The need for moral excellence
The first and most important place to begin with is the family. If we are to raise children who will grow up to be wise mature adults, abounding in moral excellence, we must firmly establish in their upbringing and life the foundation of moral excellence in which the distinctive hallmarks are truth, righteousness, justice, love, fairness, equality, and humility.
By Thomas Lee
The modern society today is plagued by heinous crimes such as that of the abominable cruel murder of cosmetics tycoon Datuk Sosilawati Lawiya, gang violence, drug abuses, teenage pregnancies, baby-dumping, and many other repulsive social ills.
There is also a small but influential segment of the community which condones and promotes sexual promiscuity, homosexuality, abortion and filthy and coarse language.
Most of such loathsome activities are flaunted flagrantly through hard rock and hot metal music, television, movies, videos, books, magazines and other modern media like the Internet.
And if all of these are not enough, truth, righteousness, justice, fairness, love, equality and basic human rights are compromised too. We see criminals roaming free, and the corrupt enjoying without restrain their ill-gotten wealth, simply because of the abject and ignominious administration and management of the rule of law.
Then there are the immoral with their sickening and repugnant lifestyle, the racists with their insensitive, offensive and outrageous attitude and actions, and the greedy rich and powerful exploiting the poor and defenceless, using them as cheap labour.
Hence, it is perhaps time that we should do something positive and concrete to arrest the fast declining and morally bankrupt condition.
English historian Edward Gibbon in his famous six-volume The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has shown us that it was the immoral behaviour of the Roman emperor, politicians and people that led to the decay and eventual fall of the Roman Empire.
According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to external invasions because of the gradual loss of moral values and virtue among its citizens, who were enjoying the luxurious comfortable life and lifestyle, with nary a concern about the country, its future, and posterity. The emperors and the political leaders were immoral, corrupt, weak and lazy. They outsourced their responsibities and duties to develop and defend their nation to foreign migrants, who later became so numerous that they were able to overrun the country and take control of it.
If we are not to go the way of the Romans, surely we need to protect our children and progenies from the current onslaught of the destabilizing and destructive sensually self-indulgent hedonistic culture invading our nation from the West, transmitted directly to our homes via the globalwide cyber connection and by satellite television.
The horror of such a moral incursion into our society should not be simply dismissed as scaremongering, or as spreading ominous reports or rumours of impending disaster.
The moral decay is fast descending upon us. Just read the daily newspapers and we see the horror of even school children getting involved in gangsterism, extortion, and rape.
The immoral West is be a good lesson for us to know what we should or should not have and do.
One dreadful case is perhaps sufficient to illustrate the abomination of what a society is like when it has lost its moral soul.
British writer Theodore Dalrymple, in article titled “The case for Cannibalism” in the 5 January 2004 edition of the City Journal published by the US Manhattan Institute, tells the story of Armin Meiwes of Germany who placed a personal advertisement on the Internet looking for “A young, well-built man who wants to be eaten”.
The advertisement is disgusting enough, but what is most repulsive is the fact that someone answered it. Bernd Brandes, a person said to have a mental obsession with pain and suffering, offered himself to be killed and eaten by Meiwes.
Meiwes was convicted of causing the death of Brandes due to mental disorder and jailed eight and a half years.
The most loathing part of the whole episode is that there are people who said that what Meiwes did was not a crime, as both he and Brandes were matured autonomous person and free to do whatever they want, so long as they don’t hurt or harm anyone else.
Such an ethical, or rather the lack of ethics, attitude is a possible consequence of the lack of a moral mandate when we accept theories such as that propagated and promoted by Professor Stephen William Hawking in his latest book The Grand Design, in which he said that there is no need to invoke God to set the Universe going.
“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing why the universe exists, why we exist,” Hawking said in the book co-written by US physicist Leonard Mlodinow
As I said in my previous Weekend Reflection, Hawking’s theory means that there is no morality as life is a merely meaningless materialistic mass – a body of matter with no definite distinctive significance and no perspicuous precious value. So, why have ethics and laws? Everyone should just go for the pursuit of pleasure, sensual self-indulgence, and do whatever he likes, including killing each other, since human life is merely a mass of matter that comes together by chance. The Meiwes-Brandes case is perhap the result of such a philosophy of life.
What then should we do?
As a nation, we need to build and develop into our lives a solid foundation for moral excellence.
The first and most important place to begin with is the family. If we are to raise children who will grow up to be wise mature adults, abounding in moral excellence, we must firmly establish in their upbringing and life the foundation of moral excellence in which the distinctive hallmarks are truth, righteousness, justice, love, fairness, equality, and humility.
This can be done best by the parents being role models for the children. The home is the fundamental context for the cultivation and development of character. The parents should lead by example to inspire their children to live a morally clean life and lifestyle.
Secondly, we need to integrate into our education system, at all levels, the learning and articulation of the basic universal morals and values of humanity, susbscribed to and practised by all the major religions and faiths. Hence, we should restore the religious education class in our schools. At present, only the Muslim students have to attend the compulsory agama class, whereas non-Muslim students have no mandatory lesson on their various faiths.
The battle for the mind is a battle for truth, righteousness, justice, fairness, love, equality, humility, and human rights. It is a battle against the tide of wickedness and moral depravity that is beginning to sweep our land, and our children and young people are the targets of this amoral culture from the decadent West.
Thirdly, we need political leaders who are dedicated and committed to moral excellence. We need leaders with the strength of mind or spirit of competency, accountabity and transparency (the CAT principles) to enable us as a nation to confront the immoral and corrupt culture with a firmness that results from a commitment to moral excellence. This is something we should consider with the uttermost care when electing our leaders.
The survival of our nation depends on how we can navigate through the current societal system which is showing signs of beginning to disintegrate into a cesspool of violence, blatant immorality and putrefaction. Our schools are disintegrated, with racism rearing its ugly head in them. Teenage rape, pregnancies and baby-dumping are becoming common. Crimes are getting more and more heinous and brutal, ala Sosilawati. We are losing confidence in our justice system, while our society has become so corrupted that we don’t know what is right and what is wrong any more.
It is time we get out of our comfort zone and start reflecting on our polluted socio-political culture, and act wisely, positively and constructively to stop the moral decline and decay in our nation.
