It does mean something. It tells us that the problem isn't moral, so we shouldn't run around screaming of how human civilization is declining. It tells us that this is how things are supposed to work in the environment we set up, so we shouldn't tell people this is an illness. It reminds us that this failure mode is the default state, so we really do need to work and/or remodel our environment if we want to avoid it.
There is a reason I put the word 'moral' in quotes, and you just explained it. The thing is, that I think it has already become sufficiently obvious that as a society, we see a need for change. Using vague terms like 'morality' make a lot more sense when you put them in a quantifiable context that represent the will of the populous. Thus I don't see the need to regress back to this 'default state' of pretending we don't know where we stand because it seems we've already established that much. Instead, presenting things that way seems to confuse and induce semantic arguments like this one because it removes knowledge that people already know; leading to [IMO] wasted brainpower -- unless a lot of people really are unaware of the current zeitgeist, in which case I would take back my arguments.
