When I tell people I’m a History Major, I generally get one of three reactions:

1. So…do you want to teach…or…what?
2. Oh cool, who’s your favorite President?
3. If you could live in any time period, when would it be?

My favorite type of people tend to ask the third type of question, and my answer is always the same. “Well I definitely wouldn’t want to live during the Middle Ages. But as far as when I would like to live, I would say now.”

We have so much today that we take for granted, and not just luxuries like phones and Chipotle. No I mean we have basic necessities that 100 years ago, only the rich could afford like dental care, clean water, (unless you live in Flint), and FDIC insurance.

“War” by its standard definition, is generally over if you live in a first world country, especially since most power these days derives from the hegemony, or “soft power”, of nations that resolve conflicts through negotiations or proxy wars (i.e. Syria).

Although the U.S. is still subject to terrorist attacks, our citizenship is nowhere close to the danger that would befall the citizens of say, Germany, during the Middle Ages when their population was halved from 18 million to 9 million during the 30 years of conflict which eventually led to the advent of the nation-state itself.

So yeah, we have it pretty good right now in 2016, despite a Presidential Race that reads like a bad S&N skit and an economy that’s just starting to crawl out of the worst downturn since the 1930s.

But a trend I have been noticing over the past year or so is the vacuum of accountability facing our country. With modernization has come secularization. Millennials are twice as likely to classify themselves as “unaffiliated” to any religious faith than baby boomers were when they were our age.

This can be attributed to a variety of factors including the wide dissemination of information due to the internet, as well as the archaic dogmas that don’t make much sense in the Progressive society we have become.

This is both a good and bad thing. We can start with the bad first if you like. Religion was invented to explain things that we couldn’t understand and gave us a sense of comfort when we pretended we had answers to questions like “What happens after death?” “Where did we come from?” “Does anyone really love me?” “How should I live my life?”

For a long time, “God”, in some capacity or another, was the prevailing answer to all these questions. Where did we come from? God created us. What happens after we die? We go back to God.

Unfortunately, the idea of who “God” was and what he wanted us to do was open to interpretation. And, of course, the people in power created laws that would dominate and subjugate the people below them. This trend can be seen across the world from the Pharaoh masquerading as “Osiris” on earth and forcing his underlings to build pyramids in his honor, to the Pope in Medieval Europe hanging the threat of excommunication and Hell over peasants and kings alike, to the caste system in India.

Hardline religious extremism can cause people to do terrible things to each other, as we know all too well due to the problem we face today with ISIS and other extremist groups. Religion has been responsible for too many atrocities to count on three hands and, in a way, the secularization of society is a positive progressive movement for humanity, especially now that we have actual answers to the questions that religion used to answer for us.

But the slow departure of religion from our culture is not without its downside. For many, religion offered meaning in a seemingly meaningless existence. It allowed and continues to allow criminals, drug addicts, and the like to reform their lives. It provided a sense of community and the thought that someone was looking out for you and would always love you no matter what was comforting.

But above all, religion used to keep the peace. It used to outline in black and white the way to live life. Nowadays we still have laws, only now, courts judge you, not God. And you’d think since we’d updated many of religions misguided rules (yes I’m looking at you Leviticus), things would be better.

But honestly, since we’ve exchanged morality for litigation, a massive accountability vacuum has emerged. For example, people used to think that the laws in the Bible or the Koran were the word of God, and were less likely to go against them, particularly if a punishment like Hell was involved. Now laws are drawn up by people just like you and me.

The only thing that keeps you from breaking the law is respect for the institutions that put them in place and fear of the consequences. Back in the day, if you broke a religious law, people thought they'd go to Hell, be reborn as a beetle, or would suffer some other horrible post humus consequence. And if you were a really good person, you didn’t break God’s/Shiva's/ Allah's/Yahweh's law because you loved and respected it and him.

Now, as courts and judges as the sole arbiters of justice, there isn’t much respect among lawbreakers for such institutions. Just walk into any bathroom in a courthouse and read the graffiti on the stalls, my point will be remarkably clear.

And legal consequences can be circumvented using a good lawyer, or some other shady of show of power. Take the bankers who caused the 2008 crisis for example. Where are they now? Still padding their pockets with million dollar bonuses. Still bundling high-risk mortgages with low-risk ones and giving them a AAA rating.

But I digress. So what can we do? Will society continue to erode accountability in America until we regress into a world that becomes “solitary, nasty, brutish and short,” once again?

Well, one of the things we can do is teach morality. What kind of morality? Every kind. Truth is like a sculpture, one perspective will never lend full understanding. I know there is a vehement debate about keeping Christianity out of classrooms. But what if we taught not just Christianity, but all kinds of ethical philosophies? Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, Stoicism, Egoism, Utilitarianism, Daoism, the list goes on and on. Call it “Comparative Ethical Models”. Or not, I don't care. Historians don’t exactly have a good track record naming things: the 30 Years War, the 100 Years War (which lasted 109), the Battle of Trafalgar, you get the idea.

Long story short, we are maturing as a culture and have less of a need for religion. While the morally dubious functions of religion have been filled by differing fixtures of society, the positive functions religion provided, such as community, morality, and a sense of meaning have largely been left vacant. And it doesn’t seem that anything will be stepping up to fill the void anytime soon.

So what can we do? Do whatever makes you happy as long as it’s not intentionally hurting anyone. That’s all anyone can do, really.