Socrates: The question of whether there is a moral crisis is a question of a very perplexing variety. For instance, suppose it were on all fours with AIDS. There isn't any dispute as to whether there is such a thing as AIDs. Everybody knows that AIDS exists and the only question is, "Is there an epidemic"? Well, then the question is how do you define epidemic? Is it major numbers of people, serious and widespread, etc.,etc.,
The question of the moral crisis is first "Is there such a thing as a moral crisis?" How would we know for sure? What indicators should we be watching to see if such a thing as a moral problem exists in a society? And then what indications are there that it has reached
For most people, I suspect, the most important issues have to do with the moral basis of society, and the civic virtues which hold it together.
Gorgias:It might be wise to look at what the word crisis means. A political thinker once said if you are going to use the word "crisis", you want to use it advisedly, not for just any situation or problem, but only in a problematic situation in which
I guess we want to be careful we are not using the word crisis for a society when, in fact, it is not life-threatening.
And when people look at what is going on out there now and say "well there is a crisis every generation and their kids are simply rebelling the way they did. They don't see the situation as life threatening or as a possible collapse in the system.
So, how serious is the current problem, does it merit the medical term crisis or not? It would seem to me that a collapse of civic virtue is pretty obviously life threatening and warrants use of the term crisis.
Pythagoras:You would define crisis as a system collapse?
Gorgias: The possibility of a system collapse.
The medical analogy is one more dramatic way of using the term crisis. Another way would be to see it as a crisis of trust, a crisis of the legitimacy.
Parmenides: Then there is a crisis by the Chinese definition of crisis. The two characters that form the word crisis in Chinese ... one standing for something like danger and the other standing for opportunity. So in a crisis there is a chance of recovery, as was said, the possibility of a system collapse but the possibility that something positive could be rescued from the situation.
Gorgias: These two ideas of crisis fit together rather neatly.
Both also fit with Charles Maier's definition of crisis as a "a precarious systemic state hovering between decomposition and a rallying of collective energy." If the society emerges it is transformed not just restored.
Socrates: If there is no longer any trust at all in the institutions, wouldn't it be right to say that they are in danger of collapse? If trust could be reestablished perhaps there is the opportunity for recovery, but obviously it would take a real transformation for that reestablishment of trust.
Pythagoras: This definition suggests to me also the need to be clear about what we mean about moral crisis if we define it in terms of a system collapse.
Based on the idea that a crisis is a system collapse or a crisis in trust, it certainly seems to me that there is a moral, or perhaps a spiritual crisis taking place.
Pythagoras: I would see the crisis to consist in the breakdown in the system of our polity, in a sense, in the whole fabric of government of democratic decision making, how we make collective decisions for the common welfare and the common good. Collective decisions now are based more and more on interest group, power politics. We have lost sight of the common good as a reference point.
Parmenides: In order to determine if there is a crisis we might think a little bit more about some of the specific institutional difficulties that are said to be in crisis.
For example, I would like to hear people's opinions on the moral crisis as it applies to the educational situation. Is the danger a possibility of collapse and what is the opportunity? Why is the educational system in such disrepair and what is going on there?
Meno: If we are looking at institutions, I also think some more detailed comment on the religious institutions is needed, where they are going and what they are doing, what's happened with some of the institutions like the Social Gospel and why did they disappear and so on? Just to help to think more concretely about the problems involved and in order to better think of a solution.
Thrasymachus: You might want to factor in a third major institution which some were discussing -- the health care or medical care delivery system. It is a kind of paradigm case of a serious problem in the body politic.
Parmenides: And probably the welfare system ought to be conjoined with that. And I think that the phenomenon of the paramilitary militias, we can argue about how significant a phenomenon that really is in the U.S. But that would suggest a crisis in civil order of some sort.
Plato: Well, the militia problem feeds into problems with the criminal justice system. If people feel the government is not protecting them, they organize private militias. When there was a lot of bomb tossing into saloons in pubs in London, somebody said, " Every man's his own magistrate," and I thought that was a wonderful statement about the Hobbesian "state of nature" where there is a "war of all against all." When society breaks down Hobbes vision becomes real indeed.
Plato: So we have as indications of many institutions in jeopardy that would indicate crisis, the education system, the religious system, the health care system, the criminal justice system, the democratic decision making process. Where to start?
Comments of any sort are welcome but help on the following points would be much appreciated:
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