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We started looking at morality as something totally outdated crap as most people would call it and total Bakwaas as people in India would call it.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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Teaching Kids Read Early Makes Sense?

Picture Courtesy- GettyImages I am an only child, though not a child anymore. My childhood went in search of friendships outside the home, and waiting for the evening to come by to immerse into those rare moments of camaraderie. Our days, the Pre-Appu childhood, was largely supervised by our parents. I do not much remember visiting my friend’s place in childhood. Much unlike my daughter and her friends who keep meeting up in their homes. My friends were kids of my father’s colleagues and we met when they met. Friendships were formed and finished in the children park.  The interspersed period of loneliness was filled up by books. It was from Comics to pocket-books to Geeta Press to even, Indian Classics like Ramayana and Mahabharata . They filled up my days of solitude with rare happiness. I was called introvert and adults left me alone. It was an arrangement which we both liked. There was no other arrangement in the view. For some reasons, parents those days did not appr...
2 comments
Read more

On the Eve of Formation of New Government

The long dance-duel of democracy has finally ended. The rulers and wanting-to-be-rulers have now decided to rest after a no-holds-barred battle is over. The unapologetic political parties and apologetic, righteous neutral commentators, jumping in and out of the discourse. In fact, the case for the commentators was the most curious, under the thinly wrapped veneer of neutrality and forward-thinking lurked the opportunity to shoot and scoot.   This was a campaign which made people see through the charade of intellectual bourgeoisie, who pretended to be neutral but treaded the thin line between the public and private. Thankfully, the campaign ended and hopefully we are left with few things still left to believe in.   Narendra Modi has a task cut out for him. Swearing-in happens tomorrow evening. My view he has things to do, new paths to tread.   He has invited the SAARC countries, all of them to attend. That to me is a good be...
Post a Comment
Read more

पुस्तक समीक्षा - मैं मुन्ना हूँ - लेखक - मनीष श्रीवास्तव

  जिस प्रकार वनस्पति घी डालडा होता है , जैसे प्रतिलिपि ज़ेरॉक्स होती है , मनीष श्रीवास्तव जी श्रीमान जी होते हैं। कम लोगों को पाठकों का इतना स्नेह प्राप्त होता है , जो उनके कृतित्व एवं लेखन से आगे निकल जाता है। इसका कारण उनके लेखन में   सत्य का प्रतिबिम्ब परिलक्षित होना होता है जो पाठक ने उनके व्यक्तित्व में देखा सुना हो। लेखन मेरी दृष्टि में वह माध्यम होता है जिसके द्वारा अपने सत्य को वह कपोल कल्पना का आवरण पहना कर सार्वजनिक कर देता है और आत्मा को एक पिशाच के बोझ से मुक्त कर पाता है। कलम के माध्यम से लेखक वह कहने का साहस जुटा पाता है जिसे अन्यथा वह संभवतः न कह पाए।जब कोई कृति यह कर पाती है तो वह न केवल लेखक की आत्मा के पिशाच हटाती है वरन पाठक की आत्मा के धागों पर लगी गिरहें भी खोल देती है और उसके मानस को मुक्त कर देती है।   इस दृष्टि से मनीष की यह पुस्तक " मैं मुन्ना हूँ " अपने दायित्व का पूर्णता से निर्वाह करती ...
Post a Comment
Read more