Immoral Society

Immoral Society

The society we are now in has incredibly advanced technology, compared to the day back to 17th century when the Puritan society was just established in America. Our society changed a lot, we have new cars coming out every year, integrated with the technology that before, only existed in our imagination, like auto-driving technology. Although our society is much more advanced compared to the Puritan society, our inner world, our moral, is going backward. Superstition is growing among people; people are becoming more corrupt and abuse their power; Individuals have no ethic.

The superstition nowadays is growing and even worse compared to the superstition in the Puritan society. Back to the puritan society, when the Salem Witch Trials started, the townspeople really thought that the witches that were hanging around Salem were real, as they say, “The Devil is precise; the marks of his presence are definite as stone.” (Miller 35) After then they started to abuse witches in order to protect themselves from being attacked by the spirit of the witches. The whole thing eventually turned out to be a ridiculous disaster, people found that there was no “witch” in the town, they were fooled by their superstition regarding the witches. Now, around 350 years later, superstition still exists in society, people are still being fooled by the superstition they insist on, ISIS is a typical example. ISIS is a terrorist group based on the Doctrine of Islam, but some have twisted the Doctrine, saying that people will redeem themselves, by fighting to death to kill the person who is offensive to Islamic god. Many people who joined ISIS thought that joining ISIS could redeem themselves by killing and this can ameliorate previous sinfulness (Tucker 2015). What this caused is that many people become a loyal fighter who never leaves the battlefield until they die; or a bomber, detonate themselves to kill another group of people, to satisfy Islamic god, to redeem themselves from the previous sins. (Wood 2014) As a common sense detonate yourself or fight until the death doesn’t redeem you, and witches do not exist in this world. You are sinning more as you are killing more people, because no one can deprive our right to live, this is a most precious gift granted to everyone. At least the people from the puritan society eventually realized that they are fooled, there’s no witch is their town, but the people who live in contemporary society are keeping joining ISIS, believing that they are doing the right thing, they are redeeming themselves. Things are getting worse as the power of ISIS is expanding every day, as the report indicated “they have at least six armies in Africa, and innumerable cells in Europe and America.” (Scarborough 2016) The country as powerful as the United States of America doesn’t even have 6 armies in Africa. The extent of explosion or terrorist attack is growing every time it happens, killing more and more people, The superstition is getting worse and worse, compare with the superstition in the puritan society.

Not only superstition is getting worse, the corruption and abuse of power are getting worse as the superstition is getting worse. During the Salem Witch Trial, many people were accused with many ridiculous reasons. It is ridiculous that you would be laughed and blamed if you accuse a person of using these ridiculous reasons nowadays. The fact is that the people used these ridiculous reasons for the accusation, and it achieved their goal. In later research, people found why they can success using the ridiculous reasons is that the people who are accusing usually were abusing the power they have, or impelled by the power behind them. The corruption is actually shown during the Trial, a girl named Abigail, a teenager, threaten a governor whose name is Danforth, warning that “ What look do you give me? Don’t give me such look!” (Miller 103) This seems like a small and irrelevant case, but this girl dares to threaten a governor, who represent authority, as well as the local law. This girl can do this because she has the power that greater than the governor, so she is abusing her power and accusing everybody of ridiculous reason, and she is always innocent. Same as our society nowadays. The election in America for the presidency is going to an end, and everything, no matter is a scandal, or a good news, comes to an end. From the outset of this campaign, a surprise comes. Hilary uses her private email to read classified email that should be read in the official email, and even saved a lot of classified emails, which definitely breached the law. Now a person with power can even read highly classified emails that matter the whole country just by abusing their power, and these document also should not be saved personally, it is the document that belongs to the country. This is basically stealing a country’s secret, which is a crime that will bring her to the jail, probably for whole life, but the fact is that it does not bring her to the jail; instead, a day before the poll starts, the FBI clarifies that “Based on their review,we have not changed our conclusion made in July.” (Comey 2016) The conclusion in here is that FBI decided not to charge Hillary Clinton. A person who breached national law are not paying for what she did, this is ridiculous. This person is stepping on the law, a national law, just because she has the power to read the things she should not even open, and has that power to let the FBI says that she will not be charged. Now we have a person who can abuse her power to step on national law, so threaten a local authority representation is a small case compare with this one. Our society is getting more corrupt.

In addition to corruption and superstition, our ethic is degrading at the same time. Back to the puritan society, when the people who reckon the adultery as an infamy that should be with you for your whole life, once you committed, as the Hester Prynne, who committed adultery, being recognized as a figure of sin and “ the infamy, which brought by committing the sin, would be her only monument.” (Hawthorne 71) We can see that people hate the person who commits adultery, which is not acceptable ethically because the person will break the promise between him, or her, and him, or her, spouse, and people in that time hates it, disdain it. You can see their disdain from recognizing Hester as a figure of sin and carries infamy that will never leave Hester even she dies. These people who disdain it all has correct ethic, but as the time passed, these people were all gone. Nowadays adultery, the offense against our ethic, is happening every day, everywhere, and people seems not caring this anymore. “In France, the transgression is so forgivable that president Francois Mitterand’s mistress sat alongside his wife at his state funeral.” (Counter 2016) This is crazy because adultery is happening so obvious, even in a president’s family, the representation of a country. Francois Mitterand is in the front, and his wife can even stay with her husband’s mistress, who represent the break of promise between her and her husband, without any uncomfortable feeling and hate, and feels that the adultery is forgivable. You can not even imagine that this is going to happen back to the Puritan society, because promise is important, our marriage, social agreement, international trade contract, is all different kinds of promises. If people can break the promises easily, our society will be a mess. Unfortunately, in our society, it happened. The people nowadays don’t know what is the promise, they don’t have ethic, so they can stand the adultery, stand the break of promise, and stand the break of ethic.

Everything is getting worse, superstition, corruption, and loss of ethic, compare without old puritan society.  Our society is formed by every individual, every individual influence others, and this whole society. If every individual can do their job, by refusing superstition, protesting corruption, and correcting their ethic, our society can still be saved.