• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Do we have a moral crisis?

lewisnotmiller

Grand Hat
Staff member
Premium Member
The change was afoot well before 1914, but it clearly found it's full expression with WW1. Human cleverness had finally so outstripped human wisdom that an epoch of self-annihilation had finally begun. One that is still playing out in the form of man's inhumanity to man, and one that is still set on the human species erasing itself from existence.

Interesting point. Do you see that as morality or technical capacity?
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
Not asking for that. Just a year you consider clearly the moral superior of the present time. You have a lot to pick from, whereas I'm tying myself to a single year.
The moral decline in human beings are fading all the time after an enlighten master like Buddha or Christ has been teaching. So you can say that when one of the masters (enlighten beings) leave earth when they die, the people who have been following the teachings start to lose the understanding of the teaching with in a few hundred years. and this is the time of decline in my view.

But if you want it on a personal level one person at the time. it comes down to how much each person put in of effort to stay on a higher moral level without declining. But because of how society is built up now (started with the industrial revolution) this is a main reason why peoples moral decline. Humans get attached to object they can buy with money (and to the money it self), and they forget the moral teaching of the enlighten masters and they become more and more atheistic (not an attack on atheists) And when people have less spiritual awareness they stop caring if they do immoral action words or thoughts. (that is the true moral decline)
 

Kangaroo Feathers

Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...

epronovost

Well-Known Member
As for love, surely.
Romantic love is vilified...and sex can exist only within the consumerism where pleasure is bought as product...and everything stoops to mere lust.

Romantic love is vilified? How and by whom? Romantic love has never been as commonly accepted. It's now pretty much the only basis for relationships since transactional relationship are frowned upon. In the past, romantic love was often used to be considered dangerous (see Romeo and Juliette for example).
 

Estro Felino

Believer in free will
Premium Member
Romantic love is vilified? How and by whom? Romantic love has never been as commonly accepted. It's now pretty much the only basis for relationships since transactional relationship are frowned upon.

Sure...that is a good point...I guess people follow their heart much more than in the past...but romance is more about the aesthetical aspect of love. I am interested in the OP's view.

In the past, romantic love was often used to be considered dangerous (see Romeo and Juliet for example).
Well..you're talking to an Italian :p
 

Kangaroo Feathers

Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
I DO NOT speak worldly wealth when i speak of moral decline. only of spiritual moral value and the teachings from spiritual masters. Wealth does not make us permanent happy, but good moral will do.
Uhuh. "Everything objectively measurable is improving, so I choose to believe in immeasurable intangibles to maintain my preferred narrative that things are getting worse, despite all evidence to the contrary"? Understood.
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
Uhuh. "Everything objectively measurable is improving, so I choose to believe in immeasurable intangibles to maintain my preferred narrative that things are getting worse, despite all evidence to the contrary"? Understood.
I have my understanding of reality, you have yours that is not a problem for me.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
I DO NOT speak worldly wealth when i speak of moral decline. only of spiritual moral value and the teachings from spiritual masters. Wealth does not make us permanent happy, but good moral will do.

Morality is not the exclusive domain of the spiritual or financially poor, it is a human (and many animals) trait.

I know of poor, spiritual people who happily explode bombs in public places and kill children and millionaires who donate a large proportion of their wealth to needy causes.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Do we have a moral crisis?

No moral crises in this life. Of course, it is a very contracted life by design. It involves just a handful of villages on a mountain lake and a circle of a few dozen carefully chosen friends and acquaintances. The rest of the world scarcely affects us. We go almost everywhere on foot, and are rarely are more than a few miles from our home. It's a simple life without moral issues.

Is the rest of the world suffering a moral crisis? America certainly seems to be. But that's over a 1000 miles away - not our crisis. It's one of the benefits to the change we made.
 
Last edited:

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
I see it as just the opposite.

Humans have changed little. Morality has improved somewhat, but it has been far outstripped by our technical abilities.

Take WWI as an example. Violence and war have always been part of the human situation. But for most of human history violence was a handicraft. You pretty much had to kill people one at a time with hand tools, like swords. Then EuroChristians weaponized gunpowder, greatly facilitating slaughter. And made advances in navigation technology and ocean going vessels. That brought EuroColonialism, and the attendant horrors to the planet. Horrors like slavery and genocide on a global scale. One of the big justifications for that was "Bringing the Light of Jesus to the benighted darkies around the world."
By WWI, industrial capacity, technology, and fossil fuels really ramped up mass killing abilities. Unfortunately, humans were still prone to violence and mostly still operating on moral codes from primitive cultures.

The problem wasn't that morality had changed, it's that it hadn't.


Similarly, sex/marriage/procreation has changed dramatically over the centuries and moral codes haven't kept up. For most of human history, kids hooked up in their teens and started making babies. But the likelihood that both of them would survive into their 30s was slim. Marriages weren't expected to last more than a decade or two. And children were an economic asset. Nobody expected parents to provide health care and education, then send them on their way upon reaching adulthood. Kids started earning their keep while in single digit age and then provided for the parents who were still alive when they're grown. So, while the world has changed enormously, human instincts towards sex have not. And the moral codes were invented in a completely different world. Overpopulation is a far bigger moral issue than having your community wiped out by a drought or epidemic.
Humans and morality have not changed, but the world has.

Humans and morality haven't declined. Quite the opposite, they haven't changed enough to keep up the human situation.

Tom
ETA ~A big part of the reason that morality isn't keeping up is the religious/spiritual belief that ancient people were somehow more moral and closer to God than modern people. I see no reason to believe that. In fact, I think it's a big part of the moral crisis mentioned in the OP.~
 
Last edited:

Wandering Monk

Well-Known Member
Hope you're all well.

Here is an interesting blog at a psych site ...

Scroll down to this list -

There is a —

Moral crisis when there is no objective standard for truth-telling

Moral crisis when success is more important than character

Moral crisis when because of their positions we look to celebrities and business people for wisdom

Moral crisis when we believe we are more important than others

Moral crisis when we believe we are less important than others

Moral crisis when we believe we can flourish alone, without others

Read the rest here -

Today's Spiritual Crisis

Cheers!

OK, you have given us a list of abstractions. Now, give us concrete ways to measure morality. At that point we can look at statistics to see if morality is improving or declining.
 

MonkeyFire

Well-Known Member
Yes the world is crashing in morality. Money have become more important then spiritual development, and money dictate who gain power in the world now, not those of higher spiritual wisdom.
Love and kindness plus compassion toward others should be in focus, not the gain of ego and selvfishness

You sound like a hippie. :)
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
No moral crises in this life. Of course, it is a very contracted life by design. It involves just a handful of villages on a mountain lake and a circle of a few dozen carefully chosen friends and acquaintances. The rest of the world scarcely affects us. We go almost everywhere on foot, and are rarely are more than a few miles from our home. It's a simple life without moral issues.

Is the rest of the world suffering a moral crisis? America certainly seems to be. But that's over a 1000 miles away - not our crisis. It's one of the benefits to the change we made.

Oh yeah!
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
Morality is not the exclusive domain of the spiritual or financially poor, it is a human (and many animals) trait.

I know of poor, spiritual people who happily explode bombs in public places and kill children and millionaires who donate a large proportion of their wealth to needy causes.
If you speak about "muslims" who blow them self up to hurt others, the do not hold any form of morality, spiritual or non spiritual. and they are not following Islam. So even you think they are muslims, they are not, they are only evil beings.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
If you speak about "muslims" who blow them self up to hurt others, the do not hold any form of morality, spiritual or non spiritual. and they are not following Islam. So even you think they are muslims, they are not, they are only evil beings.

Not particularly, i was speaking of Christian, Islamic, Jewish and the terrorism of several other religions?

It is not your prerogative to dictate who is and who is not muslim.

Although i agree on general terms that any religious person who engages in bombing is number one on my hypocrite list
 

columbus

yawn <ignore> yawn
If you speak about "muslims" who blow them self up to hurt others, the do not hold any form of morality, spiritual or non spiritual. and they are not following Islam. So even you think they are muslims, they are not, they are only evil beings.
I think you're indulging in the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. You don't think that suicide bombers are devout Muslims because they don't behave the way you think a devout Muslim ought to behave. I disagree vehemently.

I think that anyone who would consider becoming a suicide bomber is mentally ill. In a group as large as Muslims there's going to be mentally ill people who are also devout. And other devoutly religious people who will exploit the mentally ill.

Pretending that these people aren't devoutly religious is to completely misunderstand the human situation in general, and religiosity in particular.
Tom
 

Spirit of Light

Be who ever you want
Not particularly, i was speaking of Christian, Islamic, Jewish and the terrorism of several other religions?

It is not your prerogative to dictate who is and who is not muslim.

Although i agree on general terms that any religious person who engages in bombing is number one on my hypocrite list
I should have been a little more careful with my words yes.
 
Top