When reality hinges on moral foundations... - EDITORIAL

He claims to have worked at the National Theatre in Maharagama since he was a child. If one tells him a name of a Sinhala movie he would give the date it was released. He would also name the cast and perhaps a song or two, if it had good songs. Quite clever one may say.  

However he does not work at the movie theatre anymore. Now in his old age he is a cobbler who hangs around Rajagiriya area, walking down the road shouting “mending shoes, mending umbrellas”. He would repeat his story as a theatre employee to any enthusiastic customer. “Those were the good days. In the 1960s people were so kind, very gentle. They were good people. Now people are rough and often use abusive language for the slightest thing” he would say for the umpteenth time.  
Of course he is not the only one to say that those who lived in those decades were generally nice, cultured and well-mannered compared to the present lot. The elderly would often lament the supposed deterioration of values among the new generations.  

There’s definitely a difference. The people of the previous generations were in general more gentle, graceful and patient. Of course every generation had its share of self-centred, ill-tempered and badly behaved people. However as a percentage they were much less then. People were also said to be more forgiving those days. Their life was slow-paced. There was time to interact with neighbours and relations and as the saying goes bringing up a child was seen as a duty of an entire village or community. There was a high degree of inter-dependency.  

Open economy that put money above values, technology especially computers and mobile phones, busy careers and encompassing stress in daily life are blamed for the supposed deterioration of basic values and the self-centred behaviour of modern men and women.   
The question however is, have we really lost age old values?  
True, the generations are getting more and more impatient and in general have low tolerance threshold. The younger generations are easily irritable and quite introverted hooked on to their phones and computers.  

Still when there’s an emergency or disaster like a road accident or floods we still see the youth and the middle aged rushing to help victims. These are the very same ill-tempered people who may even use a few bad words when they are in a bad mood. However there’s no dearth of age old values like empathy and generosity also among these people. In fact it looks that their morals are waiting for an opportunity to be manifested. The present generations may not have time to engage in charity or show gestures of kindness as done by the previous generations. However they do it in their own ways. It’s in fact quite a relief to know that we human beings still retain what we call the basic human values though may not be the degree of our ancestors.   

As Martin Luther King Jr said ‘all reality hinges on moral foundations’. According to him ours is ‘a moral universe’ - a universe with moral laws. There’s no denying of this fact. The survival of the human race is dependent on the kindness men and women have for fellow human beings. It’s imperative that we continue to preserve the basic values in spite of our busy daily schedules.