Half Century Hangout
We are Half Century Hangout where different perspectives make for better discussions.! John, Luke and Chuck are three guys who grew up differently but became good friends with a lot to talk about. On this show three unique perspectives are brought to the table where we dive into everything from current events to life's big questions. We might not always see eye to eye... But that's exactly why we're here. So grab a seat and join us for honest conversation, unexpected insights, and a few friendly arguments.
Half Century Hangout
Fish Stories: Is Moral Decline Real Or Imagined
The line between ethics and morals seems increasingly blurred in our rapidly evolving world. What drives our moral compass when objective truth feels negotiable? The Half Century Hangout crew tackles these profound questions with candor and curiosity.
We begin by establishing a crucial distinction—ethics generally represent externally defined standards governing professions and organizations, while morals emerge from within as personal principles guiding individual conduct. This difference becomes particularly significant when examining the perception of "moral decline" that seems to plague every generation's view of the next.
Has society truly experienced moral deterioration, or are we simply viewing the world through a different lens than our predecessors? We explore how the shift from black-and-white thinking to acknowledging life's gray areas might be mistaken for declining values. The evolution of media offers a fascinating case study—from Walter Cronkite's factual reporting to today's opinion-driven news landscape that monetizes information and polarizes audiences.
Family structures have transformed dramatically, potentially altering how moral values transfer between generations. With greater physical and emotional distance between grandparents, parents, and children, traditional channels for moral instruction have fundamentally changed. Meanwhile, workplaces now accommodate up to four generations simultaneously, each bringing different ethical expectations about everything from punctuality to communication.
Perhaps most thought-provoking is our examination of "moral facades"—how selective memory paints certain eras as morally superior while conveniently forgetting their significant failings. The conversation culminates in a powerful reminder that clearly defining your moral principles prevents creating convenient "trap doors" to escape accountability when faced with difficult choices.
Like us on your favorite podcast app and join our next conversation as we continue exploring life's meaningful questions with humor, wisdom, and genuine curiosity.
Welcome back to the Half Century Hangout. So what's been going on in y'all's world?
John:Just celebrated Mother's Day.
Chuck :Yeah.
John:It was a great, great day to celebrate mothers.
Chuck :How did you and Kylie celebrate, lynn?
John:We celebrated by making supper for Lynn Nice.
Chuck :Yeah, it was good.
John:It was a good supper. Had steaks and pasta. High roller over there, Luke, that gated community he lives in. It was part of a quarter of a cow. I think you got half of one didn't you?
Chuck :Yeah, I did. Yeah, we had a good time too. We had the kids over Most of the kids. My daughter was unable to make it.
John:How was Becky over Mother's?
Luke:Day. It was good. The kids came and took care of things. I said my kids are old enough and you know what? We decided it was time for them to step up.
John:So they did.
Luke:Did they make you?
John:breakfast.
Luke:No, I still made breakfast. I made Becky and I breakfast, which was good they don't come over that early so we did that and then just kind of hung around. Really, the other thing that I have to add with all this is that the score is one to nothing. What?
John:are you keeping score of? Are you talking about a soccer game?
Luke:Pope's from Chicago and Pope's from Green Bay. One to nothing. Baby Go Bears.
Chuck :Duh Bears. So one of the coolest things that I. After they announced Pope Leo XIV, they had a picture of him when he was Archbishop, I guess, in Chicago.
John:They had a picture of him at a Cubs game oh, that's cool, it was a Sox game. I thought it was a Cubs game he's not a Cubs fan the Cubs claimed him, they claimed him first, but he's not he's probably been to one but it was a Sox game he was at the World Series in 05 when they won so do you know what his first profession was, before he became even a priest? He was a teacher.
Luke:He was a math teacher. He was a math teacher.
John:And then going to law school and he decided to become a priest.
Chuck :I saw an interview where they interviewed his brother.
John:Yeah, brother was a Catholic school principal, huh.
Chuck :Retired.
Luke:I did hear that he made one of his first large decisions as Pope and he said that it's called soccer now, not football, not football.
John:I don't think that has anything to do with the faith. I'm pretty sure he probably didn't do that.
Luke:They had it on Sunday morning the other day where he said his brother was trying to call and he finally picked up the phone. He's like, why don't you ever answer your phone? That's his brother. It's hilarious, it's great stuff, it's super cool. I think the one thing that was neat that I was talking with my wife about was that I think sometimes here we always think that we're ahead of the game in America.
Luke:We're the best whatever, for the first time ever, we are having the discussions about one of our residents, one of our citizens, being the Pope. All these other countries have had this already. We think it's kind of cool.
John:Oh, he's from.
Luke:Chicago, we're the last ones.
Chuck :Even if you're not catholic, you're still involved in the conversation hilarious.
Chuck :It's kind of fun. Good stuff though it is, it is good. Yeah, well, guys, I wanted to chat about something today that I think is extremely important and, uh, that's kind of a big subject, but it's ethics, and I think, before we even jump into this subject, that we got to be careful of on the front end is that we don't become like holier than thou or self-righteous, because it's easy to sit up on top of a mountain and point out the flaws of everyone else, but I just think it's a discussion worth having.
Luke:I'd like to start out with a question between you guys and you answer it for me, because when we first talked about it, I think this is a very important piece of what it is is what is the difference between morals and ethics? Okay, because a lot of times those terms are intertwined and used together. But, john, what do you think, what would you say are the difference between morals and ethics?
John:Well, I think ethics are usually externally defined standards, and morals are kind of those personal principles we live by, those written on our hearts, morals, more than ethics, which are defined for us. What would you say, chuck?
Chuck :Sort of similar to that, but maybe with a little nuance to it. I think ethics is a system that you enter into, like there's an ethical system, like you know. I don't know if, did you take ethics in college? I took ethics in college and I didn't know, but I'm still. I still don't know. I didn't really do the research on it, but it is ethics, a part of the philosophical school, John.
John:According to some, ethics is is a part of philosophy yeah philosophy that we kind of live by.
Chuck :So I think ethics is kind of this overarching thing I don't even know really what word to give to it but then morals hold up ethics, so it's like it the more morality would be a pillar that holds up ethics. I don't know if that's the right way to look at it, but that's kind of the way I've always thought of it.
Luke:Well, I mean, that's fine, it's what you think. That's why I asked the question because I think everybody looks at it a little different. I've really always looked at it like ethics are extrinsic and morals are intrinsic, so the morals come from within and the ethics are placed there by something or someone or whatever it would be.
Luke:That's kind of the way that I've always looked at it. I don't necessarily disagree with the fact that you said that your morals may uphold the ethics that you live by, but I think that sometimes we might get stuck somewhere. I mean not me, it's never necessarily happened to me but if you joined or you had a career path that somehow your morals didn't line up with the ethics of that organization might be a little problem.
John:Well, and we talked about values. I think values are a part of that conversation too. What? What are our values? How do they match what the company's values are? So, and how does that intertwine with the ethical decisions that we make as we go along?
Chuck :So I think there's like a system of ethics with each different little thing. So like I think the medical field has a system of ethics, like the Hippocratic oath right, I think education has a system of ethics business ethics, medical ethics, correct Educational ethics, yeah.
Luke:But I think, within those there, within those, you still have honesty, sure you know so, as you look at and as you introduced it, as we're going to talk about morals, how do you see morals playing out in this environment that we talk about? Where do morals come in? Where do you see it, yeah, being important? Where do you see it having the most impact? What do you see it being important? Where do you see it having the most impact? What do you see with that?
Chuck :So I think there's this perception that the ethics of a country, or the ethics of a city or whatever, has been declining over the course of time.
Luke:The ethics are or the morals are.
John:Well, I thought we were talking about ethics. I think morals are harder to define for me.
Luke:Well, I think, because they're different, right, right, and so we might say the morals are declining, like if there's a moral decline a lot of people would say it that way, because, at least the way that I look it, it's hard for me to say that there's an ethical decline, because the ethics aren't derived from individuals, they're derived from some group whatever that is, they're defined by someone else. Now you might say, like you said, if there's a moral decline, like we've heard that word, We've heard that term.
Luke:I mean my dad used to say that, right, like there's a moral decline. Do I think that there's a moral decline? I think I would probably throw the question back and say how would you even measure that? How would you look at it and determine if you think there is a moral decline? How would you know? What would, what would your indicators be that there is a moral decline?
Chuck :So maybe that's the question is do you guys think there has been a moral decline in the last 20 to 40 years?
John:Go ahead. I think that's where we need to be careful, because that's a judgment, that's a judgment call, and I think that each generation may think that there's a moral decline, maybe because it's different than what they were taught or grew up or what the morals were at the time that that they were in the the world's different.
Chuck :Let me push back on that just a little bit. I think it's okay to make a judgment call, Okay, I think we can judge whether something is moral or not moral based upon an objective truth. But I don't. I think where we kind of get things a little bit hairy is when we start condemning.
John:A generation or people. Correct, okay.
Luke:I think that the word that I struggle at and I realize it's a semantic kind of debate, it kind of lends itself to that is that if you're talking about a moral decline, does that mean there's less morals? Morals that are in place don't live up to what we think they should be in, what they mean or what the meat of them is. Does that make sense?
Chuck :Yeah, I think it's probably both.
Luke:Is the bar lower, or is everybody going under the bar? Because I think that's where the judgment piece that I would struggle with comes with a little bit is that let's just say that you have this moral. Whatever it is, let's just say that it's trustworthiness.
Luke:Let's just say something like that, okay, and I believe that it's also a moral that I would have. But you know, there's people that would say, well, trustworthiness means you're telling the truth, you're doing these things right, you're. You're honest, you're open, you're. You're constantly doing telling people the right things, the real things. You're telling the truth, you're doing these things right, you're honest, you're constantly telling people the right things, the real things. You're not, you know whatever. Do the people that say oh well, you know what? I didn't lie to you, I just didn't tell you that part Like a lie of omission, right, as we?
Chuck :call that.
Luke:Is that a lessening of that moral compass? Is that a lowering of the bar? Or is it the fact that maybe you have three morals, where you have trustworthiness, something else and something else, and I only have two? Is that a moral decline? You know what I'm saying? That's two different things to me.
Chuck :Yeah, I think I know what you're trying to toss out there.
John:Why don't you explain that? What do you think he means for?
Chuck :me? Yeah. So what I think he means is is are there fewer, fewer morals that people are living by, or are there this set of morals that have been set up by the subjective truth and people are failing to reach that? Is that kind of the what you're saying truth and people are failing to reach.
Luke:That Is that kind of the what you're saying. It's two things.
Luke:It's either it's a level of the number of morals you would have or that you uphold, or is the meat of that moral being degraded somehow to the point now that it doesn't mean what it meant 30 years ago? That's kind of what I would lean more toward a little bit, just personally. And, john, I think you alluded to it is that over the years, over generations, something 50 years ago probably meant something different than it does now. I mean, look at, let's just take an example of the news. Okay, 50 years ago people walter concrete cronkite and believe everything that he said, because you know what it was factual. It was boom, boom, boom. That was it. He had a reputation yeah that's what everybody do
Chuck :you know, when that changed when did it change, john John?
John:1979. I just heard a story on this. It was Simon Sinek was talking on his podcast and he said in 1979, I think it was David Koppel was covering the Iran-Austria crisis and they figured out that, wow, if you had a good story time because they were reporting the news. Well, now the news channels started yeah, exactly, they started to monetize it. So now what you see is one side or the other, right.
Luke:So now what you see is one side or the other right. So if I'm looking at that from a moral compass, if I look at it and I say back, then people put a lot of weight into what they believe to be the absolute truth. All right, now I think that people don't necessarily put that much weight into it because they can look at this thing, they can look at this it, because they can look at this thing, they can look at this thing, they can look at this thing, they can look at this thing and they can form their own kind of thing, which might have its merits, which I think is a different discussion, but I think that that lessens the impact of what that moral that people 50 years ago held. That's just kind of the way that I look at it.
Chuck :Yeah, I think what you're, if I hear you're right and I I've been using this word objective. I think that there's this thing where people don't believe there's an objective way to do things anymore. There's not an objective truth to live by. There's all these little, you know, subjective things that you know. Okay, if I don't like, I can lie about things if I want to, because if this person disagrees with me or condemns me or holds me accountable for that lie, then I've always got this person to uphold and encourage me. So I think it can be a slippery slope in that judgmental and condemning type of thing that you're talking about, John.
John:The world was somewhat more black and white and it's become a lot more gray and you have to learn how to discern what the truth is, or what's right and what's not, I mean what's being reported.
Luke:I think a lot of times people say you know how kids hate it when we say back in the day, right, I think what we look at at our age is that we seemingly at least for myself look back and everything seemed much simpler, yeah, okay.
Luke:So when we look at that sometimes I think that that is what lends itself to that conversation of the moral decline, because we were able to identify things back then, like you said, john, more black and white, like we could put this here and put this here. Now it's more complex. Our world is ever changing, which, again, this isn't a bad thing. It's just that it's adjusting what I think morals. If people were looking at it where it's going, I think that people our age generally would say I know there's some research about it, I know you probably have some numbers with it, but I think that people our age would probably say that there's a moral decline just because of the look of it, just because they see all this stuff going on that never happened before, just because they see all this stuff going on that never, happened before.
Luke:When was the first time that you ever saw on a TV show a man and a woman sleep in the same bed, whether they were married or not? It was the Brady.
Chuck :Bunch.
Luke:Everything else, lucy and Ricky Mary Tyler, all of them, they were all separate. It was the separate beds. Yeah, they were always separate beds.
Chuck :It's so much different if you look at the moral side of things and what people put up as their morals, would you say that there are people living today who have less morals, or that they just aren't living up to the morals that have been expected of them? I mean, what's your thoughts on that and how do you put meat to those bones?
John:The morals maybe are different. I don't know if you could say it's a decline or an increase, or how do you measure that decline? I think that's what Luke said how do we measure that decline? And then we can say, okay, yeah, there was a decline, or no, there's not a decline in in the way that we are treating each other, or whatever I mean. Is that how you're going to define it, or is it defined by whether you show up to work on time? Is it defined by how you make your money?
John:Is it defined by whether companies are socially responsible or not. Companies are socially responsible or not. Is it defined by how you are preserving the natural resources we have? So how do we define that moral decline?
Luke:I think the one thing that we can look at is that morals can vary from one person to another. Yeah, so when you ask that question, are they getting less? I think what the question that I have behind that is is that, as time goes, all right, so over the last 50 years, as the times have changed, should that change? Or is it okay that the moral, the way that we view the actual moral, has changed and adapted with the change in times? Because I think that it's. It's kind of like I could use an example of. I'll just use an example of the Bible. Okay, when the Bible was written, it was in its first version, right, it was here in the languages that it was written in, in Hebrew, and all the things that it was written in.
Luke:As time went and people you know, translated it, moved it into their languages and, doing it, the stories changed a little bit. Sometimes the versions as they came through, the story itself really didn't change, but maybe the way that it was told. They changed some words to make it easier for people to understand it as time went. Sometimes, as a preacher, I'm sure that you have to use a story from the Bible in a way and move it a little bit to help people understand the concept of it, and that's the key, I think is what drives the morality of the Bible, is the objective truth that's hidden within the stories.
Luke:And I think that that's what I'm trying to say is that the morals, if you just use them, we'll use the same one we used before, which is truth.
Luke:That would be a moral right Right. The idea of truth is the same, but the moral as somebody now might view it might be a little different than the way that they viewed it 50 years ago. Even though the center truth is still there, it's still the same thing. I guess the question for me would be is do people now younger than us, one or two generations below us, do they look at that absolute truth the same way? That's where I would say no.
Chuck :That's where I would say no too.
Luke:I would say that it takes a different look, because I think that the focus has changed from kind of a you know where morals used to be this real positive, bring people together, happiness, be kind to people, that kind of thing. And I think that that has changed a little bit to the point that maybe it's not just our focus on those morals but it's focusing on different ones, because the times have changed so much. I mean, do you really think that the times have changed that much?
Chuck :No, I think that's you know I read an article before we actually started this that you have actual behavior based upon perceived behavior, and the perception of decline was way higher than what the actual decline is according to a Gallup poll that was released in 2020.
Luke:But what's the decline that they're measuring?
Chuck :Yeah, and it doesn't really get into a whole lot of of that, but it was just saying the perception of decline of the majority of the responders was higher than what the actual behavior was. Despite those perceptions, it seems to have remained stable over time, as opposed to getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.
Luke:And I would probably tend to agree with that, only because I think that it's not necessarily that it's declining. It's the way that we're viewing it, because we're viewing it through a different set of eyes, because the times have changed.
John:Our lens is different.
Chuck :Our perception is different. I think that's it, and you bring up an interesting point, though. When you talk about you mentioned absolute truths Like what is it that is driving morality among you, know us, or among current generations, Because you brought up the Bible? There are truths that are found in that Bible that I think people have, you know, lived by and died for over the years. But back in the 1800s, you know, there were people who had the same color skin that I have, that were using the Bible to justify their sins slavery, you know.
Luke:Yeah, I think one of the things for me that I look at as to where, like you said, where do those absolute truths come from, or where do your morals come from. I'm a pretty firm believer that many of those things are taught to you from a very young age. Taught to you from a very young age from your family, from your parents, from, your grandparents, from church, whatever it is, but from a very young age.
Luke:And I believe that over the years, as time has gone, as we know, there's been, you know, a lot of research done on it, but there has been a breakdown of what the family may look like compared to what it did 50 years ago most of the time.
Luke:And so those breakdowns have, I think, personally affected the way that the morals are being taught or handed down to people that are younger than us, because it's not, the world's not the same and the makeup of the families and the way that things are is not the same.
Luke:There's great research done on how different it is now with the two-generation, three-generation interaction among families, how it's much less now than it used to be, because a lot of times maybe there's distance between the youngsters and the grandparents or the grandparents aren't involved in the lives as they were when we were younger, or those types of things where that has changed that interaction, where those values and where those things I said, values, where those morals come from, because I think that's important I think that it happens more. I think that the family unit is a large portion of where at least your initial morals come from and what your base is like, what your base is, and then as you get older, we all know you know you kind of take your own path and you do your things, but it's still there and then it's passed on again from you onto your kids, your grandkids, those things as you go.
John:And we've. We've talked about that and you talked about generations not being together. We have so many generations in our workplace now up to four generations in a workplace. How does that affect, maybe, the ethics? People of some generations may think it's okay not to show up to work on time. I don't know. People of some generations may think you got to be there and you got to punch in at the exact time.
Chuck :You're not 15 minutes early, you're late.
John:If you're not 15 minutes early, you're late, and there are some people and there are some cultures too, because I've worked with some of those. Absolutely that are that are, and you know you're there 15 minutes early and you're waiting to punch in until that second turns yeah rather than taking an extra 15 minutes to punch in and I also.
Chuck :I also think, before we kind of end this discussion, I also think that there's a facade of morals. Like everybody back in the 1950s thought that that was the golden era, right, but there was a lot of crap going on. It wasn't the best for everyone 100%, and I think that's universal.
Luke:I think it's universal through time. It is now. I mean, there's people now that think this is the best time of anything, the glory age of technology, or whatever you want to say, or the 80s or the 2000s.
John:I mean, everything has its positives.
Luke:Every generation, every decade, every century, whatever you want to go by, everything has its positives, but everything also has its negatives and a lot of times that's human nature that we remember. We want to remember the good times, not as much the bad times.
Chuck :Well, my point in bringing that up is that you can appear to be, you know that perfect family. Right, you got the house with the white picket fence, you know you pay your taxes on time, you got the kids and grandkids, and you know everything looks picture perfect. But behind that is, a isn't a great picture could be just a facade and I think sometimes our culture gets tricked into thinking that because there's this moralistic facade, that exists.
John:I think what you're talking about is we write our own story and throughout life we have to write our own story. Sometimes those stories aren't quite. Maybe they're fish stories, I don't know. Have you ever told a fish story? Does the fish get bigger when you catch it? I'm not a fisherman.
Chuck :So you're thinking that, behind some of these good old stories that we've talked about, that the fish is a little bit bigger than what it actually was?
John:or or we are.
Luke:We're omitting some of the things that we don't want people to know, or maybe maybe even forgetting some of those things right, right, yeah, yeah, I think, I think that's the other part of it is that, when I was mentioning that before, how people look back on things and we concentrate on the positives at our age, I know for me for sure there's parts of it that you forget. But generally speaking, what are the parts that we forget? The negative, negative parts?
Chuck :Yeah.
Luke:Because it's easier or cleaner to forget the negative parts than it is the positive part. Yeah, Because you know you don't want to really remember the negative if you don't have to Well, it casts us in a different light when we're telling those stories, right Well?
John:100% and we might be wired that way. Human beings might be wired that way. Not sure, but I think we are.
Luke:I do think the one part that I just want to throw in, the last part that John mentioned and he said something about the morals and how we act right, that back up what our morals are right. We talked about this with values a little bit. I think that the gray aspect of morals, I think, can get you in trouble, because if you're really not defining your morals, I think that you're kind of giving yourself an out. You know what I mean. You're building yourself a trap door or an escape door. That, oh well, you know, I really didn't mean that. I meant this.
Chuck :Yeah.
Luke:You know you're really not being truthful with yourself.
Chuck :So in your mind, if you can define and list out the morals that you want to live by, whether they be few or many, then it's, it's putting you, it's setting you up for more success.
Luke:Yeah, your morals tend not all the time, but tend to drive you in a certain direction, toward what career you would choose, Because you want to align what you believe in with an organization that has ethics like this or whatever it is, because that's a little bit of a problem if your morals don't line up with that. Like you said, they're like pillars that are holding it up right. So if they're not lined up with that, it could make things difficult for all those that are you know, that may listen to the podcast, that are younger and looking for careers. I think it's an important thing for you to do is to be able to look at as a human being, as a person, to be true to yourself and your morals, to say what do you guys do? What's your moral compass, what's your ethical structure?
Chuck :Right, yeah, I think that's a really good point to be made. Got a quote for us.
Luke:When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost. When character is lost, all is lost.
Chuck :That's a doozy. I'm a character, Danger Will.
Luke:Robinson.
John:Danger, yes, well, hey, thanks for hanging out with us here at Half Century Hangout. Be sure to like us on your favorite podcast app and we'll see you next time. Peace out the Bears.
