Society could not function effectively without laws. While society must never exert total dominance over its people, a certain degree of control must be maintained in order to ensure society's continued existence. Without a method of control, chaos reigns.
   Fortunately, the laws that societies make usually reflect their own accepted morals. Such morals are founded in particular religions or philosophies and are practiced out of necessity or tradition. Hence, the universal ethics prevail because individuals wish to uphold them.
   If a society enforces laws that its populace disapproves of, it will collapse. It must treat its people as constituents, not subjects. While every society may pass laws, even the most powerful one cannot truly legislate morality. Personal morality is far more influential than the morality of the whole. A successful society will understand this fact and work with it to benefit itself.
   Yet even in conditions where social morality fully reflects individual morality, it may not be a best case scenario. If individuals have little desire to uphold and adhere to high morals to begin with, any attempt of the societies to foster such ideals would be futile and hypocritical. Moreover, if the society truly upholds righteous beliefs, these beliefs may possibly be perverted to become detrimental, as was seen in the Red Scare of the 1950's.
   Even in an ideal situation, wherein social morality is based on individual morality and its enforcement is kept in perspective, the individuals may waiver on their own ethical practices. The individuals in a society are human and by no means perfect. Temptations to stray from their own morals are natural and abundant. However, once they yield to their temptations, moral entropy begins. If this occurs on a large scale, the overall morals will ultimately change due to pressure, or the society will fall. Yet, if the society does accept the slackened individual morality, this collapse may still follow.
   Fortunately, because a society may simply follow moral codes when they are convenient and disregard them when they are not, the individual does not have to conform to such an irresponsible, hedonistic, and degrading level. While perfection is an impossibility, one surely may strive to obtain it, even in the face of massive social pressure toward decadence. In the long run, that may be all that matters.

-Holden Caulfield, editor