Where have morals and values gone?

By Lionel Wijesiri

All religious leaders agree that we have already lost our way. We are becoming a materialistic and self-centred nation. For most of us, the illusion of happiness is more important than true happiness. The illusion of progress is of higher value than genuine progress itself. We are looking into our screens at a virtual world while the real world burns.

Stress levels have heightened, leading to many disputes

We’re collapsing; socially, ecologically and morally. However, no one is noticing it because we’ve defined ourselves as “individuals” and have become disconnected from everyone and everything, pursuing pleasure at any expense. We’re becoming a society of addicts; addicts to instant gratification, and the so-called ‘freedom’. We have no concept of the freedom anymore as something to be earned and worked at and as something that includes responsibility.

We are spending our lives chasing money, attempting to keep up with the neighbour. We want to display our physical assets as a show of social status. And what is our final reward? Shortened life spans, sickness and health problems from lack of sleep, heightened stress levels and continued worries. Worst of all, unlike our parents and grandparents, we spend little time with our families. We have allowed the television to flood our homes with garbage sitcoms and movies that endorse and glorify strange values. And for anyone who has a sense of decency and morality, this is heart-breaking at best.

World of consumerism

In the glamorous world of consumerism, the race for unlimited accumulation is formidable; hence moral values are generally given a summary treatment. Ends alone matter most and means are free-for-all. The neglect of morality in the means adopted inevitably leads to a further fall in moral inhibitions.

In a note to a group of young people, Mark Twain once advised, “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Twain’s thought is certainly appealing, yet we need at least a general idea of how to define ‘right’ before we can do it. How do we determine what is right? It’s not as easy as it sounds, despite the fact that there’s a vast field of study devoted to the topic which is described using terms such as ‘ethics’ or ‘moral philosophy’.

However, countless philosophers writing shelves full of books over interminable millennia could hardly improve on the age-old Golden Rule - Treat others as you want to be treated. Albert Schweitzer rephrased it this way: “A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.”

Immoral behaviour

Moral development teachers often say that becoming moral requires enough emotional development to feel guilty when we do wrong, enough social development to accept our responsibility for behaving in agreed upon ways towards our group, and enough mental development to be able to place ourselves in another person’s shoes. However, just because you develop some of these qualities, it doesn’t guarantee that you will develop a wise and effective philosophy of life.

As Steven Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People points out, many people set goals and strive for years to achieve one goal after another, only to discover when they get to the end goal that they didn’t want to go there. He says, “No one on their death bed ever complains that they should have spent more time in the office.” At the end of life, intimate relationships and how you have dealt with others are the things that count.

People pursue pleasure at any cost

Immoral behaviour comes from somewhere. Our environment is not highly moral or supportive of morality and our society doesn’t seem to know what to do about these permissive conditions. In general, many adults fail to be good role models to the young.

This writer, during his three-and-a-half decades business experience, has come across an ever increasing number of employees doing something unethical at work every year - padding the expense account, stealing property, lying about what they did or did not do or using sick leave inappropriately. Even at the highest levels, many executives admit they have “fudged” figures in their entertainment bills.

Development

In any case, all of us face temptations frequently to be dishonest and almost all of us could improve our moral behaviour in some way. Avoiding being immoral is a very worthy endeavour; however, it is important to realise the immense gap from being ‘just barely on the side of the law,’ i.e. on the edge between moral and immoral, to being highly ethical and noble.

We can’t all be like Mother Teresa or Albert Schweitzer, but we can recognise the highest levels of ethics humans are capable of achieving. It must, in some cases, require a long and hard struggle to get there. It takes great self-control to transform yourself from the lowest level of just barely acceptable morality to the highest level. But who can say that we can’t all do it?

If we talk about our young generation, unfortunately, most of them get only a little help in developing a philosophy of moral values. They tend to pick these values in a haphazard, piecemeal fashion from friends, parents, the media, teachers, popular heroes and clergy. Therefore, their values are frequently contradictory and not logically connected with how they actually behave.

For example, they accept the Golden Rule, but at the same time, they struggle for money and ‘the good life’ for themselves without much consideration for the needs of others. They claim to value being understanding and forgiving, but sometimes become nasty and revengeful. They supposedly value hard work, but procrastinate. They seek a devoted partner, but are unfaithful. There are many moral decisions made by each of them every day and always new moral dilemmas to resolve, mostly on their own without help.

This writer believes that moral values are a touchy topic because our own guilty conscience, when aroused, can hurt us. It is true that many people loosely “expect” their religion to keep them moral, but, on the other hand, insist that religion shouldn’t get too deeply involved in their “private” behaviour or challenge their rationalisations for selfish, immoral behaviour. Most importantly, we avoid discussing our values because we are not sure of them and afraid our self-serving denials and illusions will be revealed by an open airing of our beliefs.

Reality

We mature, we learn, our needs change, we have new relationships, our jobs make new demands on us, we have children, we are successful, we fail and finally, we approach death.

These things change our values. Changes in values usually result from conflicts: We act in ways we don’t value, we see another viewpoint, we recognise inconsistencies among our values, and we are pressured to change our values by others, and so on. In many of these conflicts, such as individual freedom vs. responsibility for others or happiness vs. achievement, there are persuasive arguments on both sides.

However, logic alone is not the only factor changing our values. More important may be rationalisations, biased self-protective thinking, emotional personal needs, and even unconscious factors. So, to have true wisdom about our moral values requires knowledge and reasoning skills, awareness of our irrationality, insight into our emotions, and some probing of our conscience. That will indeed be really hard!