Whenever I think of morality in life, it reminds me these stirring words by Albert Camus “Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football.” Rarely, it sounds like discreet and dignified to me. Most of the times, I understood it as “simpering and no cavalier behavior of humans.”
The stories of men who barter political influence for material advantage have so multiplied that we are almost numb to their devastating and sickening effect. It has become commonplace, or so it would seem, for men in positions of responsibility in government and business to betray their trust and place their own immediate gain ahead of their moral obligations. Outright graft, the perpetration of fraud and theft, has become almost an everyday occurrence.
On another front the evidence mounts of the corrosion of ethical standards among our colleges and universities. We have come to take it almost for granted that many colleges will field professional football and basketball teams under the guise of students, with incalculable damage to the proper goals of higher education. We hear sensational reports of organized criminals making billions on slot machines, illegal mining and narcotics, and we are struck with the powerlessness of a committee reports to do anything about the conditions its investigations disclose. Are we indeed losing our morals ?
No, our real trouble is not that we have grown morally callous. Far from it ! The widespread reaction to our present moral crisis is itself the most convincing evidence that our consciences are more deeply sensitive than ever before. There has been, of course, the kind of moral weakening which always comes in an technologically advanced period. There are the evidences of a letdown which we should all have expected. The surprising thing is not that there should have been such a letdown, but rather that it has not been far worse than is actually the case and that public reaction has been so prompt and decisive. Technology has been or going to be widespread medium for this kind proliferation of letdown.
Our present difficulties do not stem from a moral decay, which simply has not happened. They arise rather from the rapidly increasing demands which are made upon us all by the very nature of the world we live in. The plain fact is that the morality which did very well for yesterday is no longer adequate today. Living at a time in which our concern must extend to all mankind, when no false pride of nation, creed, or race can be allowed to block the peaceful development of our “one world,” when the alternative to undreamed of progress is inconceivable disaster—living at such a time as this, we are still too easily content just to limp along with the moral concepts of an earlier generation. Our morality must always be expanding, seeking ever more inclusive principles .
Now in our own time we must confront the grossest immorality of all, that of post war (Tech or military or economic)is grossest because it represents the ultimate disregard for human personality.
The present moral crisis—and our situation is critical indeed—demands two things of us all, two things which must rest heavily upon every person who is genuinely concerned for ethical values. The first requirement is that we must take honest stock of ourselves. We must discover how far we as individuals are guilty of abetting the widespread social approval of anything you can get away with. To what extent do we allow ourselves to drift along with the tide, and how far do we assert the basic principles for which we profess to be concerned? How effectively are we helping to create the kind of environment in which these principles will be inculcated by example as well as by precept ?
This self-evaluation is our first duty, and it must be undertaken repeatedly. And we must always be thoroughly honest with ourselves, making certain that the principles for which we are concerned are far more inclusive than just the so-called “old-fashioned virtues”. They must include as well, things like respect for individual differences, and social responsibility. These basic elements of our democratic faith are indispensable ingredients of a vital growing morality.
Beyond this. we must be always concerned that our moral concepts never settle down into a fixed mold, incapable of further expansion. Our morality must rather be open -ended, growing—that it may always he sufficiently inclusive to meet the continually increasing demands of our time. We as a human cannot claim moral leadership of the people unless one self-deserve it!
We must strike out on new paths and improve the heritage we have received. Take your motto with sagacious words and continue to live with it. Continue doing your self evaluation for every decision you make. Your choices and reasons may vary with others, but underlying principles should be meaningful. Introspection and Retrospection should gauze you from good vs bad!
sivaayyala 