Anyone with the slightest religious beliefs, despite what religion it is, or an affinity for the importance of morals and values in society must wonder at least sometimes how we incorporate morals, values and a social conscience into modern society.
You could hardly expect your child to watch the news and not be just a little confused about what morals and values actually are. It is not only the uncertainty that surrounds the current refugee debate in Australia that still has the Oceanic Viking in limbo at sea while dignitaries play out their respective politics.
A lot of it too goes down to what has happened in the business world over the past few decades. Recently the fallout from the global financial crisis has seen former captains of industry decline in absolute disgrace. Will that matter in the long run? Probably not. It happened before. Remember the 80s? Companies folded. Illegal transactions became public fodder for a while there but did things change?
It is not that long ago for most of us who were already up and running in the workforce but when everyone told us everything was good again, old habits came into play – and this time it was stronger.
This week I went along to see Michael Moore’s latest offering that has just opened in Australia. Capitalism: A Love Story is simplistic but it is real. Whether or not you love or loathe Michael Moore, we need more of him. We need more people willing to expose those who are held in high esteem, simply because of their bank balances.
Probably the most telling quote from this movie was the one where an executive said he was in awe of the propaganda that made the people who would actually lose out of the whole new system believe they would be winners.
Yes, propaganda it was. To tell people that by reducing wages and conditions would make them better off, where executives of the same companies were making hundreds of thousands more than they had done has to be the biggest communications coup of more than a decade.
Will Hutton wrote in the UK’s Observer this weekend how much of this that correlates with some of our most watched television shows and movies. The Sopranos, The Wire and Wall Street were three of the so called fictional portrayals of the underworld that have become part of life, or at least corporate life. Hutton relates how a wire tap brought a whole world unstuck with its secret tips, kickbacks and disposable, pre-paid mobile phones.
It was a whole web of illegal trading that the FBI accidentally dropped into. The issue Hutton was referring to was that of a corporate web that eventually outed ringleader Zvi Goffer, a thirtysomething who was a major player in at least five big takeovers between March and November 2007.
There was actually nothing novel about what he or his colleagues did. They just supplied information to people who would buy shares before information was made public about companies before anyone else knew about it.
A whole web of insider trading and deceit was uncovered and many of them now face jail sentences.
Will their jail sentences make any difference is the real question. We honour people who have found success and have the trappings that go with it. We turn a blind eye to how they have actually attained their status.
It is difficult for me to think that things can go back to a day where honesty and integrity actually meant something. I also do not have kids but I sympathise with those who do. I can’t think how anyone can explain how we all cheer along those who find success by dubious means or are willing to sink boats because we don’t want people coming to our country.
How do you explain morality, honesty and social justice to your kids? How do you reconcile it all?
