Inquiry proposal

Makenzie Mooney
Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1104
13 October 2016

Morals lost. Whats gained?

There are a lot of different views on how morals work. Philosophers,
Psychologist, and religious leaders all differ in the different ways that they believe
morals came to be. In the normative sense, morality refers to a code of conduct that
would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions,
almost always including the condition of being rational. Morals can be viewed in many
different forms people born in baby boomer/generation X have a different set of morals
than that of millennials. One can see a change in morals first hand when looking at TV
shows from the 50s-60s to now. Earlier shows depicted men as the decision maker and
provider for the family. In the late 1950s show Leave It to Beaver, Beaver's mother is
rarely seen out of the kitchen, the stereotypical mother. Things have since changed
dramatically, in 2014, Disney Channel introduced their first openly gay couple, to many
people's disapproval, on the show Good Luck Charlie. This moral change over time
made me start to think about how my parents have different views on many aspects of

life when compared to me and if this is caused by my lack of traditional morals. This
brought me to my Inquiry question: why is there a decline in morals and where do
morals derive from? As I began to further research this topic I found some possible
answers that I would like to study more about; Millennials dont see their lack of
morality as being a lack but more of a gaining of different values above others and there
is not definite answer for where morality comes from although many people would say
otherwise. The thing that made me choose this inquiry question was it is almost never
ending. People try to study it but can never prove anything. Another thing that I thought
was interesting was how much influence that it has over people. Morality affects every
part of our lives no matter what we do it is a part of our decision-making process.
As I was searching this topic I found that some people think that the loss of moral
values has hurt society, others think that is has helped to expand our minds and accept
things easier. The part that makes this discovery weird is that the different mindsets can
almost fit perfectly into two separate groups with the millennials and acceptance in one
and the other generations and believing that the loss of morals has hurt society in the
other. I found many odd things about the loss of morality in millennials, like people
claiming that it is due to hook-ups, less religion, more acceptance, and technological
advances. Some of these make more sense than others but they all in a way add to the
big picture: millennials are lazy, rude, and entitled I felt a connection to this summed
up caption that I continuously saw throughout my search. I think that I could expand on
this and somehow connect the lazy, rude, and entitled baby boomer/generation x
definition for millennials to how they see the loss of morals in the same light, fixing a
broken system, a thing that not many of them understand. By including how other

generations view the millennials I will be able to reach a wider range of concepts that
can make my paper come together.
Morality is something thats true origin is long sought for. Sometimes it comes
from a higher power, a God. The Ten Commandments and the Holy Bible lay out the
right and wrongs of the earth. The loss of morality would directly be the loss of religion,
others think that we act on instinct and self-preservation or more of an evolution of
morality, and scientist like Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, who considered moral
judgment to be based on a process of explicit cognitive reasoning. While doing
research, I found a term called the Universalist moral scheme, which widely means if
two people have differing opinions on whether something is moral or not, they cannot
both be right, they may be both incorrect. This is not a favored understanding because
when talking about the Bible the Old testament and New Testament cannot both be
correct. I think that by adding in the Universalist Moral Scheme i will be able to connect
my reader to the ideology and add another example of the loss of morals due to the
passing of time. I also think that this part will give the reader some insight on something
that people normally don't view as a loss of morality but would technically be counted.
I am really just skimming the surface on the world-wide debate of
The bible (and other religious text) vs evolution with my question of morality. The hard
part of this debate is that you cant really have one without the other, the true meaning
of morality and the effects of losing it are extremely dependent on whether you are on
the bible or evolution side of the debate. This question is important to me in many ways,
being a millennial and a Christian. My hope for my inquiry will be to further expand my
readers thought process when doing something and to help my reader to understand

the differences in the two groups thought processes. Why do I deem one thing right and
other wrong? I know that my question cannot fully be answered but I feel as if that is
kind of the point. You cannot put a definition on something that is only mildly
understood.