Benightenment

Here is an article by Dennis Prager. It is short enough that to reprint the whole thing would take no more words than to describe it:

Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally

Moral standards have been replaced by feelings.

Last week, David Brooks of the New York Times wrote a column on an
academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral
vocabulary among most American young people. Here are excerpts from
Brooks’s summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. It was led by
“the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith”:

● “Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.”

● “When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds
of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described
problems that are not moral at all.”

● “Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering
things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a
partner.”

● “The default position, which most of them came back to again and
again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste.”

● “As one put it, ‘I mean, I guess what makes something right is how I
feel about it. But different people feel different ways, so I couldn’t
speak on behalf of anyone else as to what’s right and wrong.’”

● “Morality was once revealed, inherited and shared, but now it’s
thought of as something that emerges in the privacy of your own heart.”
(Emphases mine.)

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