Civilizations come and go. As things are going, ours is probably no exception and will go as others before it did. But it does not have to be that way. Barring a natural cataclysm that could send us the way of the dinosaurs, there is no reason our society could not continue on indefinitely. Even improve.
 
That would, however, mean applying the SOLVER principles with a particular emphasis on the long-view. All actions and policies now must be measured in terms of their effects into perpetuity. Our problem, and that of every civilization that has preceded us, is that humans tend to behave as all other animals do: We want all we can get right now, with little regard for what we leave for our children and theirs.
 
The Constitution with its idealistic principles tied to practical rules, demonstrates that we have the capacity to formulate a civilization with staying power. That's because every aspect of it was crafted to protect the future. However, once the document was framed and nailed on the wall to display how smart we could be, we turned our backs and once again set about unleashing our shortsighted selfishness, under the guise of progress, compassion, fairness, and rights to every licit pleasure. The progressive view today does not defend and embrace standards and rules, it dissolves them. It is now considered enlightened in some circles to grant every person practically total freedom and unaccountability.
 
This track denies nature. All of nature has rules. Although unwritten and unspoken, in a primitive and savage way, right and wrong still exist there. The alpha wolf decides what is right in the pack because it possesses the physical and psychological power to exert its will. A tree may dictate what is right by exuding allelopathic chemicals into the soil out to its root perimeter in order to extinguish competing plants. A lion takes prey from a hyena and a hyena takes it from a leopard because that is the order of things and therefore the right thing. Instinct and physical attributes decree this form of morality in nature.
 
Society, the in-your-face conglomeration of masses of people possessing tools and weapons that can inflict damage far beyond that of mere fang and claw, requires lots of rules and lots of alpha enforcement. Otherwise, the population would regress to a might-makes-right brutal anarchy.
 
Today, even obvious crimes like murder, theft, rape, and business graft are being excused with clever manipulation of the legal system, 'understanding,' and 'compassion.' In large part, such accommodation of sociopathic behavior derives from a belief that we do not really control our destiny but are victims of our circumstances: genetics, upbringing, race, and socioeconomic class. This belief, in turn, springs from an even more fundamental belief that we are mere matter and as such do not have control. In other words, a decision to murder someone is really not our decision, but could be the consequence of chemical reactions and electrical discharges in our brains that in turn obey laws of physics and chemistry. This materialistic mind set could lead us to think that every movement, every act, should make us want to exclaim, "Well I'll be darned, look what I just did. I just don't know what came over me!" In other words, we have no free will because we are victims of neurological biochemistry. If we have no free will there is no point in punishing anyone for any act they may perform.
 
This belief in materialism, and the question of whether we have free will, are discussed at length in the companion book. So I will not explore it at this point beyond identifying these issues as underlying causes of much of the emerging attitudes toward rules and accountability. For present purposes, it is clear that we at least seem to make choices and have free will, and that some of those choices could clearly result in the demise of civilization.
 
It is evident to most people that crimes against others should be policed and punished. We want to be safe when we walk down the streets and sleep in our homes. But our efforts to get at the causes of crime are almost totally misdirected. Rather than encourage true intellectual and skill development, society attempts to lower standards, accommodate, and excuse. Typical examples are the public school system shifting downward the requirements for high school graduation, and colleges being forced to admit students with lower test scores than others. Rather than tighten controls on the media and entertainment so that standards of decency and morality are protected, there is a race to remove virtually all limits. The same people who would argue that we are victims of our circumstances seem to overlook that what people see and hear influences what they come to believe. What they believe is what they do.
 
But never mind all that. Ratings have become king. People respond more enthusiastically to horror, shock, fear, and celebrities than they do to good news and beneficial instruction. News casts will spend weeks on the death of Princess Diana, but ignore educating the world on the steps necessary to change the circumstances of hundreds of thousands dying of disease and starvation. The benefits to Iraqi citizens and the world from the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is virtually never heard while the media pummels the world audience with only the costs of effecting that change. The good news of people lifting themselves and their fellow man up to make a better world are ignored, while the worst of news is dredged from the depths of human depravity and featured over and over. The U.S. casts the recent Russian pressure on media to feature at least fifty percent good news as draconian, but it is at least a sane step in the right direction. Those permitted access to the public airways must lift society up, not just drag it down for the sake of dollars.
 
The end of civilization will not likely come because society degrades to the point that overt crime against fellow citizens is openly permitted. It will more likely result from ignoring the causes that erode the rule of law, such as short-sighted socialism discussed in the previous chapter, and the 'renorming' of social mores with entertainment that celebrates such things as vulgarity, violence, lewdness, indiscretion, disrespect, and open sex.
 
Aren't there lines we all sense that should not be erased? A proof that these lines do in fact exist is the emotional release from swearing and the humor of a dirty joke. People everywhere use these psychological tools that depend upon forbidden zones. Somehow we intuitively know what is off-color and profane. We sense what lends itself to a higher human standard and what degrades and threatens society.
 
When rock-n-roll began, Elvis's gyrating hips drove traditionalists and parents crazy. Sodom and Gomorrah had returned. Kids scoffed. The old fogies just didn't get it. For the young, rock-n-roll was way too cool and certainly no more than innocent fun. But today there is filthy language in rap and hip-hop, and sexually explicit entertainment even our young children can easily access. Try as I may not to be a mossback, there seems a clear a difference by way of degree between Elvis and music today that celebrates demeaning sex, murder, civil disobedience, and every manner of vulgar language.

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At the present pace, where will it end? There are now films and video games of rape, murder, and torture. They are justified by some as 'artful free expression.' Really. Aside from not being able to discern any conceivable value in such entertainment, might it not be numbing and create insensitivity, particularly in our impressionable children? Since children know that adults—moms and dads—create such entertainment, might they not feel that such behavior is validated?
 
We keep edging ever closer to the Roman Coliseum. In the special front row seats there, a person could enjoy hearing bones break, getting sprayed with some real blood, or having a lopped-off appendage land in the lap as a souvenir. The Romans worked hard to prevent boredom among the citizens. For over 400 years the cruelty and gore for man and beast in the arena took on every imaginable grotesque creative form in order to maintain the interest of audiences. The Roman Empire is no more. The moral degradation of its society and its failure to think long-range is in large part the cause of its demise.1
 
Clear standards seem to be vanishing fast in our entertainment 'coliseums.' There is now practically bare-fisted, few-holds-barred bloody competitive fighting on television. There is full-contact teen dancing that looks exactly like the sexual act. Gay and straight TV shows where free for all sex is the theme glut programming. Erection commercials are interspersed in family television programming. We're also treated to bare breast exposure, bumping and grinding, ignited horse flatulence, and bestiality jokes during the family formatted Super Bowl. The new wave of reality shows seems to have no limit in their reach for stupidity, shock, and horror. Now the average American TV-drunk home has more television sets than people so that none of this quality programming will be missed.
 
In the mayhem of shock and titillation, it is hard to get the needle on our moral compasses to point in any clear direction. Violence is now even applauded with a perverted, bloodthirsty fiendishness. If in doubt, pan the audiences at professional boxing, ultimate fighting, wrestling, and when fighting mayhem breaks out during the more tame sporting events. Consider even the packaging of war as "shock and awe" by government and media.
 
Sex, an act meant for committed adults capable of shouldering the responsibilities of family, is presented as a mere recreational thrill-ride for people of all ages. Even the President is excused on television when he gets caught on company time, on company property, swinging from the Oval Office chandeliers with an intern. Children get to hear about thongs, cigars, and sex act details that make parents blush, while the President is given a pass by large segments of the population because "sex is a personal matter."
 
The media, pandering to the cheap-thrill seeking masses, engage in a never-ending cycle (more like a downward spiral) of profiteering one-upmanship. Each new provocative display raises the ante and challenges the competition to push the envelope even further. The goal is to shut down the thinking forebrain of the audience and enliven the base instinct hindbrain.
 
It might not be quite so alarming if a large and profitable part of the audience were not children. They need education, rules, and time to develop conscience, not alluring entertainment. They are the society of the future and should be protected and nurtured accordingly. Instead they are being brainwashed with confusing smut, vulgarity, and every form of base biological, violent, and criminal urge. Without sufficient life context they are easily led to believe that that is what life is about, how it is celebrated, and what they should aspire to.*
 
Schools are tightly controlled because they shape the emerging buds of future society. In the larger classroom of the world, the media is emerging as the school. As leisure time increases, people feed more and more on entertainment. What a wonderful opportunity through the impact of story to raise the public's sense of right, dignity, conscience, reasons and ethics. 
 
The old time, so-called corny movies were clear attempts to do just that. The good guys always won and everyone was decent except the bad guys. How far (down) we have come. Entertainers should see their unique powers of influence as something other than a profit opportunity to promote depravity and to pander to those who evidently love to be dumbed-down. But for too many, as George Bernard Shaw observed, "Virtue is insufficient temptation."
 
How do we judge what is or is not socially redeemable and will serve the long-term stability of society? Use the SOLVER extrapolation principle. Ask whether we will advance or degrade if the action being promoted were universally practiced. Will open and free sex without regard for age, gender, or responsibility and commitment create a better society? Will the celebration of crime, filthy language, fighting, disrespect for parents and authority, sexism, racism, ageism, and the like create a better and lasting society?
 
The answer is not difficult.
 
Vulgarity, violence, crudeness, disrespect, and easy sex are marketed like candy. Will this moral slippage lead to the end of civilization? All we can say is that it does not seem to be improving it. However, there has also been some trade-off between virtues lost and those gained. Perhaps the disassembling of arbitrary puritanical standards is necessary for society to find their moral footing and build something more solid and meaningful. So long as we do not get mired in this moral floundering, end up concluding that there is no right course, and that nothing really matters, we may escape our doom. Maybe the b-movies where the good guys wear white and the bad guys always lose is a fantasy. But it is a good one; an ideal that we should set before society to reach toward.
 
*I recently watched a movie called Idiocracy. It is available on DVD and I would encourage you to watch this humorous look at the dumbing down of society and where we are headed.