"Self gratification is the new morality. Family values and self sacrifice are sneered at, children are viewed as a hindrance, consumers......even commodities to be bought and sold."

I read years ago of a very similar sentiment found scribbled on the walls of Pompeii. In fact, almost every society seems to have those who decry the moral decay and dissolution as THEY see it. In the Victorian era, when all was superficially prim & proper, there were vices and sin galore behind closed doors.

Sorry, ake, but you are projecting based on YOUR notion of
'what ought to be'. It is easy to point at society's problems and make lists of statistics. We had a fellow, Anthony Comstock here in the US in the 1870s-to-1890s who made a career of 'fighting vice & immorality' as **he** saw it. In the same era, we had John_Harvey_Kellogg, the cereal magnate, who wrote books and gave speeches on similar lines...(famous for suggesting that parents spy on their kids lest they indulge in "solitary vice"... and tie their hands if they caught 'em!).

I know I would not care to have YOU, ake, get the power that Comstock had, nor the prominence that Kellogg had.