Moral values in retrospect

People talk about how we've strayed morally as a nation and talk about how we need to get back to the values of the past. Well, I call bullshit on that. What exactly is so moral about the past? Genocide? Forced whitening of Indians? Keeping women from voting? Slavery? Cheap access to legal prostitution? Segregation? Child labor? The exploitation of immigrants?

We think because gay people want to sanctify their unions with marriage that things are getting worse? If anything, isn't that an example of things getting MORE moral? Why should they care, if they aren't moral, if their union is sanctified. People play violent video games and we think things are going to hell? They aren't actually killing people so that's really a step in the right direction, isn't it?

The problem is that in the U.S., violent crime is at an all time low. Bad shit happens, sure it does, but not like it used to, not per capital. We obsess ourselves with this trivia so we don't have to worry about the real problems we can't fix. We'll act all shocked and horrified that 10 year old girls are going out and getting pregnant. We'll start a moral crusade about that shit, but we don't get up in arms about the fact that 10 year old girls are CAPABLE of getting pregnant these days, do we? 100 years ago that wouldn't have been possible. 200 years ago a girl wouldn't have entered menses until she was 14 or so. Everyone in our society is too sedentary and as a result, young girls are hitting this benchmark early. It's nature's way of filling the void.

It's always been easier to bitch and whine about moral decline than to do something constructive that might have been hard and taken time. We thrive on fear because fear makes it OK for us to bitch about the wrong things and ignore the real issues in this world.