During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America’s youth.
Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.
It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues.
The interviewers asked open-ended questions about right and wrong, moral dilemmas and the meaning of life. In the rambling answers, which Smith and company recount in a new book, “Lost in Transition,” you see the young people groping to say anything sensible on these matters. But they just don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so.
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, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.
“Not many of them have previously given much or any thought to many of the kinds of questions about morality that we asked,” Smith and his co-authors write. When asked about wrong or evil, they could generally agree that rape and murder are wrong. But, aside from these extreme cases, moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner. “I don’t really deal with right and wrong that often,” is how one interviewee put it.
The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. “It’s personal,” the respondents typically said. “It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?”
Read the rest of this article in New York Times.
So sad. I feel … lacking words … “appalled” is not strong/adequate enough, maybe a mix of “disgusted” and “sad” with my own fellow countrymen and culture.
The new generation that “don’t have the categories or vocabulary to do so” will be the ones voting and participating in the American democracy and political and work sphere. What kind of workers & citizens will they be ?
By: Gabriel Borlean on 23 September 2011
at 5:55 pm
What else could we expect, Gabriel, in a secular age? We reap what we saw.
By: DanutM on 23 September 2011
at 6:03 pm
well … “to be honest” (using an American expression, as if what I had said before was not honest … go figure!) … this situation as described in the article would not be different than the 1920s generation, or the masses in the medieval times (with their superstitions) etc.
What this survey shows to me is how LITTLE influence the Church and the Christian Faith have in the US society … even though 40+ % of Americans go to church every Sunday, 86% believe in God. Yet of the Evangelical/born-Again ilk, only 8% have a Biblical worldview, and the churches are full of Bible-illiterates.
In a recent national poll ppl were asked, “What comes to your mind when you hear the word Evangelical?” … Top 2 responses: 1) they hate homosexuals and are against gay marriage 2) they want to take control of political power.
Few preachers focus on preaching Law & Gospel. Terms like ,”sin” “prematrital sex” “spousal fidelity” “honesty in your taxes” etc. have really falled off the radar. Yet some demagogous decide to lead the masses with hotly charged rhetoric and topics (called “sermons”) like the homosexual agenda, pro-Israel, environmentalism, etc. How about we get back to Jesus and what he taught.
Okay, enough venting for today.
By: Gabriel Borlean on 24 September 2011
at 11:48 am