Illusion of Moral Decline

The Moral Decline illusion works because the world is complicated and the mind is in a hurry. Both facts are unlikely to change.

What the illusion teaches is not distrust of the eyes but respect for the gap between seeing and knowing. In that gap live most of our avoidable mistakes.

Consider the railway porter who has carried ten thousand suitcases. He knows what nobody packs: a plan for what happens after arrival.

In the end, life asks only whether we were awake while it happened. Carry it lightly. Ideas, like umbrellas, are useful only when actually opened.