Skip to main content

Morality- A Difficult but Necessary Proposition

Who among us has not come across a difficult situation where morality is not a question of choice. We all take pride in being moral beings, even the most amoral of us. We have been raised to be a moral being and human race has survived through centuries in spite of inherent weaknesses as an animal, on account of Morality. It is morality which has preserved and nourished our species.

This social conditioning makes us imagine an ideal image of ours in which we are the most moral being. I am very sure the case is no different for the men who are unarguably and demonstrably known to be immoral. There are various definition of morality which makes it even more confusing, ranging from unyielding religious sense of morality- which to my mind is a orthodoxy disguising as morality, to the Aristotle's and Buddha's middle path. Aristotle defines moral virtue as a disposition to behave in the right manner and as a mean between extremes of deficiency and excess. 

Religious morality has done much harm to the true sense of morality in the way that it demanded that reason be surrendered in the face of it. Therein was the fault. We live in a world which questions everything, and the person standing next to you might even question your existence. The denial of right to logic moved men away from religious morality, so much so that ethical morality suffered in company. Einstein put forth the distinction very clearly when he wrote," Morality is of highest importance- but for us, not for God."


We started looking at morality as something totally outdated crap as most people would call it and total Bakwaas as people in India would call it. We failed to realize and recognize the great disservice we did to the humanity, the society and mostly to ourselves in rejecting the concept of morality. We try to substitute it with law. We want to scare people into behaving. No law, no policeman can watch you forever, through all your living hours. Also we do not want that. This was pretty evident in the outrage which greeted President Obama's shift from "Yes, We Can" to "Yes, We Scan". 

The only way to avoid the daily destruction of social fabric is to re-introduce morality to our generation and those after us. Also we need to teach them one important aspect about morality. It is the flower that blooms best in the unkind forests. You are not a moral person if your sense of morality is unable to sustain morality. Just as the test of bravery is danger,  the test of morality is adversity. To be truthful when you have nothing at stake and nothing is on offer isn't morality. To qualify as a truthful person, you need to be truthful where being truthful is going to cost you something, your love, your friendship, your safety, your reputation and your life in worst case. We need to get back to morality, otherwise courts giving severest punishments considering all cases as rarest of rare case will do little to improve the headlines of the newspapers. The only person who can keep watch over us is ourselves and the ability of being watchful of our behavior when no one is watching- is morality. Morality is how you behave when you are presented with all the possibility of being immoral. Teaching your kid to be truthful every evening is no good, unless you tell your kid to go to the school and tell her teacher that her homework isn't complete because dad forgot and was reading Crime and Punishment, not because he wasn't well..now you know, from where I am coming..must close it before full-disclosure happens on the blog. The moral of the story is that saving morality is our only hope and it is never going to be easy, that is a given.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

कायस्थ- इतिहास एवं वर्तमान परिपेक्ष्य

सत्यम , दानम , क्षमा शीलमानृशंस्य तपो घृणा। दृश्यंते यत्र नागेंद्र स ब्राह्मण इति स्मृतः।। ( हे सर्पराज , जिसमें सत्य , दानशीलता , क्षमा , क्रूरतारहित भाव , तप एवं संवरण , एवं संवेदना हो , वह मनुष्य को ही ब्राह्मण मानना चाहिए। ) शुद्रे तु यद् भवेल्लक्षम द्विजे तच्च न विद्दयते। न वै शूद्रों भवेच्छुद्रो ब्रह्मणो न च ब्राह्मण : ।। ( यदि शूद्र में यह गुण हैं ( सत्य , दान , अक्रोध , अहिंसा , तप , संवरण एवं संवेदना ) और ब्राह्मण में यह गुण परिलक्षित ना हों तो वह शूद्र शूद्र नहीं , ब्राह्मण है ; और वह ब्राह्मण ब्राह्मण नहीं है। )  - युधिष्ठिर - नहुष संवाद , अजगर कांड , महाभारत , वन पर्व   वर्तमान परिपेक्ष्य में जिसे जाति कहा जाता है , वह वर्ण व्यवस्था का विकृत रूप है। सनातन धर्म का वर्ण जहाँ समाज को व्यवसाय एवं क्षमता के अनुरूप व्यवस्थित करने का प्रयास था और कर्म पर आधारित था , जाति उसी व्यवस्था का विघटित रूप बन कर जन्मगत व्यवस्था बन गई। जाति या कास्ट पुर्तगाल

Pathaan and Polarisation- Movie Review

Many have not seen Pathan, I have. I have a huge tolerance towards stupid movies and I love to watch all sort of movies. What has bothered me most about Pathaan is that in terms of content and characterisation, it is absolutely shoddy, much worse than much lampooned RaOne AND there is no review which openly tells you about it.  Most reviewers have reviewed the movie like a teenager, gushing over VFX generated body of ShahRukh Khan. This reminds me of my schoolmates bunking classes to watch tomato-sauce-laced movies of Ramsey brothers, gushing over semi-nude voluptuous actresses in the late 80s. Only difference being that those were school kids in class XII, with raging hormones and a stupefied intellect when a world around them was fast changing. Here we have middle-aged professional movie reviewers guiding people to their way in or out of Movie theatres. Their primary argument in favour of the movie is nothing but beefed up Shahrukh Khan and the gap between his earlier movie and this

बाल विवाह - हिंदू इतिहास और सत्य

  इतिहास का लेखन उसकी विसंगतियों की अनुक्रमिका नहीं वरन उसके समाज के आम रूप से स्वीकृत मान्यताओं एवं उस समाज के जननायकों द्वारा स्थापित मानदंडों के आधार पर होना चाहिए। परंतु जब लेखनी उन हाथों में हो जिनका मंतव्य शोध नहीं एक समाज को लज्जित करना भर हो तो समस्या गहन हो जाती है। जब प्रबुद्ध लोग कलम उठाते हैं और इस उद्देश्य के साथ उठाते हैं कि अप्रासंगिक एवं सदर्भहीन तथ्यों के माध्यम से समाज की वर्ग विभाजक रेखाओं को पुष्ट कर सकें तो हमारा कर्तव्य होता है कि हम सत्य को संदर्भ दें और अपने इतिहास के भले बुरे पक्षों को निर्विकार भाव से जाँचें।   बीते सप्ताह बाल विवाह को लेकर विदेशी सभ्यता में उठे प्रश्नों को भारत की सभ्यता पर प्रक्षेपित करके और उसकी स्वीकार्यता स्थापित करने पर बड़ी चर्चा रही। इस संदर्भ में   श्री ए एल बाशम से ले कर राजा राम मोहन रॉय तक चर्चा चली। बाशम की पुस्तक द वंडर दैट वाज इंडिया - को उद्धृत कर ले कहा गया कि हिं