In these fast-paced times, with the rapidly evolving technology, it is said that human lives are advancing for the better. However, despite such achievements, the question of morality still continues to haunt the seemingly immaculate portrait of modern times. Are we truly the pioneers of progressive thought, or is it that we as beings try to hide behind the shimmers of the technologically advanced but morally regressive and corrupt world?

Since ethics are abstract and subject to social manipulation, we cannot view ethics with our bodily eyes as something that is tangible. Hence, they are difficult to define clearly. However, in addition to our morals, ethics and human values are all crucial and useful for a healthy community. Strangely enough in all the religions and societies of the world, they hold a great semblance, despite having relevance to that particular culture or country.

In this way some of them even become universal, for instance, no matter where you go on earth and find a community living there, you know that it is wrong to lie, cheat, kill, steal, and the like. According to Freud, there is an agency – the superego which tends to suppress the id and push the ego to operate on the morality principle. He suggests that we undergo several positive and negative reinforcement techniques during the first five years of life. These techniques help label certain things as “good” or “bad”, “right” or “wrong”.

Moral principles provide us with a goal to work toward; such so that we can be the best versions of ourselves, not just for our benefit but for that of society and the world as a whole. They direct us in the direction of how we should act in the world. It tends to divide things we ought to do and things we ought not to do into two groups. The actions we should take are motivated by compassion, empathy, and a desire to aid others. The actions and ideas that we hope to expurgate and conceal are the things that we shouldn't do. For instance, violence is unacceptable in various societies. It is often met with different penalties, such as fines or jail time. In this instance, our ethical standards declare that violence is immoral, and as a result, society and the government penalize violent individuals in an effort to dissuade them from acting violently in the future. However, when it comes to violence in defense, these rules can be altered unless the violence in defense becomes greater than that of offense.

All in all, moral values are essential to the very essence of human life. They serve as the pillar of an orderly and collaborative society. We wouldn't be able to accept one another or coexist without it. For a society to harbor virtues like truth, honor, justice, pity, and the sort, moral values must altogether be practiced. If not for them, we would regress to nothing but primal savagery and the very idea of modern ‘civilized’ societies would simply collapse.

Published in The Daily National Courier, August, 08 2022

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