It's that nebulous thing called "cultural factors".

There are two stable equilibrium points in a society, one where most people play by the rules most of the time and one where most people ignore the rules most of the time. It's quite difficult to shift from the latter to the former; it seems to be historically associated with Protestantism, which itself could be seen as a movement to ""clean up"" religion from corruption.

Read Tacitus' writings on Germania. While the Mediterranean and Near Eastern peoples were issuing violently long-winded, and ultimately hollow, discourses on the subject of ethics, Northern peoples were holding to faithfully monogamous marriages and living in small communities in comparative peace. What the Southern peoples preached the Northern peoples lived.

Yeah lets look back to a 2000 year old mistly fantasy document that romans used to moralise their own society for our own explaitions. That seems like a great idea. Its not like that line of thought ever had bad consequences.

I'm going to treat this like a real comment instead of a sarcastic quip.

The reason we go back to '2000 year old [not sure if 'misty' or 'mostly', both work in interestingly different ways] fantasy document[s]' is because there are universal truths about the human condition. The value of a statement is not in its newness or its antiquity; it lies in the truth of the thing being said. Brashly rejecting an idea because it is old has the same merit as rejecting an idea because it came from a woman - that is to say, none.