The Moral Breakdown Is Widespread
It Infects Every Facet of Society
SOCIETY today is in a values vacuum. It is fragmented by many life-styles. The reasoning of many runs like this: ‘Each life-style is an acceptable alternative. You be tolerant of mine, I’ll be tolerant of yours. You do your thing, I’ll do mine. To each his own. There are many ways to go, and each way is right; nothing is wrong. There is no sin anymore. Stand up for your rights. Peaceful protest is a whisper; turn up the volume with violence. Violence is a form of free speech. Sex is open to expression with whomever you choose and in any way you want. Obscenity is art. Live and let live.’
Or is it ‘die and let die’? Well into the 20th century, people had very precise ideas about what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is immoral, what is honorable and what is dishonorable—and many still do. But for others a change began during the 1950’s and escalated thereafter. The entire inventory of ideas about virtue, morality, honor, and ethics was made to seem illogical, inhumane, and unacceptable. The ideas that became dominant exalted individuality. They asserted the view of each person to live according to self-determined goals. Now the acceptable mores were to be tolerance, diversity, and nonjudgmentalism. In this new philosophy, it is forbidden to forbid.
The disastrous consequences of this philosophy continued to mount until in the 1980’s they were at flood stage, and they are still rising in the ’90’s. Here are just a few reports on the disastrous consequences, beginning with a speech on values that was given in New York City by a corporation vice-chairman before a conference on business ethics:
“Politicians cheat on their constituents. Brokers rip off their clients. S&L executives drive their institutions into the ground and leave taxpayers footing the bill. Preachers and would-be presidents cheat on their wives. Kids cheat on exams, and millions destroy themselves and others through the ravages of drugs and crime. . . . Fifty percent of all marriages end in divorce. Twenty-two percent of all children born today are born out of wedlock, and one-third of all children will live with step-parents before they are 18. Clearly, the disintegration of family is massive. If you assume that the molding of values starts at home—early in life—then the reasons for a breakdown in ethics are obvious.”—Vital Speeches of the Day, September 1, 1990.
Every day newspapers, magazines, newscasts, movies, and television programs reflect the decline of traditional values. In a speech at the University of Chicago, chairman of the Chase Manhattan Corporation said:
“Whether you flip first to the sports pages, the Washington report, or the business section, the evidence is the same. The sports pages bristle with the latest scandals of ball players shaving points, college teams on probation for recruiting violations, and professional athletes on drugs. The news from Washington is of perjury trials, federal judges indicted, influence peddling, and the latest lawmaker under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. You turn to the business section and find exposés of insider trading and the like.”—Vital Speeches of the Day, August 1, 1990.
The barrage is so steady and unrelenting that people become numb to it. They are no longer scandalized by these scandals. The lecturer just quoted commented on this: “Many Americans are no longer outraged by news of yet another ethical lapse. Convicted felons are no longer outcasts. They are celebrities. They are invited to elite parties. They write best-sellers.”
Wall Street’s Ivan Boesky ended a speech to students at a business school by raising his arms overhead in a V-for-victory pose and said, “So here’s to greed!” Later his greed led him into insider trading, and he was tried, convicted, fined, and jailed. His fine was $100 million, but he got to keep over half a billion dollars. Michael Milken, another Wall Street manipulator, was fined $600 million for his junk-bond dealings—he made almost that much in one year! He was able to retain one and a half billion dollars.
Industry Week magazine published an article whose title raised the question, “Forget Ethics—and Succeed?” A consultant from Utah thought corporate ethics had worsened and said: “My observations suggest that the more successful the businessman, the more unethical the behavior.” A manager from Michigan said: “We have a policy regarding ethics, but middle management ignores the rules by rationalizing, ‘That’s not unethical, it’s just smart business.’” A supervisor from Miami laments: “Ethics is fast losing the battle; profit is No. 1 at any expense.” Other businessmen were more blunt: “Anything goes,” one said. Another added this: “Our policy is if you can get away with it, do it.”
It is not just businessmen who contribute to the tumbling moral standards. The values virus has spread into every facet of society. Too many lawyers are acting more like shysters than respecters of the law. Too many scientists are stooping to misconduct and fraud to get grants from the government. Too many doctors are earning reputations as being more interested in fat fees than in patients—and too many of their patients are scheming up ways to launch malpractice suits.
Neighborhoods reel under the impact of drugs, crime, and gang wars. Marital infidelity ruins families. Small children become victims of sexual abuse, including child porn. Teenage sex brings on pregnancies, abortions, and neglected babies. Drug pushers invade school yards. Schoolchildren carry knives and guns, and reading scores continue to tumble. The best remedial training for this is parents who read to their children, but often parents are too busy making a living or too involved in their own self-fulfillment goals.
The music industry contributes to the moral breakdown, outstandingly so through some of the far-out, heavy-metal rock bands. A corporation counselor commented: “Rock music turned out to be the perfect medium for proclaiming and spreading the idea of casual and unlimited sexual acts and for celebrating the use of illegal drugs. Rock music was also a powerful force in generating contempt for parents, for older generations and social institutions which opposed the unzippered, drug-using lifestyle.”
One of their goals is to offend and shock and grab attention with lyrics that are outpourings of crude, coarse, vile, and loathsome gutter filth, which are crammed full of brutal abuse of women. Oral and anal sex described in scores of ways, sexual abuse urged, gloatings over rape so violent that female sex organs are ruptured—no limit to the gross obscenities glorified. When one group was tried in court for obscenity, a Duke University professor praised them as literary geniuses and defended their rank obscenities as having artistic value. The jury agreed, concluding that the lyrics were not obscenities but art.
A similar evidence of the decay of values in society is the fact that last year one of the most grotesquely obscene rap albums ‘sold so many copies (more than 1 million) in its three weeks of release that it sailed to the No. 1 position. That means it was the biggest thing in the music business at the moment.’ Names chosen for these rock groups match the lyrics: “There are at least 13 bands named after the male genitals, 6 after female genitals, 4 after sperm, 8 after abortion and one after a vaginal infection.”—U.S.News & World Report.
A professor at Boston University commented on the Mapplethorpe exhibit: “I saw it at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. There, as elsewhere, the works were arranged in sections, so to speak. The ‘hard core’ photos were . . . as disturbingly pornographic as one can imagine. I do not know if they were ‘homo-erotic,’ but they were photographs which depicted acts I would not on my own think were possible, let alone pleasurable.” The issue of the exhibit’s obscenity was tried in court, and a jury judged its obscenity to be art. Hardly art, certainly not morally responsible, and evidence of a further erosion of true values on the part of artists and viewers.
We need limits. We need stabilizing guidelines. We need ideals to work toward. We need a return to the original source of true values.
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People are no longer scandalized by scandals
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Juries declare gross obscenities to be art