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