Something that bugs me is when I see people decry “today's” degenerate culture, and wax nostalgic about how much more moral the world used to be. In the frum world, this often manifests as rhetoric along the lines of, “In the alte heim, even the goyim were tznius!” Whereas now, boys have to leave the city during the summer, because there’s pritzus everywhere you look.
Oddly, when people talk about “morality” and how terrible the world is “these days,” they’re always only talking about sex. Specifically, how much easier it is now than in the past to see things they find erotic, and how it is now acceptableto talk about sex in public. “People today have no shame!”
Whether or not a guy seeing a woman in short sleeves (or in a bikini on the beach) is a moral issue at all is debatable, as is whether it really is easier to see or talk about erotica than it was in most of the past, but let's grant it arguendo. Even so, why is that the measure of morality “today?” Why are all other moral categories excluded? What about grift, or theft, or violence, or murder? Surely murder is a more serious moral issue than whether it’s okay for people to wear t-shirts and shorts when it’s hot out.
I saw an interesting statistic. In Europe in the 21st century, the murder rate is approximatly 1/100,000. Contrast that with tribal societies, where about half of men are murdered over one thing or another - honor, women, property, etc. (The reasons for this mostly have to do with the state claiming a monopoly on violence, not something inherent to tribal people vs. urban people.) If we assume that men are about half the population of these tribal societies, and ignore any murders of women that may occur (in order to give these societies as favorable a standing as we can) that gives us a muder rate among tribal societies of about 25,000/100,000.
If we use murder rates instead of bare skin as a measure of morality, people in the modern cultures the moral guardians think are so much worse than in the past are 25,000 times more moral than tribal societies. We’re also 100 times more moral than medieval Erope, which had a murder rate of about 100/100,000.
It doesn’t seem like we’re so immoral after all.
Overall point is valid, but a couple of nitpicks:
ReplyDeleteI believe murder rate is per year, so this comparison isn't quite right.
Also about half of tribal men die violently, but that includes at the hands of other tribes, so it's unfair to exclude deaths in war. By their nature deaths in war tend to be very bursty - very few in Europe for the last 80 years, and then suddenly 4% of the population killed in 6 years, which makes comparing these rates very difficult.