On March 19, 1666, Samuel Pepys, President of the Royal Society, Member of the English House of Commons and Secretary of State for the Navy, visited the King’s Theater in London. In his diary, he mocks a little about the sad state of the house that is being remodeled, and then goes on to report that afterwards, with deep satisfaction, he met Sir. G. Carteret spoke of the general deplorable condition of the kingdom and the general decay of morals. Even then, things seemed to be in tip-top shape, and the impression was that things were going downhill. Where would this end?
Moral decay has always been a popular topic of conversation. At least since people invented language, they complain that things are getting worse. O Tempora, o Mores, what times, what customs, the Roman Cicero already conjured up in his speeches more than 2000 years ago. And currently, people like to whine about the fact that morale is no longer far off and that things are going downhill, as psychologists Bryan West and David Pizarro from Cornell University are reporting in a study. According to the message, the belief in the decay of morals lives on across all generations, political affiliations or religious beliefs, like the researchers write at work on the preprint server PsyArXiv.
Morality pessimist Pepys saw nothing wrong with hitting his wife
The doomsday lawsuits are almost exclusively aimed at matters that are located in the realm of morality. The test persons of the psychologists West and Pizarro stated that ethically relevant things in particular had deteriorated on a social level during their lifetime. Sure, cars, communication technology and technology in general have already improved. But what does that matter? Where crime, violence, racism, disrespect and other reprehensible things are constantly increasing and society as we know it is therefore on the verge of collapse.
And so back to Samuel Pepys, the London moral pessimist and bon vivant, who recorded his doings (and his drives) in extremely juicy diaries in the 17th century. In it he describes, for example, how he happily watched the execution of a Major Harrison, who was publicly hanged, gutted and quartered. Afterwards Pepys, he reports, was nice to eat a few oysters with company. On other days, even on a lot of them, he writes about his numerous affairs and the rough way in which he approached women. He recounts how his wife, Elizabeth, mutely and reproachfully displayed in front of the servants a black eye he had given her himself. In short, the diaries of Samuel Pepys can be read as a case study of the fact that morals have not deteriorated far and, on the contrary, a few things have developed for the better since then. For example, who was the last person to pass the time at a public execution followed by an oyster feast? And which politician has recently boasted about his affairs or his penchant for domestic violence?
A few things have changed for the better in the moral realm, it may be said in this vague generalization. But in general people are perceived as suspect, callous and immoral, write West and Pizarro, whose message is moral progress. Despite all the protestations, the public prefers to hear daily horror stories about murder, manslaughter and other ugly occurrences. Pervasive moral pessimism may serve a purpose, West and Pizarro argue: Concern about the decline of a society’s values helps keep them upright and societies intact.
People complain with the same force about ever smaller offenses
Another interpretation of the never-ending whining about moral decline can be drawn from another recent study that psychologists led by Craig Harper of Nottingham Trent University have just published: Progress masks itself because sensibilities remain the same. Instead of getting upset about serious mistakes, people get upset about smaller and smaller offenses – but with the same force. Like the psychologists around Harper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science to reportthe adherents of the political camps are also similar in this regard: progressives and conservatives show a similar pattern in this context, just in different fields.
On the left side of the political spectrum, the definitions of trauma, sexism, racism, bullying, prejudice, mental illness or addiction problems are expanded. For example, what was once considered an ordinary brawl in the schoolyard is now often labeled “bullying.” So far, this concept creep (concept expansion), as the Australian psychologist Nick Haslam has christened the phenomenon, has primarily been regarded as exclusively left-progressive. But as Harper and his colleagues show, even right-wing conservatives expand on the morally charged concepts that are important to them. For example, according to the current study, there is a growing notion of what constitutes sexually abnormal, what forms of protest and activism constitute terrorism, and where personal responsibility begins.
So the short message is: different values, different ideas about moral decay. In both cases, however, the screaming is in many, probably even very many, cases excessive. Even 2000 years after Cicero and almost 400 years after Samuel Pepys, neither morality nor humanity have completely collapsed. But of course not everything is good, that’s for sure.