Dr Satyawan Saurabh
In present day fast-paced life focusing on a narrow notion of the good life is eroding various moral values. To address the crisis of moral values, there is a need to promote a holistic vision of the good life. To find the true meaning of life, Buddha left his home and wealth. One can learn the values of truthfulness, righteousness, honesty, and compassion from the lives of Raja Harishchandra, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Kalam. Emphasizing the broad dimensions of moral values can ensure the long-term well-being of individuals in particular and society as a whole. Moral values are permanent beliefs and ideas within a person and reflect a preference for good or bad. In modern times many societies have increasingly focused on the accumulation of material wealth, power, and status as the primary goal of human life. This has led to a narrow definition of the good life, where success is measured by the ability to accumulate material wealth, often at the expense of others. A narrow conception of the good life is leading to a crisis of moral values. Like the issue of corruption, a narrow notion of the good life leads to the erosion of values such as transparency, probity, social responsibility, and honesty. Due to this, personal interests have been promoted in place of public interest. Climate change Meeting the never-ending human demands over the years has put tremendous pressure on the planet’s resources. The planet is warming at an unprecedented rate, glaciers are melting, and wildlife is disappearing. All these calamities have arisen out of attachment to over-materialism.
For example, the crisis in Joshimath is the result of choosing economics over ecology or the ecosystem. It is often said that “unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it”. A recent example is that of a civil servant who cleared a sports stadium for dog walking and asked the athletes to leave. Today, if someone is asked what is his goal, he would say that money. They have the urge to do anything to get it. Even if it has to be accomplished by adopting the wrong path. Don’t know how many such examples will be seen which show how much the youth have dropped their moral values in themselves. Sadly, they do not recognize manners, culture, and morality, nor are they ready to accept them. Today’s young generation is walking like a mad elephant, forgetting morals and values and trampling everything that comes it’s way. He is oblivious to what will happen whenever he falls to the ground. This is happening only because of a lack of moral values. The great land on which great personalities like Maryada Purushottam Shriram and Arjuna were born. Today manners, morals, and values are being lost from the same land. Sanskar takes us to the heights of success. When we forget our ideals, culture, and purpose, then only failures come into our hands. The bitter truth is that today’s youth do not know about values, ideals, and principles. If we think honestly, then there is no one else who is spreading immorality and rudeness but we are. We have to take steps to save them as well. Give good manners and education to your children. A child is like a blank paper, it is our duty to write a note of culture, moral values, and manners on that blank paper. There is still time and from today itself we have to take an oath that instead of blaming the youth, we should teach values, morals, and manners to the children. Today the focus is on wealth, modern luxuries, and sensual pleasures, with a focus on the end rather than the means. Reasonable means are not given importance to achieve these means, due to which moral values are neglected. This leads to crony capitalism, scams, crime, and growing inequality in society. The narrow notion of a good life, being against Gandhian principles, is leading to the Gandhian 7 Social Sins, which can cause serious harm to society. For example, black money and tax evasion – a result of ‘money without work’, similarly the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki – reflects ‘science without humanity’. Dissatisfaction, alienation, disturbance, agitation, inequality, disharmony, anarchy, lack of ideals, injustice, tyranny, humiliation, failure, depression, instability, uncertainty, struggle, and violence. All these surround our lives today. Communalism, ethnicity, linguism, regionalism, and violence in the individual and the society is the responsible reason behind the narrow ill feelings and problems. If the elements of morality are not sufficiently available in the children’s environment, then the elements which will be dominant in the environment will become a part of life. That is why it is said that values are not taught, they are acquired. To address the crisis of moral values, there is a need to promote a holistic vision of the good life. To find the true meaning of life, Buddha left his home and wealth. One can learn the values of truthfulness, righteousness, honesty, and compassion from the lives of Raja Harishchandra, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Kalam. Emphasizing the broad dimensions of moral values can ensure the long-term well-being of individuals in particular and society as a whole.
(The author is poet, freelance journalist and columnist).