There was a time when morality was thought of as very clear-cut. We call that somewhat dogmatic conception of morality, around the turn of the century, the Puritan or Protestant Ethic. What was right was right, and what was wrong was wrong; what was good was good, and what was evil was evil. People may not always have lived by the rules, but at least they knew what the rules were.
Those were the days when the material world also seemed very clear cut. To Newton, the universe was mechanistic, governed neatly and predictably by rigid immutable material laws. Those were the days, too, when Darwinian survival of the fittest and capitalistic self-interest were regarded as basic laws of human society. And it was the time when the future was really important. Most people believed firmly that respectability, thrift, self-denial, and hard work would bring them a sure future reward, if not on this side of the grave, surely in the hereafter.
But times have changed. Newton has been extended by Einstein. A universe of solid billiard-ball atoms is now explained in terms of such concepts as "probability," "uncertainty," and "relativity." Our societal values tend to follow our world views, and thus the transition in concepts of morality goes on. The work-success ethic is giving way to the value of sociability and togetherness; future-time orientation is giving way to existential emphasis on the here and now; the ideal of independence and the autonomous self is giving way to "other direction" and group conformity. The excessive rigidity of Puritan morality is giving way to moral relativism, the "new morality," often termed "situational ethics," in which there are no predetermined absolutes, no always rights and always wrongs, or always goods and always bads, no definite guides for human behavior. "It all depends . . ." the relativists say.
