On moral revival

We are living in an era where institutions are able to act immoral pretty freely, long lasting and without consequences. This is not only true for companies, but also for social, political and religious institutions. Together with the up rise of social media, press – if still not oppressed, yes they are still some out there – manages to expose dirty laundry of corrupted institutions.

What mostly concerns me in this issue, is the fact that these intuitions forcibly condemn their actions only after being heavily scrutinized and consequently being busted. When we take a look at news headlines within the past couple of weeks, we can already see many examples of these self-condemning institutions including; Oxfam with sexual abuse in Haiti¹, Facebook with global privacy issues² and Heineken with their contribution to sexual exploitation in Nigeria³. For the sake of time, I will spare some other dozens of self-condemning men that popped out of Hollywood during the #metoo movement.

Of course, these incidents are just the tip of the iceberg. It seems that we have overestimated the contribution of civilization, scientific and technological revolution on the development of morality: while brains are enlightened, moral development dropped behind somewhere in the dark ages.

So yes, we badly need moral revival for current and especially future generations. In this, I identify two potential main sources; philosophy and religion. These sources are not mutually exclusive and in fact, as history shows us, they can be the alchemy of happiness and prosperity on both individual and social level when they collaborate.

Note however, that I have Italicized ‘potential’ in the previous phrase, because I will quit briefly, but clearly state why both of these sources have limited potential to contribute to moral revival of masses in its current state.

Many philosophers such as Plato⁴, Spinoza⁵ and Kant⁶ have written on morality or ethics. We however, are too distracted to understand and practice some of these philosophical concepts, let alone find some time or energy to even read them. Ethical philosophy has therefore a negligible influence on current daily lives of masses, is only read by a marginal isolated circle of academic scholars and is therefore limited in contributing to moral revival.

In this sense, religion seems to be more successful and in fact, is one of the most influential systems – probably just after or together with money – to organize and control masses⁷. However today, religion in general is taken hostage by Machiavellist demagogues and is struggling to contribute to moral revival of masses in its current state. These masses are numbed by shallow religious symbolism and dozens of other “-isms”, which prevents them to explore and internalize moral values that are veiled somewhere deep within religion.

FI

1 https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/22/americas/oxfam-report-haiti-threats-intl/index.html

2 http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/21/technology/mark-zuckerberg-apology/index.html?iid=EL

3 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/03/23/promotiemeisjes-van-heineken-verkopen-bier-en-hun-lichaam-a1596910

4 Plato. Plato’s Phaedo. Oxford :Clarendon press, 1911. Print.

5 Spinoza, Benedictus , E M. Curley, and Stuart Hampshire. Ethics. , 1996. Print.

6 Kant, Immanuel, and Mary J. Gregor. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, U.K: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Print.

7 Harari, Yuval N., author. Sapiens : a Brief History of Humankind. New York :Harper, 2015. Print.