Every age thinks it is in crisis.

Things have got worse, people say, clucking their tongues; crime is up, the quality of life down, the world in a mess.

People of religious bent are inclined to think that their personal epoch is so bad that it probably marks the end of the world.

Such sentiments are misleading because they premise a belief that somewhere or sometime the world had something which has since been lost---a cozy, chintzy, afternoon-teatime era when there was neither danger without nor unease within.

But when we begin rummaging among these myths to provide solutions to present day troubles, which is what moralizers do, we are in trouble indeed.

~~~A.C. Grayling~~~