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."
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