The idea of a "moral decline" is linked to the narratives we create about the past, in which events are idealised or simplified. On the other hand, human beings have a tendency to analyse events in terms of how we would like things to be. This example was published last year in the Times of India Reader's Blog:
"Moral values are fading these days. […] The culture is degrading day by day due to the effect of the western influence and movies which often mislead the younger generation.
[…] The low moral values have created unrest and turmoil in society. […] We can dream of a kind and honest world only if we nurture moral values and keep our ethos."
Such arguments, with many variations, can be found everywhere nowadays. The only problem is that similar arguments can be found in texts from many other periods in the past.
THE MYTH OF “DECLINE AND FALL” by Edward Champlin (1996).
"Everyone knows that the Roman Empire “declined and fell.” The title of Edward Gibbon’s 18th-century masterpiece The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is part of Western cultural consciousness. There is something deeply thrilling about the notion: Rome, the largest political and economic unit in the world before the year 1000, fell; are we too doomed to lose our power, our culture, even our memory?"
"But the notion of decline is an extremely difficult one. A political unit may indeed “fall” because of complex political, social, and economic reasons. The real problem comes when we, like the Romans, do not understand these reasons and, like the Romans, equate decline with moral decline."
"In the end, “Rome” did not decline; it changed, as all cultures must. "
I think the rest is obviously bs, btw, as the absence of moral values doesn't create unrest and turmoil (if anything that absence would be pacifying), nor do I think that a kind and honest world depends on there being strong moral values.
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