Morality and the lack of it

Reality bites

Many of us abide by laws, rules and social sanctions solely for the fear of being publicly exposed and punished. What is the world coming to, with everyone out to commit whatever outrages they can get away with. Is humanity hurtling inexorably towards some moral black hole, wonders Monideepa Sahu

Are we naturally inclined to do the right thing? Don’t we all, at some point, use the veil of morality to disguise our baser self-serving instincts? In a world where some people’s jet-setting futuristic lifestyle smothers other people’s villages into toxic garbage dumps, what actually is the ‘right thing’? As Lincoln Steffens aptly said, “Morality is moral only when it is voluntary.” Many of us abide by laws, rules and social sanctions solely for fear of being publicly exposed and punished. Such attitudes encourage hypocrisy. Those who follow rules because they are convinced in their justness, act out of moral strength. When we are forced to do things only out of fear of consequences, our heart is not in it.

We jump traffic signals and hit and run if no policeman is within sight. We are sticklers for cleanliness, but keep our own homes tidy by tossing garbage on public roads or the neighbour’s doorstep. We set fire to brides, impose our unfulfilled ambitions on our children, grab that bag of cash under the table, and claw rivals to get ahead at work or to hook that attractive partner. It’s passé to be principled. ‘Honest officers’ make amends for their own sins by harassing soft targets with petty rules. Friends and relatives empathise with the unfortunate fool who gets caught. When our enemies get caught, we revel in our own superiority. Pointing fingers at others from the vantage point of self-righteous superiority boosts our egos.

What is the world coming to, with everyone out to commit whatever outrages they can get away with? Is humanity hurtling inexorably towards some moral black hole? It’s time for each one of us to introspect, and discard what we feel uneasy about deep inside.

Morality is not a set of absolute values written in stone. Thresholds of what is
acceptable, unacceptable and downright horrible in human society has undergone repeated changes throughout history. In the pristine past, ‘Civilised’ Europeans considered it the height of morality to gang up on their fellow human beings and burn them on the stake as witches.

White men conquered the Americas, righteously looting and decimating the ‘savage’ natives. Human beings were commonly bought and sold as slaves. In our own land, widows were burnt alive in the pyres of their dead husbands with complete social approval.

It would have been morally outrageous to have allowed such women to live a life of dignity, or to allow humans from lower castes to drink water from the same well with their social superiors. Ultimately, we aren’t degenerating into creatures far inferior to our ancestors. We are actually progressing, because we are expressing our inherent immoral and debased streaks in ingenious new ways.

Those with a more religious bent of mind may consider others to be less morally grounded. Yet, there’s that inner spark of decency, kindness and honesty in every
human being, which is independent of their faith, or lack of it, in any gods. Morality does not die out in the absence of outward shows of religious fervour. In fact, the noble values of religions can, in the hands of twisted minds, lead to religious intolerance.

Wars and mass destruction have happened, and continue to happen, because opposing groups feel their deities and ideologies must prevail over the rest. Self-righteous intolerance continues to raise its ugly head in many forms, such as the recent cases of widespread intimidation and attacks on people from our North-Eastern regions. In neighbouring Pakistan, Chief of Pakistan Army Staff Gen Kayani recently cautioned that Pakistan could be at the risk of civil war if militancy was not eradicated. However, the same militants are encouraged as freedom fighters as long as they take their fight someplace else. Racism, and discrimination against others based on caste, creed, sex and just about anything else, can become increasingly vicious when it is cloaked in pseudo-religious sanction.

Warped prayers

A group of ‘worshippers’ whom I recently chanced upon in the heart of Bangalore, set me thinking. The four men were suitably suited-booted representatives of India’s fastest-growing, tech-savviest mega city. They sat with hands folded in prayer, chanting indecipherable mantras in a vacant plot of land. Taking them to be future neighbours, I made friendly overtures.

No, this was no bhoomi puja ceremony. It wasn’t even their own land. Unsettled by the intrusion, the well-heeled foursome hurried away, leaving behind old clothes, vermilion-stained lemons and other tell-tale signs of their ‘prayers’ to transfer their own bad luck to others. Do these gentlemen typify our tendency to grab benefits for ourselves at the expense of our fellow human beings? Oh, wait.

They were righteously ‘praying’, disguising their vile desires, while fooling others by putting on a show of being holier than thou. Most of all, they were deluding themselves into believing that praying for bad luck upon others was the right thing. In the rest of the country, cases of exorcisms and witch-hunting abound. Innocent people, even children, are ritually killed to appease evil spirits and for gaining wealth.

‘Prayers’, when warped in this manner, are a fry cry from the ideals preached by all religions. If we cannot feel goodwill towards others from deep within our hearts, then no grand show of formal prayers or rituals can purify our souls. Lighting candles at altars or mindlessly chanting words which mean little to us, cannot redeem us if we continue to steal, cheat, kill and lie.

Cloaking ill-will and insincerity beneath a thin veil of self-righteousness seems to be the norm today. The road to hell is paved with good intentions twisted to meet the selfish ends of the privileged. Take for example, the Right to Education Act, which has been conceived with the noblest of intentions. But in practice, complaints of discriminatory practices by elite schools against children from less privileged backgrounds are flooding the task force formed to redress grievances. The poor grasp of English among RTE students is a major concern. The children cannot afford private tuitions, and the schools are often setting them back a year rather than helping them bridge the gap.

Where can we turn for leadership? Godmen are showing their ungodliness, and toppling from their moral pedestals. In today’s world, there’s an acute shortage of true champions and heroes. Cycling legend Lance Armstrong’s recent fall from grace on refusing to fight doping charges is the latest disappointment. The world admired him for his gritty fight against cancer, and for his courage to aim for the highest sporting peaks.

Today, he joins other sporting icons such as sprinter Ben Johnson, Ukrainian long jumper Lyudmyla Blonska, and Marion Jones, who were disgraced because they had taken performance enhancing drugs. They stand testimony to the ebbing away of ethics in sports. Seeking quick and easy routes to success, they may win a brief season of public adulation. But ultimately, shortcuts and tricks can only get one so far. The bigger they are, the harder they can fall. All’s not well in the rest of the sporting world. Match is stale news. Even ICC umpires, those upholders of rules and fair play on the cricket field, are being accused by models of sexually exploiting them in private.

Misplaced priorities

The concept of leadership is being twisted by people like us at the most basic levels. We are prodding our young children to become ‘leaders’ by showing off their skills and pushing competitors out of their way. Our children are learning that a lavish lifestyle is the ultimate goal to be grabbed by hook or crook. Education is a means to wealth, and not to learn something or improve ourselves. Even in a venerable institution such as Harvard University, 125 students are being investigated for cheating in an exam, the largest academic misconduct scandal in the history of the prestigious institution.

Today, having ‘fun’ makes better sense than earning what we desire through hard work. Principles such as loyalty or fair play are becoming obsolete. The media blares out strong messages through TV, movies, video games and other eye-ball grabbing channels. Sex, violence, extramarital affairs and lack of integrity in every sphere of life is normal; they hammer relentlessly into the viewers’ heads.

“Politics has no relation to morals,” said Machiavelli. While we are endlessly swamped by reports of corruption of our netas, we must place their crooked shenanigans in perspective. Corruption was an integral part of politics in Machiavelli’s age many centuries ago. Our own Chanakya’s Arthashastra noted this fact millennia ago. When leaders and officials are left to manage public money, it is inevitable that they will pocket some of it, just like fish swimming in the sea imbibe some of the water. Meanwhile, only days ago in Uttar Pradesh, minister Shivpal Yadav claims he was mis-quoted telling officials, “If you work hard, you can steal a little.”

Freedom fighter N V Krishnamachari voiced the concerns of many of us in a recent interview. “We might term the British firangis or ‘white men’, but they ruled us based on laws... But what principles do today’s politicians have? Hardly any. We fought to get a nation to be ruled by Indians based on truth, ahimsa, human values... (But) the British did not trouble the public as much as our elected politicians do now.” The proof of his rueful words lies all around us.

The Karnataka High Court recently upbraided BBMP officials for slacking on their duties in locating building bye-laws violations. “Are your engineers working or sleeping?” observed the honourable judges. “There are violations all over the city... Are they ignorant of the law or dumb?” Meanwhile, Bangalore’s mayor and his wife faced criminal charges for allegedly making false declarations in order to benefit from land given by the government to landless people.

In our great land, everyone with power and authority seems to be playing the blame game. It’s all about who can best don the garb of moral superiority and point a finger at their accusers. The upholders of law and justice are themselves not immune to flak. West Bengal’s Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee recently declared that corruption prevailed among some members of the judiciary. She spiced up this assertion by claiming that she was aware of instances when favourable court judgements were purchased for money. Meanwhile, respected judges continue to make strange pronouncements which seem to go against the principles of natural justice. “If you can tolerate birth pangs, can you not tolerate the husband’s beatings,” a judge reportedly stated recently to a woman who filed for divorce because of domestic violence.

Our leaders are leading the way by acting in innovative ways that challenge moral principles. A professor was arrested for posting a cartoon online, which allegedly cast a slur on the chief minister’s image. And a young farmer was arrested and branded a Maoist because he questioned those in authority. The coal blocks allocation scam threatens to blacken the images of the highest and mightiest of our land. Meanwhile, the government is pulling up the comptroller and auditor general for a ‘flawed’ report.

Indian politicians seem chronically averse to dissent. Books are routinely banned, movies withdrawn from screening and eminent authors discouraged from attending literary fests; all in the name of offending sensitivities of some group or the other. Public concern is growing about the possibility of government censorship of social media platforms on that worldwide forum of free expression, the Internet.

Moral turpitude is not the monopoly of our political leaders alone. Businesses, big and small, disguise unethical deeds behind a facade of slick professionalism. Even in a vital sector such as the healthcare industry, of the 48, 082 drug samples tested by government drug controllers during 2011-12, 2,186 samples failed the quality test. In many major scams, business interests are hand in glove with politicians in undermining public interests in order to make a quick profit. At the most basic level, how many of us have spent hard-earned savings on expensive goods with poor after-sales service?
Huddled in groups over steaming cuppas, and pointing fingers at the sins of the rest of world, seems to be the flavour of the season.

But where is our will to translate hot air into action? Where, in Lincoln Steffens’ words, is “the civic pride of an apparently shameless citizenship”? People like us have repeatedly proved that when there’s a will, we can make a difference. Starting at the grassroots level close to home is the first step to progress. Residents of RMV extension in Bangalore have set up a successful model for managing household garbage. The waste from 400 households in the locality is being collected, segregated, recycled and turned into compost. Such community level programmes are a positive way to push towards doing the right thing.

People like us have helped to effect advancements in business, science and culture. We have capabilities, which we must not bury beneath empty boasts or expecting someone else to miraculously clear the messes we create. Anyone can fall prey to the lure of appearing righteous without actually being so. It’s tempting to trick others into believing one is acting for the welfare of others, and even believing it ourselves in order to feather our own nests. Individual statesmen, business leaders or citizens may be morally at fault at times. But ultimately, it is our community, our country and our world. We can, and we must, challenge the status quo and expand our vision beyond established practices in order to improve our common lot. We are all collectively responsible for upholding the moral fabric of our society.