6. The Moral Decline in the Words We Use

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/entertainment/2012/08/moral-decline-words-we-use/56142/

Researchers Pelin and Selin Kesebir analyzed the words “related to moral excellence and virtue” from 1901 to 2000. If the books are correct then it is possible there is a moral decline. They told The Atlantic Wire, "The words in a book reflect what is salient in the minds of a culture’s members, and simultaneously make these words even more salient. It’s a feedback cycle whereby people make cultural products and the cultural products make people…It would be a stretch from data to say that our findings reflect an actual moral decline in the U.S.—that people are less moral now. But we believe that even if not outright moral decline, a moral confusion would be an unsurprising consequence of this downward trend in the cultural salience of morality concepts." Analyzing words in books is a way to highlight the cultures consciousness. The Kesebirs twins say that people do not care about morality or virtue as much anymore. "These young people said, for example, that they would refrain from judging anyone who has cheated in an exam or stolen something, because everyone is entitled to their own moral opinion…We think that this extreme moral individualism and relativism can be partly explained by our findings—these young people have not been socialized into a shared moral framework, and they simply lack the vocabulary for it." They say that more virtue words, like honesty, selflessness and so on, have been somewhat replaced with individualism as a major factor. Words like unique, personalize, self, all about me, I am special, and I'm the best have been used more in American books between the years of 1960 and 2008. The Kesebirs say the findings are “disconcerting.” "Our findings fit in this broad cultural picture in which individual achievement and fulfillment are valued above almost everything else, and definitely above communal values.

The writer of the article, Jen Doll, uses this article to inform. The writer talks about the research done by the Kesebir twins. The writer also uses a bit of humor at the end despite the rather sad thought of American morality going downward. The writer ends with, “On the bright, moral-positive side: Knowing what we do and why we do it is necessary in order to improve ... or so we'd hope. Hope, that's a good word, right?”