50 | MAY 2 • 2024 
J
N

W

hat happens to 
national identity 
when everything 
holding a nation together 
disintegrates or disappears? 
What happens 
to society when 
the focus of a 
culture is on 
the self and 
its icon, the 
“selfie?” What 
happens when 
Google filters 
and Facebook friends divide 
us into non-communicating 
sects of the like-minded? 
And what happens to 
morality when the mantra is 
no longer “We’re all in this 
together” but rather “I’m free 
to be myself?”
These were some of the 
questions that prompted 
me to undertake a five-part 
series on Morality in the 
21st Century (which was 
broadcast on BBC Radio in 

2018). It was thrilling to 
engage in dialogue with 
some of the finest minds 
in Britain and North 
America as well as with 
some stunningly articulate 
teenagers from London and 
Manchester.
What emerged from 
this journey into the state 
of Western culture is that 
morality matters more than 
we commonly acknowledge. 
It’s all we have left to bind us 
into shared responsibility for 
the common good. 
Morality is our oldest and 
most powerful resource for 
turning disconnected “I”s 
into a collective “we.” It’s the 
alchemy that turns selfish 
genes into selfless people, 
egoists into altruists, and 
self-interested striving into 
empathy, sympathy and 
compassion for others.
It is no accident that 
the word “demoralization” 

means what it does: a loss 
of confidence, enthusiasm 
and hope. Without a shared 
morality, we are left as 
anxious individuals, lonely, 
vulnerable and depressed, 
struggling to survive in 
a world that is changing 
faster than we can bear and 
becoming more unstable by 
the day.
One symptom of this 
was starkly revealed in the 
news in 2018 that almost a 
quarter of 14-year-old girls 
in Britain had self-harmed 
in the course of a year. This 
is a deeply disturbing trend, 
but it will have come as no 
surprise to readers of iGen, 
the thoroughly researched 
study of American children 
born in or after 1995: the 
first generation to have 
grown up with smartphones. 
Jean Twenge, its author, is 
one of the participants in 
the radio series. She told 

me about her discovery that 
rates of self-ascribed life 
satisfaction among American 
teenagers plummeted after 
2012, while depression and 
suicide rocketed upward. 
Again, it was girls who were 
the more vulnerable.
Her view is that social 
media and smartphone 
addiction have played a 
significant part in this 
pathology. Young people 
were spending between 
seven and nine hours a 
day on their phones. The 
result has been a loss of 
social skills, shortened 
attention spans and sleep 
deprivation, but, above all, 
anxiety. Seeing their friends’ 
posts, they are subject 
to Fear of Missing Out 
(FOMO) — and constantly 
comparing themselves with 
the burnished images of their 
contemporaries. iGen’ers, she 
says, are “scared, maybe even 
terrified.” They are “both the 
physically safest generation 
and the most mentally 
fragile.”
The second result, charted 
by another participant in the 
series, the American social 
psychologist Jonathan Haidt, 
is the assault on free speech 
taking place in university 
campuses. His book is called 
The Coddling of the American 
Mind, subtitled, “How good 
intentions and bad ideas are 
setting up a generation for 
failure.”
It tells of how the new 
ideas of “safe spaces,” 
“trigger warnings” and “no 
platforming,” despite their 
good intentions, can screen 
out from university life 
views and voices that fail to 
fit the prevailing canons of 
political correctness. This is 

 Morality Matters – 
 Now More Than Ever 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

