What is the morality of our time?
A popular dictionary has the following definition of morality:
…beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior
and…
: a moral discourse, statement, or lesson
It describes moral as:
: concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior
Morality in simple terms is — Our understanding of right and wrong.
Right is that which should be and wrong is that which shouldn’t be! In thoughts, behavior and action.
This should and shouldn’t is through our understanding of —
- The world
- Ourselves
This determination is based on our believe of the reasons for the existence of both the world and us.
This reason in turn gives us a picture of what ought to happen; both in the world and with/among us.
So, to understand the morality of today we have to know the prevalent reality of the world and ourselves — which we believe in.
For thousands of years, the task of interpreting reality was carried by philosophers, artists and the Religious systems. While the former two may have appealed to a selected few, religious systems were constructed in such a manner that everyone under its jurisdiction had to adhere to its principles. While the former two could have been ignored as fancy thinking lunatics, the latter could not be ignored — for it was decreed by either God, Godmen or super special individuals. Religious systems became mandatory and powerful.
It were the religious systems that told people:
- what the world was, how it came to be, why it came to be;
- what you were, how you came to be and why you came to be.
Since these knowledge were brought to people by ‘God or special people’, they became irrefutable. The same knowledge gave birth to the code conducts of thought, behavior and action:
…beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior
concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior
If you followed the Judaic system, the world for you came to be due to the will of God.
Humans were formed from the dust of ground and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life…(Genesis 2:7)
You had an immortal soul which lived on in another realm once your body died. Your only task here is to establish a proper relationship with Him. You cannot murder, commit adultery, steal, bear false witness against your neighbor nor covet anything of your neighbor’s.
Similarly, if you were under a Hindu system then too the world was created by God’s will, for God’s will. You were the highest design of God, created to look after his world and your task was to fulfill God’s will before salvating yourself and uniting with him.
What happened to you under these systems was —
You looked at the world and yourself from their lens. That view then dictated each and everything you thought and did. If you followed their right, you got to be happy and were rewarded; if you followed their wrong, you were guilty and punished!
Philosophers here and there independently provided their own distinct view of the world and man but they found it difficult to be accepted and followed in a world where religion was the most powerful thing going around.
Come the 15th century, all this started to change as Europe gradually started to ward off religious/mystic thinking and follow the path of reason.
‘Stop arguing over religious texts and go to objects for truth’, they started to say.
What followed was a period of great intellectual change as thinkers all around Europe — influenced by Ancient Greek and Arab Philosophy — began exploring reason as a way to understanding:
- what the world was, how it came to be, why it came to be;
- what you were, how you came to be and why you came to be.
‘God is something that cannot be known by man…Man is inherently nasty’, said Thomas Hobbes while ‘God can be proved logically’, said Baruch Spinoza.
John Locke was of the idea that everything is learnt through experiences including right and wrong.
And so began a period of extensive exploration of those questions via reason. There were skepticisms and critiques but the theme was the same: Think your way through things. The same applied to moral questions and right and wrong. People were in the position to determine their own ills and perils; not some God or fate! People were confident enough. Life wasn’t something to be devoted to God and his spokesperson. Life was free to be explored.
All this led to the ‘Death of God’ and the freedom of man to choose his own rights and wrongs.
Beneath all this a small flame was burning which erupted in the 20th century. That flame was — Science.
Science was philosophy’s younger sibling. If philosophy was a progress from hearsay to reason, science was a progress from reason to sensing. Developing from the empiricist school of philosophical thinking, scientific method soon began revealing and creating crazy things in the world.
Both religion and philosophy started to seem like tortoises in a race where science was steam-engining itself to uncharted territories. It brought gravity, light and countless things to numbers, and showed humanity Atoms, DNAs, Neurons, Heavens, Planets, and whatnot!
When one of the most popular spokesperson of Science, Stephen Hawking proclaimed, philosophy is dead, he didn’t just mean in terms of knowing about the world. He and his science counterparts were sure that — if there is anything to be done, it can be done through Science. This includes the following:
- what the world was, how it came to be, why it came to be;
- what you were, how you came to be and why you came to be.
and this brings us to our time.
The Times of Sciences.
Science today has more or less answered those questions. Apart from a minute circle of skeptics, the general consensus agrees on them:
The world was nothing, it came to be from a big-bang of sorts and it came to be because of inevitable accidents. You are an organism. You came to be through evolution to fulfill nature’s desires.
This is the general agreement today. (I am neither saying these are correct nor am I saying these are the final truth).
Morality of today has come under the jurisdiction of Science. Yes, religion and philosophy exist, but as background noise.
How has this had an impact?
If Christianity considers Human life as sacred; Evolutionary perspective calls it a battlefield in the survival of the fittest.
We are at a time where the latter dominates.
If Christianity considers good deeds as tools to help be free and develop good habits; Behaviorism says,
If Buddhism called for an 8 fold path to the end of misery; Science has transhumanist ideals with technology.
Similarly, if a branch of philosophy rejected God and said life was a misery without any solution; Science wants to bring happiness to people’s feet through technological, neurological and psychological methods.
This way, our — beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior (morality) is generally dictated today by our understanding that:
- The world consists of things which do not have an inherent value unless human’s come into play.
- The world was nothing and it came to be from an inevitable natural happening.
- We are carbonic organisms who have evolved from smaller and less intelligent creatures. We have all struggled for existence and should continue to do so.
- We are here to conquer the Universe.
What this has done is opened the entire world including ourselves to us :
For exploitation and consumption!
These are the rights of today. Everything else is wrong.
Q: And who tells us the rights and wrongs?
A: The ones who control Science.
Q: And who are they?
A: The same type of people who once controlled religion.
Q: But what about all those humanitarian values going around? In society and business.
A: Those are strategic talks. They know where to hit you. They know what to feed you. They have scientific data. The more we do for each other, the more we become like each other. We will all be the same, like in Huxley’s BNW.
Q: But all that makes me happy.
A: Exactly!
Q: Okay so what do we do?
A: The world needs free-thinkers. Not Science-thinkers. Go out there and intellectually destroy science. Expose it. Expose it’s absurdity. If you’ve got the guts!!!
Q: But, Science has given us so much…
A: We didn’t ask for it!
Q: But life surely has gotten easier and better!
A: Really? Please think about it more.
Q: I don’t know how to. I am scared.
A: Exactly!
