In the "Is this what's it's like to be 13 years old" thread, there has been alot of talk about the decline of morals and values.

How do you differentiate between the decline of morals and changing morality? I ask because personally, my morals and values are not typical. In fact, I am quite sure that my behavior would often be attacked on moral grounds and yet, I consider myself to be a moral person.*

Let's digress a moment and offer some definitions. The term 'morality' is ambiguous by itself; there is descriptive morality and normative morality. Descriptive morality is morality accepted by a society or even an individual, while normative morality refers to an objective morality.

Because society evolves, so then does descriptive morality. It does little good trying to argue that the morality of my generation is better than the morality of a younger generation because sooner or later my generation will start to die off and hence, by sheer numbers within the society in which I live, I'll be wrong.

However, normative morality states that there is an objective morality and so, by sheer luck, my generation might have happened upon perfect morality and this new generation is screwing it up. I don't think this is very likely by the way.

Once upon a time, enjoying sex was immoral as sex was solely for procreation and enjoying it was proof of a poor character. Eventually, moral people were allowed to enjoy sex, as long as they were married before they did so and only did so with their spouses. Moving on, fewer and fewer people today think it is immoral to have unmarried sex within a dedicated and loving relationship. Who's right? Is there a normative morality that claims a final word on the subject?

The reason that I ask is that while I agree that a thirteen year old, even a willing one, probably shouldn't be getting groped on the bus - how about a seventeen year old? How about a seventeen year old in a darkened movie theatre? How about in the privacy of their own home? How about an unmarried 25 year old? Where's the line? Why is that line there?

I place little stock in 'because everyone knows it's wrong' because I've seen society get it wrong so many times - and history has seen much more than I. So what I would like to know is what morals and values are declining and why do you consider it a decline instead of a change.

Thank you.

*insomuch as I can wrap my head around the whole dichotomous/dualistic way of thinking