Source : Google photo
Synopsis: I see a widespread decline in moral
values everywhere that used to be the guiding principle to live a decent life
and be useful to others without any recompense. But the world is in the grip of
the tsunami of a decadent culture and values that are dragging us down and away
from our humane roots. The blog looks at some of the reasons and asks many
questions.
The collective soul of individuals makes the soul of a
nation so when the individual souls are morally corrupt, it makes the soul of a
nation corrupt. This leads to the downfall of that nation. Nations, empires,
kingdoms rose and fell in the past due to the corruption of the soul that
starts as a rot that eventually engulfs the whole nation.
The religion or faith in morals guides the people to stay
on the virtuous path so the Ten Commandments become a guiding principle to
people but these commandments are not unique to the Christians. Almost all
religions have them in one form or the other and form the basis of their
society.
But we see that in many countries, people have walked
away from these principles or pay less attention to in their daily lives so a
moral corruption seeps in. Such people see nothing wrong in taking bribes to do
their job, taking advantage of a weak and vulnerable person for their personal
gain, lying, cheating others, deceitful behavior, letting people down and not
keeping promises made in good faith, borrowing money but not repaying,
arrogance of money or social position, discriminating people based on skin
color, ethnicity or gender, intolerance of others and their religion, racism
and a belief in self-superiority etc. The list is long that corrupts the souls
of people in any country.
This collective decay of moral values is the rot that
brings down a country so that nation becomes a pariah in the League of Nations.
No one trusts them, wants to settle there or have any dealings with them
through trade, commerce and cultural exchange. There are many examples of such
nations that have become pariahs because they have lost their moral guiding
principles that give directions in their life. At the top of the list are
countries ruled by a despot dictator like in North Korea where people are
enslaved and have no freedom that other nations enjoy. They live in fear of one
man who decides how they should live. It is really no different from brutal
kings or queens of the past who ruled their subject with an iron fist and
punished those who wanted to live freely.
The French , British and the Spanish kings constantly
waged wars with their neighbors or sent huge armies to regain Jerusalem so they
needed huge amount of money that they forcibly collected from the poor and the
rich people or borrowed from the Templars. People lived in fear and abject
poverty but their sons were forced to join the armies to fight in crusades and
die somewhere. When the Templars wanted the king of France to repay them the
money borrowed, he invited them to a meeting where all were massacred. This was
the moral decay of the kingdom that affected everyone.
When people live in fear, they start mistrusting people
because they become suspicious of others. They are always afraid that someone
will report them to the dictator who will put them in prison, torture or kill
them because a dictator becomes extremely paranoid who does not trust anyone. To
live in such a country is to live in a living nightmare so people become
desperate and try to escape. Hundreds of people were killed while trying to
escape East Germany if you recall. Millions of people have left their country
of birth because of war and the brutal government that is rotten to the core
and spreads the rot to the people.
This moral rot of a regime that subjugates its people
leads to revolution that encourages the common people to come out and join the
revolution like in Cuba, Romania, Haiti and many other countries where people
overthrew their dictators at a tremendous loss of innocent lives. In the past
the revolution in France and Russia was the outcome of the repressive regimes
there.
Those of you who travel all over the world for tourism
have stories to tell about how you were treated by the airport authorities and
the people. In spite of having a valid visa, they will look at you with
suspicion, will demand to see if you have money on you, will want to know how
long you will stay, where you will stay, what places you intend to visit etc.
They will do this in an impolite way to make you feel uncomfortable and
unwelcome.
When you step out of the airport or the port of entry,
you will be assailed by con men trying to make a quick buck out of you or the taxi
man who will say that his meter does not work so he may charge you much more
than the regular fare.
Then you will go to a hotel where you will be surprised
to find that the manager gives you a dirty room for a high price but you have
no choice because it is late in the evening or night when it is hard to find a
hotel you like. These hotels are run by con men who advertise in the Internet
with fancy photos but in reality they are thieves and con men who take
advantage of an innocent person like you and me because you have no choice.
On the streets a stern and impolite policeman may accost
you and ask for your papers making you literally afraid and start to wonder if
you made a mistake coming to such a country. The touts, the trinket sellers,
the guides, the taxi men, the bell boys are all motivated by their greed for
your money as soon as they spot you and decide that you are vulnerable. This is
the moral rot of a country that I write about today.
There is no denying the fact that the increased tourism in
many parts of the world has fueled this greed in the local people who forget
all decency of life and pound on you when they get a chance. It gives you a bad
taste in your mouth because you are a decent person who expects courtesy and
decency in other countries.
In some Eastern European countries, they will tell you at
the airports that you must spend so many dollars per day of your stay and you
must stay at the tourist designated hotels where they can spy on you and all
your movements. You must be accompanied by a government approved guide who
reports to them where you went, whom you met and all the petty details making
you very uncomfortable because you may not be able to travel around freely. You
may face great difficulties and harassment if you overstay and want to extend
your visa just by a few days.
Then there are countries where they give preferential treatment
depending on the passport you carry. Some passport holders are treated with
hostility and thorough body and luggage search while others may pass freely
because they hold a passport that gives them preferential treatment. The skin
color, ethnicity and even the quality of your luggage may play a role in how
you are treated.
In India, the tourists are often piled into buses that
are marked as Tourist in big bold letters that attract the con men and
cheaters like flies who will try to take advantage. It is shocking to see it
and experience such moral degradation in people that puts a dark shadow on the
whole country although there are plenty of good people whom you may never meet.
Then there is naked racism in many countries where they
may deny you a hotel room just because you have a dark skin or wear clothes
they do not approve or have turban or beard or other physical attributes that
raise alarm bells in them. In Algeria one hotel manager thought that I was a
Touareg from the desert so would not give me a hotel room. When I showed my
passport, only then he was convinced and let me stay there.
In Delhi a hotel manager said there was a room but when
my wife showed up, the fellow changed his mind thinking that I had eloped with
a foreign woman. This vulgarity and open suspicion should have no place in a
civilized society but we unfortunately live in an imperfect world where
anything goes.
One German gentleman told me that he was somewhere in the
United States while reading a Time magazine when a policeman showed up and
roughly asked him why he was tearing up some pages of the magazine. This
surprised the German fellow because he did not know that tearing up a page or
two of a discarded magazine was unlawful.
It wasn’t but the arrogant policeman treated him harshly
just the same while keeping his hand on the holster of his loaded gun. This is the
absolute rot I am writing about. It affects everyone. People call the police
just because they are paranoid and suspicious of someone because the way he
looks, his skin color or his beard or turban.
You may not notice them but there are thousands of
cameras mounted on poles or buildings that follow every citizen and send their
images in real time to a central computer somewhere that analyzes these images
and tries to identify them using facial recognition software. This is spying on
people on a massive scale that goes on 24/7 that boggles the mind of anyone.
In the airports they will take your photo, finger print
you like a criminal and scan your luggage before you are allowed out. The
paranoia is everywhere. The cameras will follow you in malls where you are
planning to buy something. The cameras will follow you if you go to certain
consulates or embassies. Even an unpaid traffic tickets get registered in their
computer and may cause you some problem in the future.
They scan the license plate number of your car to see if
your car is stolen or not and may stop you just to make sure. The policeman may
shout at you and ask to see your papers while keeping his hand on his gun. May
be it is the loaded gun that gives them the courage to behave this way. I
wonder if they would behave more genially if they carried only a baton like in
some countries and even save many lives. The trigger happy policemen have
killed people of color just because of a busted tail light in their car in the
United States.
So ask this question - Where is the basic courtesy? What
happened to civilized behavior in people? What happened to the humanity that
shows aggression at the slightest chance?
Why is it so? I know the answer. It is because of moral
rot that is spreading through their society that makes them behave this way.
When the whole country starts to behave in a degrading and suspicious way then
it means only one thing. This moral rot of their soul has spread far and wide
and affects the whole nation. No one is spared.
Neighbors do not talk to neighbors, officemates are
paranoid about their co workers, office manager treats his employees in a
degrading and humiliating way, the government offices where one seeks their
services are filled with rude people who will answer you in impolite way when
you ask them simple questions, the store owner who cheats you and shortchanges
you are the experiences many of us have.
The suspicion and the fear of others who are not like
them fuels this paranoia that you notice in many communities. The pressure of
economic needs to survive makes people lose their humanity so they start to
behave badly. The credit card culture in many countries exacerbates this
problem. When you live on credit and have very little reserve to tide you over
the hard times, you tend to become more aggressive and impolite to others.
The credit card culture makes people live on edge all the
time and it shows in their behavior. You will always worry about how to pay
back the debt to the bank, to the car dealer, to the hospital, to the school or
college. You will worry about how to pay for the things you need to survive all
because you took too much credit so now the Shylock wants his pound of flesh
plus interest so it leaves you sleepless.
The phenomenal rise in the number of people who are
looking for quick money from commission that you must pay them if you have the
misfortune to deal with them is a sign of rot of moral values. A gentleman
helps someone out with something because he has moral values that dictate his
actions. He is not looking for a commission and believes that he has a moral
obligation to help someone who needs his help in some way.
We were very surprised when some missionaries in Haiti
asked us why we helped an American woman who had a car accident. Did we know
her? We answered that it was the right thing to do.
When Rome was past its glory and on its way to oblivion
because people had become so rotten and decadent, so perverse and without
humanity, there was an example that justified its end.
There was a very greedy man who had several fire chariots
so people ran to him to seek his help when their homes were on fire. He then
started to make extraordinary demands before he would agree to put the fire
out. He wanted a lot money upfront. So many homes burnt down because they could
not come up with money soon while his fire chariots sat full of water.
The corruption and greed of this man was well known even
in distant parts of the Roman Empire so when the Caesar tired of this man sent
him away to a distant province, people quickly caught him there and poured
liquid gold down his throat that he loved so much.
What is a country without its soul intact? What are the
people who make up their country who have lost their moral values and have
become inhuman? Some people may not believe that there is such a thing as soul
so let us call it their conscience. What is a man without conscience? What is a
nation without conscience that values greed for money and material goods over
good deeds to help their fellow beings?
When a simple chat with a black man could have saved his
life, the policeman knocked him down and suffocated him to death while people
watched in horror. Have we become so inhuman for this to happen today? What
will be our future without our moral courage to do what is right?
Note : My blogs are also available in French, Spanish, German and Japanese languages at the following links as well as my biography. My blogs can be shared by anyone anytime in any social media.
https://medium.com/me/stories/public
La biografía de anil en español.
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