I think we underestimate the power of those fairy tales.

There's something very valuable in a society that professes norms and social contracts and makes it socially unacceptable to violate them, even if people will always attempt to do so.

You want the violators to have to sneak around and do it in the shadows because there's a cost associated with being found out.

It reminds me of certain "political sentiments" that have recently come to the fore. A friend of mine argued that it's better to have it be overt, since we know the sentiment exists.

I took that argument, but countered that there's also a very real danger in mainstreaming or normalizing those sentiments. Societies should be aspirational. And, if a society no longer sees value in imagining itself as better then it has very little chance of becoming so.

We love to invent "the way things used to be" as some kind of pristine ideal, but it was never real. I have a hard time listening to anyone that suggests these "better times" existed.

Then again, things do actually change. The world and societies within it have been through darker periods and lighter periods.

It seems to be cyclical, so there's actually a lot of truth to the notion of better times (as well as worse times).

There was a ton of corruption we never heard about before the Internet.

We are both exposed to more of it, more likely to be accepting of it.