Morals in western society and many countries are falling very fast in just a few decades. For examples, disrespect to the elders, cheating on exams, vandalism, sexual behaviour, fashions that focus on showing as much skin as possible, dancing is more stimulated sex (freak dance) and many others. Many people blame the entertainment media that show pop stars who are being sexy and scenes of violence in movies in order to become popular. The result of society’ preoccupation with violence and sex is not shocking anymore. The reasons are because the producers of entertainment media argue that they are only giving people what they want as an artistic creation. On the other hand, rising divorce rates and social misfits and also the rising of digital communication technology that really affects the society mainstream.
All of these are the facts that we are facing today. Regarding some of those ads, it also became evident that roots had strongly taken place in our society. It is quite marked that having "fun" is more important than being traditional; values such as hard work and fidelity. Then the massive thrust of mass media like television and theatres that taught generations today that sex, and alternative lifestyles, marital infidelity, and divorce are all to be accepted as normal. The violence from Hollywood movies has also inundated the minds of our society, and has taken root as well. We have allowed Hollywood movies to flood our homes with garbage sitcoms and other movies that endorse and glorify these strange values.
It is the matter of fact that our society is most influenced by information technology and mass media in every aspect. They create any kind of things that affect the society. The mentality that is created by technology and mass media is more powerful than any other religious teaching and cultural habits. In this age of technology and mass media, we have to control and have the ability to use these things for the good of our society, without being used by them or we use them for its corruption and degradation. We can see apparently a state of self centred ideology where the upcoming generations desire all their parents have without the hard work. I can say that we will fall much faster if we do not return to our original roots or we will reclaim our roots and our morality and take back what has been stolen from us by the liberal and immoral tenets that have soaked the minds of the today’s generations and the coming up generations after us.
In the New Dialogue of Institute for Advanced technology in Humanity, Virginia (IATH), participants are persuaded that there is a major cause of the current moral crisis deserving special scrutiny. It is a cause in the sense of a triggering event which has brought about great change and, in the process, has thrown persons and society out of the practice of thinking about collective problems from a moral point of view. The cause is the new economic order of global market capitalism. The new way of thinking is a form of economic rationality that we have termed the "rationality of cash flow capitalism” which is an amoral way of thinking.[1] In other words, economical capitalism mindset has created and changed the global market and affect the person and social morality.
The questions arise here: “who is responsible to control our moral behaviour? What is the solution we can do in facing moral crisis today?” The answer is that each of us is responsible to control ourselves and also collaborate with others to get to the bottom of these problems. However, the government should make a policy to control it for the good of all. It has to be taken seriously as the participants of the New Dialogue have started the dialogue process by focusing attention on the set of problems emerging in the new economic order that impact on society and the natural world. We should look at what it is doing to persons, to human communities and societies around the globe, and to the natural world, evaluate them and examine its moral roots in order to provide the economic benefits it produces. For this reason we should be critical to the current economic paradigm and the rationality by which it operates.
In summary, the lack of a common moral ground what many people today see and experience as a crisis in society, must be recognized that the crisis is decisively moral and spiritual in nature and personal, not just social, and must be resolved first at those deeper personal levels. It means that each person must be ready to ask in economic or business situations whether some personal self restraint is necessary in the economic sphere in order to achieve a more moral community and global society. Each of us should do what we can to bring about a human and moral form of capitalism as the legacy that our society will live under and export to other parts of the world. Therefore, we have to be more critical toward everything that’s showed by mass media, not just following what’s going on in our society, but to get positive aspect from them and to build it up. In other words the economical capitalism system should have a certain moral boundaries which are necessary to maintain stable economic and social institutions that will help navigate the global economic system to a more human and for our common well.
[1] NN, Cause of the Moral Crisis, in http://www2.iath.virginia.edu/cecmpe/crisiscause.html
(Accessed on December 24, 2009 at 11.45 am)
Ateneo de Manila University, 2010
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