A post on moral bankruptcy

Originally published in medium, on Jan 11, 2019

“Between Tradition and Modernity: A Visual Exploration of Moral Values Across Cultures” — Image created by OpenAI’s DALL-E, described by Umesh.

Whether its the eastern world where the rustic country spirit powered by chilling breezes originating somewhere in the Himalayas, or the western world that has always(sort of) aggrandized about how great the western civilization is, one of the things that I have experienced in my short life of 25 years is that, in this digital age, where all the people in social media are always happy and doing something with their life :D, people are becoming more and more morally bankrupt. Morality is something deeply inculcated in the religious doctrine of both Abhramic and Dharmic religions, but people seem to care less about morality.

When I was in middle school, we were taught a class in Ethics and Morality. There it was told that you should have respect for elders and peers, treat younger people with love and respect the family unit among others. But it seems like our teachers did not do a very good job of inculcating these values inside us or we were not very bright as students. By saying this, I am not rebuking our education system that has given us some of the greatest scientists, philosophers, doctors, writers etc… of our time, but rather why the education system that has done so much good to the world fails to indoctrinate students with a good set of moral code which is resilient enough to withstand the test of time and mishaps. Sometimes, it leads me to a conclusion that, maybe having a good moral code is sometimes overrated and detrimental to one’s own good.

What I see on going on around is a lot of virtue signaling. Few years back, I read a story that some child-right activist in India having a little girl as her domestic aid and abusing her, how Ironic is that? Also, when you hear all the child molestation cases coming from the Catholic churches you wonder whether its your fault in putting so much trust towards your fellow apes.

The way our society has been structured now-a-days, success means having a good job, more money in the bank, smart investment, and a healthy life. Nowhere, in the domain of success comes morality. Sure, most people are not breaking the laws or getting involved in heinous crimes, but is that it? Is this how we want to pass the beacon of civilization to our descendants? This is what we have to put a lot of thought on. We might be putting the very civilization at risk here.