Hello, my dear friends. I hope you’re doing well.
I was discussing moral bankruptcy today. The question that came to me was: do you believe that there is moral bankruptcy in the world? I would rather call it in a different name, called degeneracy. There is degeneracy, for sure. The last 500 years, with industrial-technological boom – that kind of shifted our attitude and our connection with the world or with nature. This is the truth; this has happened.
If you look at the history of mankind, we started with a deep connection with nature, where we could understand every little vibration of nature. We went to a level of total detachment. Everything is unpredictable and human losses, material losses, all these losses are happening because we can’t understand, or we can’t predict, or even, we are kind of ignorant.
There is a moral or ethical degeneracy associated with it. Selfishness is the main degeneracy. When human beings became too selfish, they detached, even from their own kind. This detachment is not a detachment with awareness; it’s a detachment because of selfishness; it’s a negative thing. So, the degeneracy has happened. Today, people are occupied with their mobile phones and their tablets; that itself is a degeneracy because we lost eye contact.
What is morality?
According to me, there is only one morality. Everything that is consensual is moral; this is my view.
What is consensual?
What we eat or what we eat to survive or to keep the body should be consensual for nature. Nature should be happy to provide that to us. If we murder, or if we destroy life for the sake of our survival, I would rather call it not so ethical or moral. Likewise, capturing, conquering, torturing, manipulating are all unethical because they hit your conscience.
A life with conscience intact is a good life, a healthy life, an ethical life.
But when we live without any consideration for our conscience, I would call it unethical or even immoral.
The degeneracy also happened when we pitched morality with sexuality, with certain aspects of existence, certain dress codes and stuff like that, which are very small or ignorable compared to the larger morality, where we as human beings, as a species are supposed to express our inherent humanity. When humanity is compromised, in the name of religion, probably it’s better to say manipulated existence, or certain conditioning, which makes you feel small or controlled or contracted, means less, that itself is a degeneracy.
Aspects of moral bankruptcy
Moral bankruptcy is in every aspect; corruption is one of them. All the barriers that man created, man-made barriers are all moral bankruptcy, like cast creed, country, culture. Speciesism is moral bankruptcy, you know, racism is moral bankruptcy, looking at people, especially animals or any other species, as less than us is moral bankruptcy, ethical bankruptcy. Classifying women as objects is moral bankruptcy.
There are so many aspects in our life (in our society) that amounts to moral, ethical bankruptcy, degeneracy. Racism does exist; speciesism definitely exists, and greed for profits exists, and so many different aspects of society that you can see as unethical, like for the sake of profit we sacrifice humanity, is moral bankruptcy. It’s not about anything consensual. When I say consensual, even if you’re cutting a tree, then the tree should be ripe and ready to be cut. That means it should have had its full life, not a young tree or a tree planted to be cut, just like an animal that is bred to be killed. This is all unethical for me.
Consensual relationship
When I say consensual, both the parties should have a full agreement, which means when you are going to the tree, you have a demand for its body, and the tree should be ready. That means it had its full life, and it would say, “Okay, this is fine; I’m ready to go now, this is okay.”
Likewise, if you look at nature, a tiger, a lion and a deer or a herbivorous animal, they have a kind of consensual relationship. That means, when a lion is hungry, it will hunt, which the deer knows very well, and the lion will only hunt when it’s really hungry; it will not kill for pleasure as we do. We kill for pleasure; we kill insensitively; we also destroy things without thinking. And we cultivate, to destroy all these things. So, I’m saying that we can have a proper moral, ethical life that can enhance our quality of presence on Earth. Not like existing, living. Living and existing are two different things. Everybody exists, but only a few people live.
Live means you’re living with full satisfaction and contentment; you live with purposefulness where you’re not affecting, harming, destroying, conquering, capturing, torturing, killing any beings. We must have a consensual attitude, which means we should be communicating, or we should be interacting with all the elements of nature, where you become part of nature. Every being starts accepting you because you are part of it, not like we detach from everything. Then we look at everything as objects, including our species or various races as objects; that is moral bankruptcy.
If we look at anything as objects, and if we feel that we can use them, manipulate them or utilize them for our advantage, this is moral bankruptcy. It’s not the morality which the books sometimes talk about, where you can’t do this, you can’t do that.
Your restrictions are not your morality. Your acceptance is morality. Your love is morality, compassion and kindness are the right morality, nonviolence is the right morality. When we don’t express kindness, compassion, nonviolence, selflessness, unconditional love, we have moral bankruptcy.
This, according to me, is moral bankruptcy.
I believe that it does exist, and probably this discussion throws some light into it. We can discuss it further, but this is just some food for thought so that you could think about it. This is something which we can change within. When we change our attitude, life changes. Life is always there to change or to transform, but do we take a step towards it? That’s exactly the question.
I leave you with this thought. I wish you a great day and a great future ahead.
This is Mohanji, for you.
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Transcribed by Ulla Bernholdt
Proofread by Rekha Murali