Every Generation Thinks It's the Worst — Letters from a Stoic

Every generation believes its own era is uniquely depraved. Letter 97 opens with Seneca's correction: the vices people blame on their times are the vices of mankind. No era has ever been clean. He reaches back to Cato's own lifetime, the Bona Dea scandal, the bribery at Clodius's trial, the payment made not only in money but in sexual favours, to show that moral collapse is not a new condition.

Sin, he says, never stalked abroad more openly than in Cato's very presence. This is not an argument for despair but for clear eyes. When we blame the times, we are letting ourselves off the hook. Our failures are personal, not historical.

The letter moves from scandal to the deeper observation: guilt does not actually go unpunished just because the law fails to catch it. The conscience does the punishing. Even men who successfully hide their sins cannot hide from themselves.

It is a property of guilt to be in fear. Where the law does not reach, nature has imposed a penalty in advance: the fear that never quite leaves the person who has done wrong.