moral decay

Borgia

I was just skimming through the awake magazines we got on last sunday. The cover story is about morals. The thing that immediately caught my eye was the explicite standpoint that the morals of this world went into decay in 1914.

It left me with a question: What morals? Of which time frame? Is it the victorian morals? What did really change, provided something changed at all because of the war. They quoted some guy saying something to the effect that before 1914 life had so much more to offer, indicating that everything had it's place, followed by a war that put everything upside down and the roaring 20 where those earlier conventions of discourse were hardly of any use anymore.

But, was it really that different? Did or did people not live together without being married? How about promiscuity? Never happened? How about murder, steeling, fraud, rape, you know, the lot.

I poses an official biography about one of my ancestors. He was a high ranking military officer in the early and mid 18 hundreds. As was custom in the country he served, he had a concubine, plus a dozen kids running in the backyard. Everybody did it, no exceptions. It did not hamper his career....what's new: may be the legal framework to facilitate "alternate lifestyles", but that only reflects what has been there for centuries.

The WT seems to forget that the war in the 17th century called the 30 year war brought the whole of Germany to ruin and people of Sweden, Danmark, France have also paid a dear price to finance the petty campaings of their souvereigns.During a period of 30 years hundreds of thousands of soldiers roamed, plundered and murdered the cities and countryside to finally extort a 7 million Taler (aprox. 58.500.000 troy ounces of silver eq. $ 775.000.000,=) indemnification of the bankrupt Holy Roman Empire. This sum was financed by bankers and some cities were still paying interest on these loans 200 years later. Ring a bell? Yes, the same happened right after WO I when Germany had to pay an indemnification of $ 33 billion.

Bavaria claimed to have lost during this war: 900 villages and 80.000 families. Talking about depopulation....given the fact that europe's population was smaller in size then than in 1914, the depopulation may have been worse than in those latter years (although size does matter). Some reports show a decrease in population in cities of 33% and in the countryside of 40%. Pommern, Mecklenburg, Schlesiën, Brandenburg, middle and south - west Germany counted a surviver quote of only a third. Compare that to WW I.

It would take about 100 - 200 years and a revolution in agriculture to surmount the impact of a depopulation of such an extent, not to mention it's impact on trade and economic infrastructure.

The upside was that although the war had been devastating enough, culture thrived, even boomed( Kepler, Böhme, etc.) A further secularisation took place thus separating church and state more and more. On top, the West-Fälische peace conference featured something new: a European order of states with principal equal rights and conflict solving through negotiations.

Sound familiar? Those kind of effects can be seen after the Great War as well.

So, the skindeep WT proza is not convincing. It is a call to emotions according to the usual WT public talk outline: The world is bad, so bad, depressingly bad. Did you know ....fill in something horrible about sickness, wars, famine, landmines, pollution and environmentals disasters, turn to revelation 21:3,4 and leave the hall hapily ever after. (Yawn)

Cheers

Borgia

jeanniebeanz

The WT wouldn't have anything to sell if the world wasn't always on the edge of destruction, so they make stuff up. I really enjoyed your post.

Inquisitor

Great post, Borgia.

The Society takes advantage of people with a shallow awareness of the world around them, whether it be knowledge of the past or the present. This is one of the countless reasons I will never give this religion a second chance. JWs possess an insular, artificial worldview from which their hope and religiosity are nourished. When rationally challenged, they betray their own claims that their faith is fact-based and not ruled by emotions.

INQ

Hellrider

They`re just lying again... Most history books aren`t to focused on the history of morality, but there has been written some. One thing that is for certain, is that in all centuries preceding the 20th, most guys went to see prostitutes on a regular basis. Normal sex before marriage was unheard of, so guys had to stick to brothels. That`s why there were a lot of them. Brothels, that is. And prostitutes.

Just in London alone, in the 19th century, these statistics may be of interest:

In 1857, William Acton published Prostitution, considered in its Moral, Social and Sanitary Aspects. He concluded that there were around 80 000 prostitutes in London... In the Metropolitan police district alone, there were 2825 brothels, and 8.600 prostitutes.

I don`t know how many people lived in London in 1857, but today there are about 8 million people in London. That number can`t have been more than 1/4 in 1857. So let`s say 2 million people lived in London in 1857. One million were women. About 350 000 of those were between the age of 20 and 50. In other words, one in four women between the age of 20 and 50 in London, were prostitutes.

So much for moral decay.

Borgia

Hellrider,

So true.

However, for right understanding: this thread is about the April 07 issue of Awake. The guy I referred to was Frederick Lewis Allen (page 5) quote after the (in)famous ...................

Errata: 7.000.000 Taler contained about 26 gramms of silver. Troy ounce is about 31,1 grams against a current price of about US $14,= per T.O. gives about 82 million USD. However, when compared to the price back then expressed in values of 1998 USD it appears that the ounce price has to be set around 170 - 180 USD. That would yield a 1 billion US $ indemnification. (source: http://goldinfo.net/silver600.html)

Cheers

Borgia

avidbiblereader

Good points Hellrider and thanks for the research.

The cover story is about morals. The thing that immediately caught my eye was the explicite standpoint that the morals of this world went into decay in 1914.

Just keep the 1914 doctrine out there, don't make too much of it, but keep it there without really saying anything, you are getting very sleepy, very sleepy, very sleepy, now on the sound of 3 you will believe everything I say. 1,2,3. Wake up!!

abr

unique1

Agreed.

metatron

Exactly! I couldn't agree more!

Do we still hold picnics down south while Negroes are lynched? Do we parade thru Western towns

holding body parts from 'Injuns'? Was human society threatened by a sexually transmitted disease

that killed people horribly and had no cure? ( syphilis) Was American society dominated by

cohabitation and casual marriages? ( Yes, during the Colonial period) Were men allowed to beat

their wives with any stick no wider than a thumb? ( the famous 'rule of thumb'?)

In Western nations, at least, morals are better than ever. Read "The World of the Gladiator"

for a contrast about life in Bible times.

metatron

KW13

To be honest, post 1914 or pre 1914 nothing has changed.

We've had wars ,scandals and disasters on scales we can't imagine all through history. The only thing that has changed is Technology which would obviously allow for bigger disasters.

Abandoned

"Ehhh, what was that young man? Molar decay? Well I think it's a shame how few people brush their teeth anymore. It doesn't take that long. We have fluoride in most of our drinking water, endless reminders about the dangers of cavities, and yet molar decay continues to plague our society...."

"Huh? What was that? You said moral decay? Ummm....never mind...."

(edit: this is dedicated to teh memory of Gilda Radner)

moral decay

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