Morality in Society

Morality in Society

            Human beings are social animals; the gregarious tendency brings people together to form the society, in which each person has different cognition and judgment on everything. People’s common thought on what is good or evil, the morality, bonds everyone in the society, and establishes the system of value and principle. However, a society with everyone having morality is unachievable; the lack of morality creates rules, as it is stated in the book The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne about the Puritan time: “The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have recognized the necessities to allot a portion of soil as a cemetery and a prison” (Hawthorne 42). Prisons are the representatives of laws and immorality. If we look at the prisons in our society, is it obvious that their size and quantity are constantly increasing, while the society is becoming less moral?

Nowadays, our society, under the veil of stability, charity, integrity, and dignity, is losing its morality. It looks moral but is indeed corrupted; the evil is deeply rooted in people’s mind. The hypocrisy, along with the discrimination and cruelty, dominates the world and people’s minds, and the society itself is being hypocritical. Those immoral ideas control people, and thus make the society less moral than it was in the Puritan time since the 1600’s.

The phenomenon of losing morality in society is due to hypocrisy. Frankly speaking, nobody can be “immune” from hypocrisy because “it makes people look moral”; “It affects our appearance, our speech, the way we look at people and how we judge them” (Williams). The hypocrisy in human nature doesn’t change over time; however, people’s response to their own hypocrisy has become more immoral since Puritan time. In the book, The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller about the witchcraft in Puritan time, the protagonist, John Proctor, is a man who betrays his wife and commits adultery. “He is a sinner, a sinner not only against the moral fashion of the time, but against his own fashion of decent conduct” (Miller 20). Proctor is a candid and “steady” man with an “untroubled soul”; simultaneously, he lies to his wife and public about his affair with another girl. He is hypocritical and immoral, but he has insight in his sin and never stops confessing. Proctor says: “I cannot mount the gibbet like a saint. It is Fraud” (Miller 136). He saves his morality by confessing to his hypocrisy. Even though his morality is not enough to “weave a banner with”, it is “white enough to keep it from such dogs”, and to be distinguished from the people in modern society. In order to escape from the government monitoring, Hilary Clinton set up a private email server when she was a secretary of state. The only motivation to do this is the lack of transparency and legality of her work. Her leaked emails indicate that she was the sole arbiter in the incidents such as the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi (Zurcher). How did she respond to her sin? She said she sent those emails when she was a lawyer; some of them are about her daughter’s wedding. She even signed an affidavit swearing that she had turned over all copies of government record in office (Zurcher). As a social leader, Hilary is hypocritical and immoral to use her private email and ignore the cyber security of the country; her response to her hypocrisy, hiding the truth and appeasing the public voice, makes her even more immoral and hypocritical. Both Proctor and Hilary are the typical examples and the social leaders of the society. Hilary’s hypocritical behavior and Proctor’s heroic story prove that the society is becoming less moral.

Social opinion on hypocrisy also reveals the changing immorality in society. Hilary’s emails were leaked six months ago and almost everyone in the world knows this incident. Even though she lost her campaign today, she won the popular vote. More than a half of the population in the society chose to ignore her hypocrisy and still thought her resume as the most qualified to become a social leader. Does it show the indifference of hypocrisy and morality in the society? In comparison, almost four hundred years ago, people treat hypocrisy with high recognition. In the Scarlet Letter, the protagonist, Revered Dimmesdale is a hypocritical man who committed adultery with a married woman. He hides his sin for seven years and finally chooses to confess to the public during the procession. In Dimmesdale’s redemption of his hypocrisy, the multitude remained silent then “broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, save in this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit” (Hawthorne 235). The deep voice of ‘awe and wonder’ show the esteem of the society to the man who dares to confess his hypocrisy. The society in Puritan time, as a whole, is depressive; however, unlike the people in modern society, people in ancient times choose to confront the hypocrisy and respect the people who admit hypocrisy; their honesty earns them more morality.

People in the modern world never stop emphasizing morality in the society, but what people do today is immoral and even cruel and discriminatory. Few disabled people are employed; People of color are not respected; the policemen who shot innocent black people were even acquitted for the charge. A mother has written an account of what happened to her son in a drug raid in Atlanta: “the officers, armed with M16s, filed through the house like they were playing war. I heard my baby wailing and asked one of the officers to let me hold him. He screamed at me to sit down and shut up and blocked my view. I could see a singed crib and a pool of blood” (Pierce). The mom and the baby were both innocent, but why did the policemen treat them as crimes, just because they are slums in the lower class of the society? More shockingly, some people even cheer for the cruelty and discrimination because they think lower class do not deserve the same benefits of the political commonwealth (Pierce). What is wrong with this current society? When we look at the society in the Puritan time, there was no such physical violence, even though the cruelty and prejudice did exist. In the Scarlet letter, Hawthorne described the cruelty as: “Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman” (Hawthorne 76). This verbal abuse hurts people’s mind; nevertheless, it seems mild when being compared to the cruelty in the modern society. With such cruelty and discrimination, people in the modern society are not only losing their morality, but their humanity. This civilized society we live in is becoming less moral and even more barbaric than it was in the puritan time.

In the exploration of morality in the society, it is hard for people to accept the truth. The indifferent response of people and society to hypocrisy, together with the cruelty and the discrimination in people’s mind, prove that the morality in our society has been deteriorating and degenerating since the 1600’s. As a part of this society, I am concerning about the future of morality. As an individual, what I can do is to behave more morally.

To our relief, there are still sincerity, equality, and humanity in the society. They may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that helps the society to preserve its morality (Hawthorne 43).