3. 56. How long should government work to improve sufficiently the situation in the country?

4. 1 - Half a year - 9,4%

5. 2 - 1 year – 18,7%

6. 3 - 2 years– 19,6%

7. 4 - Up to 5 years– 21,8%

8. 5 - More than 5 years – 8,8%

9. 6 - Difficult to answer – 21,7%

10. 57. What is the main cause for food price increase?

11. 1 - Political instability in the country - 33,7%

12. 2 - Government policy – 32,1%

13. 3 - Overpricing by agricultural producer – 8,8%

14. 4 - Activities of sellers in markets and stores – 8,4%

15. 5 - Gasoline price increase and other expenditures of agricultural producers - 8,3%

16. 6 - Other – 0,4%

17. 7 - Difficult to answer – 8,4%

18. 58. How do you estimate your financial position?

19. 1 - Barely make both ends meet, sometimes it’s not enough for food – 17,5%

20. 2 - Enough for food but purchasing clothes and footwear causes difficulties – 34,5%

21. 3 - As a whole it’s enough for living, but not for valuables (furniture, refrigerator etc.) – 34,6%

22. 4 - We don’t have financial difficulties other than major purchase (a house, high-priced car etc.) – 12,2%

23. 5 - We don’t have any financial difficulties – 1,3%

24. 59. What living values are the most important for you? (possible to give several answers)

25. 1 - Health – 75,9%

26. 2 - Wealthy life – 68,1%

27. 3 - Happy family life – 51,7%

28. 4 - Good overall situation in the country – 38,1%

29. 5 - Interesting job – 35,0%

30. 6 - Acknowledgement in society – 16,9%

31. 7 - Pleasant pastime – 15,1%

32. 8 - Cognition, intellectual development – 13,62%

33. 9 - Freedom of activities and actions – 13,4%

34. 10 - Other – 0,3%

35. 11 - Difficult to answer – 1,4%

Soul of Britain, with Michael Buerk, 18th June 2000

Soul of Britain, written and presented by Michael Buerk was broadcast in nine episodes in June & July 2000. This BBC TV series explored what people in Britain today really believe. What is their attitude to moral issues? What do they think about Christianity? The BBC commissioned the largest ever survey of beliefs and attitudes for this series.

The episode on 18th June 2000 explored contemporary attitudes to questions of right and wrong.

Moral confusion

According to the Soul of Britain survey:

• 45% of us believe that the decline in traditional religion has made Britain a worse place

However

• 75% of us reject what traditional religions stand for, and say that there can never be clear guidelines between right and wrong

• 79% think that religious leaders are no help with moral decisions

Just as we are confused about beliefs, so also we are confused about moral values. (It seems very likely that the two things are related).

But at the beginning of this program, Michael Buerk asks whether we really believe this?

Moral consumers

Our society used to have:

• shared moral values

• a moral framework that was based on the Judeo-Christian tradition (i.e. the ten commandments)

Today this no longer applies. We say that:

• There are no absolutes

• The most important value is tolerance

We have become 'moral consumers', choosing our own moral positions

There is a loss of respect for institutions (police, government, church)

Moral changes - age related

Changes in people's attitude to moral values are age-related:

• 69% of older people think there are no clear guidelines about right and wrong

• 85% of under-24's think there are no clear guidelines

Presumably this trend will increase in the future

Useful questions

There are at least a couple of useful questions to explore in relation to our moral values:

• Is it even possible to have shared moral values in a society that does not have a shared framework of beliefs? It seems unlikely. If this is so, then as our shared beliefs disintegrate even further, things which are morally unthinkable today will become all too thinkable in the next few years.

• Do we really believe that there are no moral absolutes? That the Nazis were OK to kill six million Jews? That it was OK for widows in India to be burned on the funeral pyres of their husbands? That pedophilia is an acceptable lifestyle choice? No, we do not. All of us have some things which we do regard as moral absolutes. Yet, if we have no belief system, what reason do we really have to think that some things are right and others are wrong?

American morality

The latest stats in American morality. I think it is pretty interesting and fairly accurate. Gallup does this poll every year in May. It is always interesting to see the results.

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