Impractical Virtues

It is impractical therefore incorrect — an extremely dubious notion that is squeezing out human values from our society

Once ‘Virtue’ is squeezed out, the grim reality becomes invisible

Beings that are human have a moral compass called conscience embedded in them, which points out the righteousness or wrongfulness of an action. It is due to this moral compass that a person develops an empathy for a victim or rage against the exploiter, respect for a benevolent person, dis-respect for an ego-centric.

The inner compass is the distinct feature of Humans from other species

The simple binary result of this compass enables a human being to label a morality-filled deed as virtue and an immoral action as a vice.

VIRTUES — THE BEGINNING AND THEIR REDUNDANCY

The advances of human civilisation and scientific thinking have enabled us to rightfully filter out many unscientific rituals and customs by testing them on the proven filters of modern sciences.

However, a common folly of the current generation is — equating ‘the initial error-prone steps on scientific enlightenment of our former generation’ to ‘handicap of their intellectual capacity’. The evidence of this folly is calling many of the timeless wisdom of former generations as impractical, anachronistic, or conservative.

It is important to note that the field of sciences has shown forward progress across advancing the human history, however, human morals have remained stagnant or even denigrated with the passage of time.

There is an explanation for this anomaly. Scientific advancements tend to build upon themselves as the latter generations inherit the time-immune failures and successes of the sciences of their former generations.

On the other hand, human moralities need to be re-discovered by every generation in its contemporary time and environment despite it being in existence in a previous period.

Therefore, human values are often found struggling to re-justify themselves in every generation and their pristine condition invariably deteriorates as the human-environment continuously gifts itself more and more of scientific and worldly wonders. Invariably, many of the human virtues whose value is absolutely justified by time and wisdom of former generations give way to justify the renewed perspective and attitudes of every passing generation. The stumbling scientific steps of former generations are invariably used to ridicule even their wise human ideas as impractical and incorrect for current generations.

PRACTICALITY AND POPULARITY OF IMMORAL IDEAS — THE GRAVEYARD FOR VIRTUES

Let’s cut to the modern time. We currently live in a practical world. By practical, I mean, a world where all actions are expected to deliver gratification. Further due to the shortening of attention spans in the information-flooded technological age, the expectation of gratification has also reduced to ‘immediate’. Therefore, the correctness of an action, even if identified by a human in the current generation, if provides delayed benefit, is considered as impractical.

It is commonplace where a lie is justified on this very argument — that it averted the immediate trouble at hand. Gradually, this practicality of averting troubles, by using an inherently immoral tool, gains popularity due to its practicality.

The practicality and popularity of the immoral vice live a synergetic relationship wherein the correctness is justified by the immediate gratification; practicality is justified by the popularity and finally, popularity is used as a proof of correctness.

Invariably, it at this point, that the corresponding Virtue becomes collateral damage of this spiralling and unbridled popularity of the immoral vice.

Extending the above example, ‘truthfulness’ in sticky situations come to be seen as a sign of foolishness.

CONTEMPORARY CASE IN POINT:

> Obscenity as a Modern Fashion, therefore traditional dressing as backward

An anti-establishment movement gripped the Western World in the mid-1960s when the youth generation got disillusioned with their Government as a result of lies to the citizens about the continued engagement and role of the US government in the Vietnam war.

The protest took the form of a counter-culture, which was premised on defiling all practices which were proven civilised in the society. This led the then current generation to embark on immoral human actions. Resorting to psychoactive drugs, experimentation with recreational sex, obscene dressing by females to reveal as much body as possible, tattooing the body became some of the common methods of protest of the time.

An artist depiction of Counterculture (Source: Internet)

This coupled with the breakdown of Hay’s law, which decided the morality of Cinematic content, allowing for commercialisation of nudity and obscenity in Western Cinema by riding this newfound celebration of immoral actions. The ‘commercial success’ of Marylin Monroe’s obscene adventure was ‘justification for its correctness’ of immorality.

The adventure of Marilyn Monroe with nudity catapulted her to stardom

ITS IMPACT was that the societal immorality born out of counter-culture, which was essentially a knee jerk reaction to lies of government, came to be identified as Modern and mainstream, simply because it had managed to become popular and even better — a revenue generator.

Therefore, any call out to the previous wise notions of civilised behaviour like non-revealing dressing in Public, non-promotion of drugs harmful to human mind and body came to be ridiculed as Conservative and Restrictive. The assertion of the wisdom behind civilised human conduct is commonly regarded as ‘rigidity of an anachronistic person’.

Traditional Indian Dressing is often looked down upon as backward by fellow Indians due to misconstruing of counter-culture as symbol of modernity

This pervasive reality of today is perhaps the most easily relatable illustration of the suffocating out of Virtue from a society.

RIGIDITY — OPINION VERSUS ASSERTION OF WISDOM:

Every battle of virtue and vice invariably end up in a confrontation.

‘Virtues’ by their nature are embedded into human beings as the inner compass guides the human being about the absolute correctness or wrongfulness of an action. However, the development of the long-sighted benefit of being virtuous often requires contemplation and reflection of past experiences by comparing the long-term outcome of virtue and vice.

This reflection firstly requires life experiences where such vice and virtues have been tested and secondly, intent and time to contemplate over such experiences. However, due to the barrage of information both available and accessible, this contemplation invariably is replaced by online searches to justify and reinforce the preconceived notion. It again follows the expectation of immediate results rather than taking the laborious and time-taking endeavour of reflection and contemplation.

On the other hand, ‘Opinions’ are the lowest form of knowledge that requires no understanding and carries no accountability. The presenter of such opinions when questioned about his opinion has an easy option to evade the question by uttering “That was my personal opinion”.

The ease of availability and access to all kinds of opinion is a double-edged sword

‘Opinion’ of others is often accepted and reproduced as justification of immorality. When confronted with the thoughtful argument of the virtuous preacher, the opinion-bearer invariably takes to slandering the Virtues as impractical thus incorrect.

BIRTH OF RIGIDITY

Here the identification of amateur and the wise is of the utmost importance as it determines the absolute correctness or wrongfulness of the action being judged. The amateur comes with some or all of these traits:

1. Doesn’t have a personal experience with the idea

2. Is incapable to make enough time for self-reflection and contemplation on the idea, which makes him borrow comforting opinions

3. Lacks the intellectual capacity to understand the significance or the eventual impact of the idea

The combination of some or all of these traits makes the amateur land with these short-sighted conclusions — practicality or popularity.

The RIGIDITY of the opinionated forbids him to re-evaluate his borrowed notions of Modernity and Liberalism. The audience must consistently ask itself whether to accept the LOUDER OPINION or the CORRECT WISDOM.

Thus, the amateur will always take a rigid stance to loudly convey that his opinion is modern and popular so by extension is correct, in contrast to, the wise, who simply states the time-immune correctness of the human virtues.

THE IMPACT:

A society devoid of human virtues is a hotbed of heinous crimes. The primary bulwark against immoral crimes in society alone. A collective conscience of a society that can call wrong actions wrong is the only practical defence mechanism against conscience-devoid crimes.

Expecting the reactive law to take its course against all such actions is simply impractical. It will require a perfectly surveillance state where all crimes are reported and acted upon in real-time. Such a state is not only undesired but also improbable.

THE SOLUTION:

Any society which expects the existence of Virtue must discover it itself. This discovery demands individuals to contemplate over their surroundings and listen to their human compass.

What this compass tells, the mouth should utter!!!