Introduction

Few themes in modern storytelling have proved as persistent and unnerving as the idea that civilisation is precarious. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game – each in its own time and medium – explore how quickly the restraints of law, ritual, and shared moral frameworks can dissolve. Golding stages the collapse among children cut off from adult authority; Conrad documents the moral bankruptcy of an imperial enterprise; Hwang dramatises the commodification of human life in contemporary capitalism. Together they present a powerful triangulation: when social structures fail or are revealed as sham, the “beast” within individuals and systems is freed.

This essay uses those three narratives as lenses to examine perceptions of moral decline in contemporary Western societies. It argues that while objective measures – especially many forms of violent crime – have in many places improved, the subjective sense of moral erosion is real and consequential. To understand why, we must look both to structural shifts (family, religion, institutions, economic pressures) and to psychological foundations that shape moral judgment. I bring Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) into the conversation to explain how shifts in which moral intuitions are emphasised produce divergent perceptions of decay. The result is not a single verdict but a nuanced picture: civilisation’s formal achievements coexist with vulnerabilities that classic and modern narratives anticipate.

Part I – The Literary and Dramatic Diagnoses: Three Portraits of Erosion

Lord of the Flies: The Collapse Without Adult Authority

Golding’s Lord of the Flies is often read as a bleak allegory about innate human savagery. Stranded schoolboys attempt to construct order through symbols (the conch), rules, and routines – an embryonic civil society. Yet the conch’s authority erodes; democratic procedure gives way to the pull of charisma and violence. Simon’s recognition – “Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us” – condenses the novel’s thesis: the external danger the boys fear is a projection of internal impulses. The boys’ ritual use of face paint literalises anonymity’s liberating power: once visible markers of accountability disappear, so do inhibitions shaped by community expectations and conscience.

Golding’s setting is a laboratory for moral collapse: no adult enforcement, no longer-established institutions, and a micro-society forced to self-govern. The result: superstition, mob violence, and ritualised killing. The novel suggests that the social technologies of civilisation – ritual, accountability, deference to expertise – are not guarantors but conditional supports. When those supports are removed, darker capacities surface with alarming speed.

Heart of Darkness: Systemic Hypocrisy and the Quiet Corruption of Power

Conrad’s novella examines another facet of moral erosion: not the breakdown of law in miniature, but the profound moral bankruptcy of a supposedly “civilising” enterprise. Marlow’s journey up the Congo River reveals not noble mission but brutal exploitation, and Kurtz’s descent epitomises how isolation, power, and the collapse of normative checks can produce monstrous outcomes. “The conquest of the earth … is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much,” Marlow reflects, concluding that European imperialism’s rhetoric masks greed and dehumanisation.

Conrad’s darkness is therefore system-level: institutions that justify themselves with lofty ideals perform terrible acts in practice. The civilized veneer – rituals, manners, ceremonial language – does not simply crack; it acquires a new function: to obscure and sanctify exploitation. Conrad shows how a society’s moral language can be redeployed as camouflage for depravity, particularly when distance (geographic or psychological) separates agents from the consequences of their choices.

Squid Game: Capitalism, Desperation, and Consumer Spectacle

Hwang Dong-hyuk’s Squid Game updates these concerns for a neoliberal age. The series stages a liberalisation of commodity logic: indebted adults consent to kill and be killed for the chance at wealth. Its horrors are mediated by spectacle – VIPs watch and bet on human suffering – as if centuries of cruelty found new, polished forms. Players rationalise participation through necessity, hope, or denial; organisers rationalize brutality as efficient allocation. The show’s formal devices – childhood games turned lethal, masked faceless administrators, and ritualised elimination – amplify how capitalist logic can desensitise people and recast exploitation as entertainment.

Squid Game differs from Golding and Conrad in emphasizing choice within constraint. The players choose to enter the games, albeit under desperate conditions. That voluntary dimension complicates culpability: victims and perpetrators can blur, and moral failure is communal and systemic. Hwang’s critique aims squarely at structures that turn human life into a wager and at societies that normalise the commodification of vulnerability.

Part II – Perceptions of Moral Decline: Data, Distortions, and Lived Experience

Is society getting worse? The popular answer – across polls and political speeches – tends toward “yes.” Long-running surveys in Western countries frequently show majorities who believe moral values have declined. Yet empirical indicators complicate the picture. In much of the Western world violent crime rose from the 1960s through the 1980s and early 1990s but then fell precipitously in the late 1990s and 2000s. Homicide rates, burglary, and other classic measures of social disorder are markedly lower than their peaks in many places. Long-run historical work (the “civilising process” literature) also points to a deep, centuries-long decline in rates of interpersonal violence.

Why, then, do perceptions of moral decay persist? Two overlapping explanations help. First is biased exposure: modern media ecology disproportionately amplifies shocking, norm-breaching events. Sensationalism, social media virality, and selective reporting make distressing stories seem omnipresent. Second is biased memory: people tend to remember the past in rosier terms, recalling norms as stronger and consensus as firmer than it was. Together these biases create a stable sense of decline even when many objective indices show improvement.

The literary narratives capture both phenomena. Golding dramatises how fear of an imagined beast corrodes relations; Conrad shows moral hypocrisy rationalised by elite discourse; Squid Game stages spectacle’s role in normalizing cruelty. In each case, perception and reality interplay: the characters’ fears often stem from real structural failings yet are magnified by symbolic fears and socially contagious panic.

Part III – Family, Community, and the Erosion of Binding Structures

One common explanation for perceived moral decline is the transformation of family and community institutions. Golding’s boys, deprived of parental influence and normative exemplars, quickly fragment into factions. Contemporary Western societies have indeed seen deep changes: rising rates of nonmarital births, more single-parent households, and diversified household forms. Some argue that the weakening of traditional two-parent families correlates with social problems such as delinquency and educational disparities – patterns supported by family demography research in certain contexts.

But the relationship between family structure and societal outcomes is complex. Crime rates have fallen even as family forms changed; socioeconomic context mediates much of the effect. Where family instability intersects with concentrated poverty, the effects on social order and upward mobility are most pronounced. This suggests that family change by itself is not a deterministic cause of decay but a factor that interacts with broader institutional and economic conditions.

Conrad’s narrative underscores the social costs of dislocating institutions: imperialism ruptures communities and moral accountability. Squid Game presents a contemporary analogue: economic precarity – high household debt, insecure labour – undermines relational trust and creates conditions where people make desperate moral compromises. In sum, the erosion of binding social structures matters most where it compounds with inequality and institutional failure.

Part IV – Religion, Moral Anchors, and Moral Foundations Theory

Religion historically anchored many moral systems in the West – communities built shared rituals, norms, and narratives that constrained behaviour and provided meaning. Over recent decades, Western religiosity has declined in many places; church attendance and self-identified affiliation have dropped, and institutional trust has eroded. For some, this decline explains moral drift: without transcendent claims, moral injunctions lose force.

To understand how the waning of religious and communal institutions affects moral perception, Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) provides useful analytical tools. MFT proposes that moral judgment rests on several innate, evolutionarily shaped foundations – intuitive systems that cultures elaborate in different ways. The core foundations include Care/Harm, Fairness (or its sub-components Equality and Proportionality), Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation (Purity), and Liberty/Oppression. These foundations can be grouped into “individualising” concerns (Care and Fairness) and “binding” concerns (Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity). Political ideologies and cultures weight these foundations differently: liberal moral reasoning tends to emphasise individualising foundations, while conservative moral reasoning draws more evenly across both sets.

If religious and communal institutions principally buttress binding foundations – ritual, loyalty, authority, and sanctity – their decline can leave societies more reliant on individualising values. That shift has strengths (expanded empathy for outsiders, increased rights for marginalised groups) but also costs: diminished shared attachments, weaker deference to legitimate authority, and fewer rituals that mark communal obligations and constrain selfishness. The result is a moral ecology in which social coordination becomes more fragile and perceptions of moral decay more acute, because the cues that signal membership and accountability are less salient.

MFT also helps explain disagreement over whether actions constitute moral failure. Two citizens may witness the same event – a protest, a change in sexual norms, a judicial ruling – and interpret it through different foundations: one sees betrayal of tradition and authority; the other sees an expansion of care and justice. The subjective sense of decline therefore reflects not just objective behaviour but shifting moral emphases and lost overlap between moral vocabularies.

Part V – Individualism, Moral Relativism, and “Liberation into Savagery”

Golding’s image of “liberation into savagery” via face paint is a chilling metaphor for modern cultural currents that prize radical individualism and relativism. Moral relativism – understood as the idea that moral truth varies by context or culture – can foster tolerance and pluralism, but it can also undercut shared norms necessary for social coordination. If every action can be reframed as a matter of personal authenticity, whether duty, restraint, or outrage loses its anchoring power.

Conrad and Hwang watch similar processes at work, though in different registers. Conrad shows how ideological justifications facilitate ruthless exploitation; Hwang reveals how market logic reframes morality as transaction. In contemporary Western societies, increasing individualism has certainly expanded moral repertoires in salutary ways: civil rights, gender equality, protections for marginalised groups, and greater recognition of personal autonomy. Yet the same expansion can weaken communal mechanisms – rituals, reputational consequences, and shared narratives – that historically constrained anti-social impulses.

This is not a deterministic condemnation of individualism; rather, it is a call to recognize trade-offs. Freedoms without forms of accountability and solidaristic institutions risk producing fragmentation that literature like Golding’s allegory dramatises.

Part VI – Shared Mechanisms: Anonymity, Dehumanisation, and Institutional Distance

Across the three works, similar mechanisms enable moral collapse: anonymity, dehumanisation, and institutional distance. Face paint, masks, and the mediated spectatorship in Squid Game permit dehumanisation; the Congo’s remoteness in Heart of Darkness allows actors to dissociate from consequences. Modern institutions – digital platforms, bureaucracies, global supply chains – create analogous distances, enabling moral disengagement. When harms are dispersed, consumers, officials, or onlookers can reassign responsibility and avoid feeling implicated.

The psychological literature on moral disengagement, diffusion of responsibility, and the bystander effect aligns with these narratives. Anonymity reduces reputational incentives; organisational fragmentation obscures causal chains; spectacle normalises cruelty. Recognising these mechanisms is the first step toward designing institutional and cultural remedies.

Part VII – Divergences Among the Works: Agency, Scale, and Target

Despite commonalities, the three works diverge in important ways that sharpen our diagnosis.

 • Agency and Consent: In Lord of the Flies, the boys are stranded suddenly, their moral collapse framed as an emergent failure of social technology. In Heart of Darkness, agents participate in systemic enterprise with explicit goals; corruption is bureaucratic and tacitly sanctioned. Squid Game occupies an intermediate position: players choose to participate, though under duress. The presence or absence of consent matters for moral responsibility and for political interventions.

 • Scale and Focus: Golding’s microcosm isolates the dynamics of group psychology; Conrad indicts large-scale institutions and ideologies; Hwang foregrounds economic structures and spectacle as modern modalities of exploitation. Each points to different policy and cultural responses: strengthening local institutions and socialisation for Golding; reforming imperial and corporate structures for Conrad; regulating market incentives and media for Hwang.

 • Temporal Context: Conrad writes in an era of overt imperial violence; Golding after the world’s most destructive war; Hwang amid a globalised information economy. Each text therefore illuminates the dominant form of moral risk in its era – ideological hypocrisy, wartime savagery, or marketised cruelty.

Part VIII – Is Moral Erosion Deliberate or Inevitable?

A troubling question animates much contemporary debate: are social elites or cultural forces deliberately undermining moral anchors, or are the changes an inadvertent byproduct of modernisation? There is no single answer. Some erosion follows from deliberate policy choices – disinvestment in civic institutions, deregulation that externalises harms, media strategies that reward outrage. Other changes are emergent, produced by technological shifts, economic innovations, and cultural pluralisation that have unintended moral consequences.

Literature warns against simple conspiratorial conclusions. Conrad’s depiction of imperialism was not a conspiracy in the modern sense; it was a system whose ideologies and incentives produced morally catastrophic outcomes. Squid Game suggests that market pressures naturally produce cruel incentives if left unchecked. Golding implies that the human capacity for violence is a baseline condition mobilised by particular contexts. The practical lesson is that whether engineered or emergent, moral erosion can be anticipated and mitigated through institutional design, cultural cultivation, and renewed forms of accountability.

Part IX – Paths Forward: Cultural, Institutional, and Psychological Remedies

If the danger is real – if the “beast” can be activated under certain conditions – what might be done? Literature and social science suggest a multi-pronged approach.

 • Strengthen local institutions of socialisation. Families, schools, civic groups, and community organisations inculcate norms of reciprocity and restraint. Policies that reduce concentrated disadvantage, support parental leave, and invest in community infrastructure can buttress those institutions.

 • Rebuild moral vocabularies and civic rituals. Rituals – from civic commemoration to community service – do more than mark identity; they create shared commitments and reputational costs for bad behaviour. Public life benefits when citizens can articulate and practice common values.

 • Reform institutions that create distance and anonymity. Supply-chain transparency, corporate accountability mechanisms, and media literacy reduce opportunities for moral disengagement. Where harms are visible and attributable, public pressure can channel behaviour towards responsibility.

 • Foster moral literacy across foundations. Drawing on MFT, civic education that teaches citizens to recognise different moral intuitions can reduce destructive moral polarisation. Understanding why others prioritise different moral goods enables bargaining rather than mutual demonisation.

 • Regulate the commodification of suffering. Squid Game’s spectacle warns of a cultural appetite for dehumanising entertainment. Regulations, platform norms, and ethical standards can limit industries that profit from the exploitation of the vulnerable.

Part X – Conclusion: Vigilance, Not Pessimism

Golding, Conrad, and Hwang each tell stories that unsettle. They remind us that civilisation is not invulnerable, that institutions and cultures must be maintained, and that human moral capacities can be bent toward monstrous ends. Yet they also implicitly offer hope: the possibility of recognition – Simon’s insight that the beast is us; Marlow’s horror that compels testimony; Gi-hun’s eventual disgust at what has been witnessed – suggests that awareness is the first step to repair.

Contemporary Western societies face real fractures – economic inequality, institutional distrust, and cultural polarisation – but they also possess capacities for reform and renewal. Objective measures such as long-term declines in certain crimes do not negate lived anxieties, nor should perceptions of decline be dismissed as mere nostalgia. Instead, the task is to translate apprehension into action: to rebuild binding institutions where they have eroded, to design systems that reduce anonymity and diffuse responsibility, and to cultivate moral vocabularies capable of holding both individual rights and communal duties.

In the end, the “beast” in Golding’s island, the “darkness” in Conrad’s Congo, and the grotesque games of Hwang’s series are not inevitable denouements but warnings. They provoke a central civic question: will we treat civilisation as an achieved status or as an achievement that requires constant work? The answer will determine whether our societies become echo chambers for apocalyptic narratives or laboratories of moral and institutional renewal.