The British Statesman, Edmund Burke, argued that the Enlightenment itself, with its project of replacing tradition and religion with reason, is the ultimate Source of the problem, and Burke's contemporary heirs continue to argue that secular humanism is at the root of today's social problems. But while conservatives may be right that there were important ways in which moral behavior deteriorated in the past two generations, they tend to ignore the fact that social order not only declines, but also increases in long cycles. This happened in Britain and America during the nineteenth century. It is reasonably clear that the period from the end of the eighteenth century until approximately the middle of the nineteenth century was one of sharply increasing moral decay in both countries. There are similar signs today that the Great Disruption that took place from the 1960s to the 1990s is beginning to recede.
Crime is down in the United States and other countries where it had become epidemic.
Levels of trust in major institutions have improved during the 1990s, and civil society appears to be flourishing. There is, moreover, plenty of anecdotal evidence that more conservative social norms have made a comeback, and that the more extreme forms of individualism that appeared during the 1970s have fallen out of favour. It is far too early to assert that these problems are now behind us. But it is also wrong to conclude that we are incapable of adapting socially to the technological and economic conditions of an age of information. All rights reserved.