What are Moral Values? Who decides these values and how we can reinforce these values in life. People often look to religion to guide moral behavior. However, religious beliefs often confuse people through various doctrines.
It is important to know what factors lead us to lose moral values. Morality being sacrosanct is mostly dictated by inner consciousness. This consciousness is our true being, inner voice and direction emanating from Ultimate. People realize this consciousness constantly, but try to ignore it. This is because the mind and the attention flow outside, and rarely inside. Everyone is aware that something lying inside is driving us.
We relate to self with body consciousness which is changeable, often unaware and remains absent during sleep, but “Inner Consciousness” is always present. How we create more awareness of this inner consciousness depends on how much we practice the core moral values in life. During sleep, we lose our awareness, but still our heart and other organs keep on doing its function. Who makes them to perform all these functions? It is the inner consciousness that is driving force and plays its role without our knowledge. Real moral values have to align with the awareness which remains with us forever.
The core moral issues are aligned to the inner consciousness. As inner consciousness does not undergo change, so these core morality values also does not undergo change, but these moral values are often ignored. It recognizes each other person as close to own self. Hence all those actions, principles, behavior and beliefs which treat other person with respect, love and do not harm others are moral values. Morality thus demands being honest, trustworthy, compassionate and loving in nature. The more we think about it, all aspirations will be judged from the broader perspective. Everyone talks about need for building these values. These are universal in nature. Anything which is done to harm somebody is not moral. While everyone agrees these to be real moral issues, but these are often sidelined and ignored by other arbitrary and emotional issues dictated by society and religious groups. Such moral issues which are mostly subjective in nature often become focus of discussion and disagreements between different individuals.
We observe divergent views on adhering to the moral values by social reformists, religious leaders and politicians. These dialogues talk on those morals which are not touching the core issues. Honesty, love, compassionate and truthfulness are indisputable moral values that are expected from each individual. Unfortunately, we are gradually diverting from these real moral values to something on where universal anonymity is not reached.
Morality goes beyond legal and social values. You may be within legal rights in performing certain acts, but if these create discomfort to others, it may not be moral. It depends on each individual to interpret as how much and what actions are harmful to others. There are people who are operating within the law of the land but still not leading a truly moral life. It is difficult to point any blame on such people as nobody else can force other person to be moral. It is self imposed adherence to be truly moral.
We come across number of incidents in day to day life when people lose the touch with real moral issues. What we observe these days is insensitivity by the people who command authority on issues that impact common people. They will take refuge of legal system and feel satisfied that their actions are completely in conformity with the norms set by the society. People have become so busy with their own life, and often try to ignore pain and suffering of others. These common problems have multiplied so much that it is considered more practical to be insensitive to the suffering of others. To move ahead in life, we prefer to dilute on these moral values in life. Those who devote time to take care of others are not fully appreciated by government or societies.
People try to mould rules to their own benefit or to the benefit of their core support group. This happens mostly in every organization. This is the reason that chief executives of many organizations are able to gain much beyond their efforts while ordinary worker is left behind with fewer privileges. It is deemed completely normal in a competitive world where a person is able to bargain better due to his strength. But morality goes a step further. It expects a person to be more considerate towards requirements of others. Such person will like to grab only so much which is felt genuine and appropriate to the efforts made.
We observe professionals charging exorbitant fees much beyond their efforts. They are within their legal rights to charge for these services. However, it is up to each individual to decide whether one ought to put some restraint looking to the reasonableness from the moral stand point. There are innumerable instances when people take advantage to extract full benefits of their bargaining power. Such insensitivities have crept in the various developed societies and each person have to look for own self interest unmindful of common welfare of all others. Lot of reasons will be given to justify large privileges which some small section of people enjoy. It is justified to foster efficiency and for attracting good talent in the top level in the organization. However, the real truth is that strong moral values have shown a decline trend. People who have the authority do not feel moral responsibility to justify what is morally right and wrong.
Your organizations may be incurring huge losses, but chief executives will continue to claim all benefits. There will be layoff in your organizations, but you try to secure your job and the privileges that go on with it. Everything looks fine from the legal stand point, but it is indicative of fast moral degradation happening all around. How can a person try to remain insulated from the sufferings of others? People have to stand above the legality of issue and understand pain and suffering of other people.
If a person is wealthy, he has every right to enjoy and spend his money in a way he deems it appropriate. However, a person who has certain moral values feels his obligation towards others to help them out of his surplus wealth. He may not prefer to engage in conspicuous consumption and big luxuries. He will look to wealth as a means to support others, and sees himself to be mere trustee. All these feelings come out of the inner consciousness to treat others with love, respect and compassion. Suffering of others will affect a moral person and touch his heart to be helpful to others. Being wealthy and not thinking about helping others may be normal, but looking to higher moral values; it is expected of a person who is in a position of advantage to support others.
The world has thrown opportunities to capitalists to improve their net worth through industrial and economic growth. We observe millionaires and billionaires. It is true that in a capitalist society, when a small section of people accumulate lot of wealth, they stand benefited in a number of ways. Their actions influence large section of people working under them. They are able to influence policies of government. There is nothing wrong in accumulation of wealth. However, morality demands self imposed responsibility to repay back to society.
You make a fun of someone because of his certain limitations. It may be quite normal for you. However, look from the perspective of other person. It could be quite stressful for that person. You may have not violated any law in creating stressful situation for other person; however, still it is not moral to magnify other person’s shortcomings and limitations. There are innumerable such instances where our conduct and dealings are not moral but well within the legal framework. We often ignore certain acts of immoral behavior. Morals are based on reality, reason and logic. People often try to suppress logic and reasoning to justify being low on moral values.
Let us examine why people are losing moral values. The most important factor is the advantage people have got through external development. Most parts of the world have been benefited from the economic development since last several decades that improved the life style and standard of living of so many people. Hence, people have believed that move ahead in life externally is the solution to the all problems of life. Our experiences with the development of science and technology have also reassured that it can offer solutions to so many problems in life. People have gradually forgotten to think and look within. Nobody has time to reinvent own self. Everyone is in competition with every other person. As long all these activities are within acceptable limits, these are healthy signs of development. However, our minds are always stressed to think about external development, progress, comforts and achievements. It is always thinking about own self. Rarely people engage in thinking about other peoples’ welfare. Why this is happening. It is outcome of losing own inner consciousness. The moment we think about our connection with God and inter connection with others, it creates more love, peace and desire to be in close harmony with others. Losing this inner connection prompts us to think about self. It makes us to look outwardly.
Looking outwardly, people tend to look to values that satisfy your individual identity. You feel right if you follow certain legal and society norms. People also get impressed by religious philosophy that impacts moral values. Hence, the real moral issues which are core to existence are lost. There is not much pressure either from legal, social or religious groups to be honest, sincere, loving and compassionate in behavior. Each religion, society and legal system has its own doctrine and philosophy. The real truth about our existence gets hidden in these doctrines. Lot of energy and time is spent to find about the real issues. The fight often goes in interpretation of what each society and religion demands. These views are mostly narrow minded and confined to the benefit of particular section of people. Unfortunately, no great leader propagates universal brotherhood and living in harmony.
As long as people forget to look within and realize their spiritual essence, moral issues will often be narrowly woven around emotional issues. We will talk about sex, corruption, favoritism, excessive consumption and nepotism as main issues. Everyone will have different views on these issues and it will occupy lot of attention. For some societies enjoying sex openly is normal whereas for conservative societies it is immoral. Taking business favors is normal with some nations that make corruption a normal phenomenon. It is still looked as immoral act by so many countries. Hence, the attention moves to all the issues that are secondary in nature.
People are not able to improve on core moral issues as it needs self discipline and a broader picture of life. This can come only to people who emphasizes on real self. How many times we practice to be honest, truthful and loving to others. Are we able to offer something as token of respect, love and compassion to others? Do we see comfort in helping others? Are my activities in tune with these ideals? Do I really mean and believe what I state. As we look to these issues, it will be evident that real moral values are missing to a varied degree with most of us. Our actions and behavior do not demonstrate attitude of forgiveness, gratitude and compassion towards others. Even people, who are in a position to afford to help others, do only a paltry service in comparison to other engagements. Despite economic development and rapid progress in science and technology, the present day world problems are mainly manifestation of losing in moral values.
Courtesy – UKESSAYS
