Bradford Schleifer (an expert in technology) once said, “In our society, the nuclear family has become the last bastion of morality and its defences are being breached.”

The issue I wish to highlight is that the word moral has been lost somewhere in the changing values of society. The current lifestyle of the people have made them desire more financial and career development. This leads to lesser interaction between families.

Ethics are an important part of a human nature and our society. However, just like everything in life, ethics and the moral conduct of people has also changed with time. Humans have always been thought of as self-oriented creatures, and this just further proves. For instance, colleagues, friend or partners speak behind each other’s backs to increase chances of promotion and various other things which may benefit them; this shows lack of personal as well as professional ethics, while society may deem it unethical, but it would still accept it.

Over the past few decades, with the advancement in technology and the many transformations that came in our way of living, the human heart and mind has also changed, besides everything else. We have become so insensitive and compassionless that we hurt people not only with our actions, but through our words as well. We cause troubles for others knowingly, create problems for them deliberately — all for what? For our own benefits.

We upload videos of oppressed people at one time and in the next start beating up a servant for an unintentional mistake. With one hand, we post pictures of mistreated lives and with the other harm our family members or someone below our rank. This is why morality in today’s society has been eroded. ‘Immorality’ has become the norm.

Kerby Anderson (Director of Probe Ministries International), pointed out that the decline of nations is due to spiritual factors. The political, social and economic problems we encounter are symptoms of the moral decline of a nation.

Even in our own country, Pakistani society has its own parallel moral standards based on traditions and cultures. Different segments of society continue to follow regressive norms, which are too harsh to even write about — which is of course their own definition of moral. The state does not challenge the traditional village court systems, where people set laws according to their own ideas of justice because that does not hurt the interests of the powerful elites.

There was once a time when lying and cheating in interpersonal relations were considered reprehensible. A person’s word was assurance that debts would be paid back. Sadly, this is no longer to be relied upon. In this today’s society, lying and cheating, even a false testimony in a court of law are all right if the person concerned can get away with it by offering the authority something they want.

There was once a time when a man of learning was shown compliance even if he was not wealthy. However, there’s a greater inclination now to measure a man’s worth proportionately to his material possession. He will be well-received in high places if he owns a fleet of fancy cars and owns a mansion, even if he was once a high school dropout and has remained essentially unlettered.

In the end, I would like to say that if money was not involved in anything and everything depended on our moral standard, how would we be doing in life?

So as Henry Kravis (a businessman) says, “If you don’t have integrity, you have nothing, you can’t buy it. You can have all the money in the world, but if you are not a moral and ethical person, you really have nothing.”

Published in Dawn, Young World, September 18th, 2021