‘Morality studies’ for social cohesion

By Susantha Hewa

Many of us habitually associate morals with religion. This is no news because it is in religion morals are codified and prescribed formally. However, these morals are tested in the way we behave in various life situations. As we know, morality is most appealing when it entails personal gains. Bernard Shaw says, “I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.” Not many would disagree!

It is easy to be role models of moral behaviour when you happen to be at a place of worship or engage in religious activities, such as giving alms, listening to sermons, praying and performing religious rites. In such situations, many of our morals – charity, kindness, empathy, unselfishness, humility, forgiveness and love – come to us effortlessly and their benign effect on us becomes noticeable in our speech and manner. The reason is clear. Such situations rarely make room for the opposite sentiments – indifference, arrogance, selfishness, jealousy, hate and revenge – which become our constant companions as we live our routine life, the rat race, as it is called.

What power is to politics, profit is to business. Nobody ‘sane’ would question why morals learnt in childhood don’t show up when people dip into politics, trade and industry, administration, diplomacy, defence and law enforcement. If morals are expected to take a back seat in these all-important spheres of human society, one may justifiably wonder if they will ever be relevant elsewhere.

We are accustomed to thinking that morals are synonymous with religion and fear that without a good dose of religion in their impressionable early years, children would be led off track. It is all well and good if this well-intentioned programme is confined to moral improvement. Unfortunately, the outcome is wide of the mark at least for two reasons.

First, when the kids enter the rat race in adulthood they become increasingly frustrated being cheated at every turn if they try to live up to their ethics. And when this disillusionment sets in, you will see them prudently putting off reading books on spirituality to mug up Steven Covey, Napoleon Hill and the rest. The fact is they begin to get their priorities right! Therefore, administering morals to kids may be an exercise in futility. For one thing, they are too innocent to need ethics; for another, by the time they need them as grown-ups, experience has taught them to go easy on them to ‘succeed’ in life. Marriage puts into relief how parents shift into reverse gear on the importance of virtue when their children reach the marriageable age. They would shake their heads in dismay if their eligible children were to choose a partner rich in virtues without anything material to show for it. No wonder if love-struck children with good memory were to regard this brand of parental love as hypocrisy.

As mentioned in the foregoing paragraph, our ordinary life is a free-for-all where morals gleaned from religion become famously irrelevant. Take the current catastrophic situation. It provides an excellent opportunity for all who value their religion to live up to their ethics. If the present unprecedented cataclysm doesn’t urge you to practice your religion, one may wonder what other more dreadful misery would release the right hormones. In a world where religion is supposed to be the moral anchor of society, how can you understand those well-heeled ‘devotees of our major religions’ merrily engaged in squeezing the last penny out of the luckless masses squealing “I can’t breathe”? No prizes for guessing that these profiteers and their patrons have their ‘spiritual lives’ intact. It’s only judicious use of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Indoctrination not only fails to produce intended results with regard to morality, it also unwittingly contributes towards separating people based on religious identities. And, ironically, it is not the moral edicts of each religion that draw the dividing lines; it is the wrappings. Thus we build our different religious identities based on formulaic rituals, ‘convictions’ of ‘beginnings’ of the universe and ‘afterlife’, superstructure and ambience of places of worship, celebrations and structures of relationships between laymen and priests. Simply, the wine being the same, we insist on the differences in bottles. In short, cast-iron faith in unverifiable claims and unrelenting adherence to formalities help perpetuate the costly division.

As we know, adults across religious borders share more or less the same set of morals when they mix with others in society although they may split hairs about the degree of relevance of this or that moral based on their religious teachings. For example, they may see killing animals for meat from different angles according to how it is interpreted in their faith. However, such disagreements don’t lead to religious separation and there is consensus on core ethics like kindness, empathy and honesty. In fact, even the followers of the same faith often disagree on the niceties of morals. However, opinions on morals rarely lead to religious discord because such disputes are in the realm of rational discussion. Unfortunately, faith-based convictions like the ‘beginnings and ends’ that situate outside the pale of reason keep us moving in circles.

There is another worrisome aspect of the premature indoctrination of children. Since young children cannot sufficiently grasp the significance of morals at a rational level we use the carrot-and-stick approach to drill them. This automatically legitimises notions of ‘afterlife’ in which, as we tell them, they would be handsomely rewarded or severely punished according to whether or not they chose to adhere to ethics. Thus kids grow up with the unshakeable conviction of an ‘afterlife’ validated by the ‘reasonable’ suggestion that death will not save them if they sin. It is their religion’s version of afterlife that by and large cements religious isolationism. In short, we unite in going easy on ethics but continue to remain separated on superfluous issues.

A more advanced civilisation would surely consider it naïve to make people behave justly on the threat of punishment in a so-called next birth. Can’t we ever discuss ethics without being paralysed by the visions of the ‘next life’ in hell? Wouldn’t people ever show empathy without considering religion as a cop behind the tree?

Every religion has its own version of the afterlife. For Christians and some other religions, it is heaven or hell. For Buddhists and most Hindus, it is the samsaric cycle of death and rebirth till you attain nirvana or moksha. For atheists death means the final disintegration; there is no afterlife. However, it is pertinent to ask whether one’s ‘afterlife’ depends on what one has believed it to be according to the dictates of one’s religion. What would be the situation of a person who changes his faith? Rationalists may argue that it should be the same for everyone, no matter what you believe. It is our respective religion’s nonnegotiable ‘answers’ to these questions that perpetuate the divisions. And, more disturbingly, as we can see, such watertight convictions tend to make people easy victims of political propaganda.

Since our age-old religious indoctrination is unlikely to be altered or upgraded in the foreseeable future; it may be helpful to find means to mitigate its unintended negative outcomes discussed above. A workable method would be to introduce ‘morality studies’ as a subject at least from Grade 5 upwards till the A/L, where ethics may be approached from an all-inclusive, critical and rational standpoint pitching the level of discussion to suit their cognitive level. It would most probably cushion the adverse impact of premature conditioning leading to segregation. There may be better and more progressive approaches; the more the merrier. Whatever makes children consider morality as a serious human concern, independent of religious tags, is grist to the mill.