial, craft and cultural center, and for ancient civilizations it is primarily a cult center. Initially, the city's population does not differ much in ethical terms from the rural communities surrounding the city, but gradually it forms its own urban ethos. This is due to the living conditions in the city, and those that are not available in rural areas. In the village, you can throw garbage out of the window – “nature will sweep”; in the city, as its civilization grows, this can no longer be done, although in the early stages some cities are fetid sewers. And just as cities were transformed from cesspools into blooming gardens, a similar process was taking place with the people who inhabited this city – they gradually turned from savages and peasants into civilized, highly moral people, but, of course, not all of them, and not at once.

    The main thing that gives the city an impetus to moral, intellectual and other development is the heterogeneity of its composition. Even if the city was originally founded by one ancestral group, then later many other groups, even other tribes and ethnic groups, join it, and in addition it is regularly visited and lived in by foreigners, initially represented by merchants. In other words, the city, in the process of its growth, is a hodgepodge of different, unrelated people who have different foundations, customs and prejudices, and in order to survive and co-exist in a limited space, these people have to learn to negotiate with each other, become more tolerant and moderate their affectivity, that is, they have to learn how to live together.e. develop morally and intellectually. The ability to negotiate is the property that underlies any rationally organized interpersonal relations, as it implies the search and finding universal answers acceptable to all, i.e. the search for objectivity, despite the fact that each person has his own subjective opinion. Gradually, this diversity is synthesized and a unique urban ethos is formed, which is no longer similar to the ethos of rural communities, and this is already the beginning of civilization.

    Now let's talk about how and why civilization is morally declining.

    Initially, the city is a plebs and elite. If there is development, then they have learned to negotiate and normally carry out their activities each in their own place.

    An educated person. With the development, expansion of the territory and complication of all aspects of life, the demand for an educated class arises and increases, and educational institutions appear in cities, and in civilization itself an intelligentsia class is formed, as an intermediate between the elite and the plebs. People are beginning to understand that in order to advance in life, you need to get an education. There is an overproduction of graduates, and the intelligentsia class is supplemented by a parallel class consisting of people with a crust of high education, but without sufficient knowledge. In the language of Zhvanetsky, a class of “educated people”is formed. An educated person, unlike an intellectual, is motivated not by truth and knowledge, but by a career, or is not motivated by anything, but was simply pushed into the institution by his parents, “because it is necessary”. In addition, an educated person is a creator and tireless worker of pseudoscience.

    Golden youth. These are the dissolute offspring of the elite with a rather perverted worldview. Mises has them labeled as ” cousins.” The elite have more money and power, and thus more opportunities to give their children a better education, but, as they say, ” the family is not without a freak.” The elite produces both the best representatives of society and the worst. It is inappropriate to analyze the mentality of the golden youth in detail here, but it can probably be reduced to the desire for pleasure and celebration as often as possible, and preferably every day, and one of the maxims that it adheres to is: “After us-even a flood.” The behavior of the golden youth has an impact on society as a whole – some young people of other classes also want to live like this. There is a certain symbiosis of golden youth and educated people, which results in the emergence of ideologies and worldviews that have an opposite charge in relation to the ideologies on which civilization is based. If the ideology of civilization is modern, focused on development and progress, then counter-ideology is postmodern. Modernity is based on the ability to negotiate, objectivity and a reduction in affectivity; postmodernism is based on relativism, subjectivism and the cult of sensuality (I do not mean modern French postmodernism here, although it also belongs to this category as a phenomenon).

    Over time, representatives of the golden youth and educated people, one way or another, penetrate the power and destroy it from the inside. Corruption appears.

    Hucksters. In the conditions of decreasing “negotiability”, increasing subjectivism and corruption of society, normal market relations begin to collapse. Rules appear and gradually begin to dominate: “If you don't cheat, you won't live”, “Profit at any cost”, “Nothing personal – it's just a business”. Over time, an honest business becomes uncompetitive and dies. Merchants also impose their own morality – the morality of a consumer society.

    Bulls. Until now, many cities are replenished at the expense of the rural population. In a normal situation, the newly arrived peasant gradually adapts to urban life and becomes a full-fledged citizen, and his descendants in the second or third generation can become intellectuals. In an abnormal situation, the situation may be different. In one way or another, villages receive information about what is happening in the city. Even the fact that the city has its “own” morality, which differs from the rural one, causes disapproval, and when there are rumors about the “licentious lawlessness” being repaired in the city, then most of the villagers are set up against the city – “the city is a source of infection” and debauchery. Now those who come to the city are divided into exactly three categories:: 1) normal peasants who, as before, integrate into the city; 2) bl… those who are not frightened by the rumors of outrages, but rather attracted, and they go to the city to plunge up to their ears into the abyss of debauchery, because they are tired and disgusted with the insipid and patriarchal life in the countryside; 3) bulls are those who go to the city, hating it in advance. For them, everything in the city is disgusting, especially from the fact that, due to their lack of adaptability, they are not able to get a normal job anywhere, and they can only join the ranks of the lower classes, including crime.

    Fundamentalists. These are the bulls who managed to get an education in the city. In principle, they are a subclass in the class of non-learners, but we distinguish that educated people tend to relativism, and fundamentalists, on the contrary, to rigid dogmatism.

    Bulls and fundamentalists do their best to impose their customs and ideas on the city, and destroy the tolerance established in the city, and their morals and worldviews are based on the savage ideas of hoary antiquity that the city has long rejected.

    Church. In general, the church is not something that contributes to decline, but rather represents a certain brake on the path of progress. Although religion is trying to privatize the sphere of morality, but in reality it has nothing to do with them. To be moral and moral is to be able to get along with people; to be religious is to be able to get along with the gods, that is, to get along with the gods.e. they are about different things. At some point in historical time, a religious canon is compiled and codified as a text. This text is declared to be holy scripture. It reflects, among other things, the moral and moral beliefs of people at the time of writing, and these moral requirements religion tries to perpetuate for all time. The fact that people were much more immoral then than they are now doesn't bother religion – that's all. At this point, there is a conflict between the church and the fundamentalists. Churchmen, as more literate, try to soften the” wildness ” of the holy scripture and connect it with the realities of today, while fundamentalists read the text literally, and consider churchmen apostates.

    Over time, confrontations grow in society. On the one hand, the glamorous crowd, on the other, bulls and fundamentalists, publicly speaking as champions of morality. Normal citizens, instead of passing on both, begin to join one of the parties themselves. The elite, which by that time had already decayed enough, is naturally on the side of the party. Society splits into two hostile camps. Then the civil war. Then: either all over again, or the country splits into a number of separate states, or the country is dismantled by its neighbors.

  2. Morality is relative. Try explaining your morals to some man-eating tribe in Papua New Guinea. But even if you adhere to its most common principles, please compare the morality of the 21st century and, for example, the Middle Ages.�

    I may be wrong, but in fact, the “decline in morals” observed by some is somewhat similar to the conflict between fathers and children, only on a more global scale. (“It was better before”)

  3. Because of disbelief in either morality or spirituality. When a person identifies himself with a biological product and nothing more, when he does not believe that there is a soul, and even more so spirit and spirituality, when those who advocate morality are called moralophages – what result can we expect?
    I'm not speaking for the whole of Odessa right now, but for the most common trends in society. Europe for example is increasingly abandoning its European roots

    http://www.youtube.com/embed/QNjSgWlDPJM?wmode=opaque

    As for the East, they do not reject Christianity there, but they give such a surrogate under Christianity that mother does not grieve

    http://www.youtube.com/embed/2LtMRxsniQ4?wmode=opaque

    Unbelief or faith that is not based on correct postulates is blind, leading the blind to the pit.

  4. Just a guess. The story has a circular motion. Culture and morality flourish, then something else blooms. For example, экономика economics or technology. The time will come when civilization will once again develop more morally and spiritually. New types of art will appear, and so on.

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