Society’s Moral Decadence: Who’s to Blame?

“..Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned; the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity..” is part of a poem by William Butler Yeats written in 1919 and titled “the second coming” which became the prelude to a famous novel by Chinua Achebe, the famous Nigerian novelist. Although the eloquent novelist borrowed those lines in comparable within the context of an emerging new geo-political evolution within his local community, little did he imagine the same feeling of betrayal and destitution would return to mainland Britain in the 21st century.

It is arguable that things started falling apart in the sixties. When young men and women decided it was time to break out from parental confinement of too many rules and regulations. This was the proven, workable moral ethics which bonded local people and to a greater extent the larger society together. Some of those teenagers of almost half a century ago still recount their stories with nostalgia.

For some, it was a time of going with the flow; the undefined craze of popular music; the subsequent emergence of the so called culture of freedom and emancipation across the land. To others, a trying age.

Some called it “the swinging sixties”. It sure was, because a lot of issues swung into action and to the attention of the status quo. Some women egg heads that’d had the chance of a decent education decided they shouldn’t just be seen, but heard, loud and clear. Shouldn’t just be home makers and baby factories, but allowed to be equal with the traditional male breadwinner. Not just in the home, factories, but all endeavours of life.

Sure, the clarion call was heeded and women got what they wanted. The door was thrown open, wide open and so began the gradual decline of morality as most parents went to work, leaving their kids in the hands of somebody else, which is never the same.

So as both parents spent most days in offices and factories, increasing their economic wellbeing, so was the gradual decline of discipline. The teaching of right and wrong, what is acceptable behaviour within the home, which albeit transcends the wider community gradually became meshed in gray areas.