Does technological progress come with moral decline?

These are two separate matters. Technology is not the cause, but moral decline today is widespread and shows itself in almost every area of life.

A computer is neither good nor evil. Whether technology brings blessing or harm depends on how people use it. So moral decline cannot simply be blamed on progress. It has a different root, and it is found everywhere, in politics as much as in trade.

Many people seem moral because they are gentle by nature or were raised by their parents to be kind. That is good, but it is not yet morality in the full sense. We speak of hawks and doves. A dove is peaceful because it was made that way, not because it consciously chose peace.

This becomes clear as soon as such a person takes on responsibility for others. As a politician deciding for his country, or as a trader negotiating for his company, he often behaves quite differently from how he lives in private. Then the dove becomes a hawk. Personal kindness stays at home, and in the name of one’s own nation or one’s own profit much is suddenly allowed.

True morality, by contrast, is a principle that holds everywhere, even where it costs something. The second verse above asks exactly this: to stay just even towards a people one feels hostile to. The first verse reminds us that corruption in the world comes from what people do. The answer to moral decline therefore lies not in giving up technology, but in people whose morality does not depend on the situation.