The Necessity of Choosing Between Right and Wrong

Most people claim to have moral values, but unfortunately, most people are confirmed hypocrites. The morality that they affect is clearly not any kind of morality at all, being nothing more than a transparent pretense. Such morality easily reveals itself to be nominal and worthless. Although most people feign to believe in all manner of laws, rules, ethics, precepts, and principles, including those commonly found in the realms of religion and philosophy, the only things in which they truly believe are money, comfort, convenience, and, above all, selfishness.

Our world currently suffers from a complete lack of morality in all spheres. The willful destruction of human life, in instances such as war and abortion, is coldly justified without a second thought. Overt greed and rampant corruption are blithely accepted, under the general heading of "business as usual." Acts of undisguised dishonesty on the part of public figures are casually pardoned and allowed to flourish. Few people acknowledge these grievous failings, and even fewer are inclined to express condemnation, mainly because most people are too busy following their own selfish interests.

Nevertheless, the daily pattern of human affairs is filled with glaring examples of immorality. In business dealings, it is taken for granted that one must lie, cheat, and steal if one intends to succeed. In politics, it is agreed that when an untoward truth appears, it should always be adamantly denied. In the heated course of war, no attempt is made to avoid the killing of unarmed people. Absolute morality is disdained as a drag, a hindrance, a troublesome holdover from a distant age of right and wrong. As a result, each person is encouraged to decide, for themselves, what is good and what is bad.

Within the weak outlook of slippery liberalism that prevails in the mainstream, anyone who strongly advocates a steadfast belief in firm standards of right and wrong is scorned as a dangerous crackpot. Most people will swiftly reject anything that might compel them to submit to any definitive restraints, preferring to be loose and flexible, bending their faulty "morals" offhandedly, from one day to the next. Without the onerous burden of having to consider either rightness or wrongness, they are free to be utterly shameless in their ambitions and their activities.

In the 21st century, with the evil prerogatives of capitalism serving as a rotten foundation, unmitigated selfishness is promoted as a chosen way of life, and is widely enjoyed by the masses. All that matters is the mindless desire for wealth and luxury, and thus, any moral doctrine that detracts from the depraved worship of affluence is roughly pushed aside. In that sickening context, it is hardly surprising for human beings, whether they are civilians caught in the violence of warfare or children who are unborn and unwanted, to be seen as disposable and to be treated murderously.

During the youthful boldness of the 1960s, it became fashionable to eagerly cast off the false values of convention and tradition, a sweeping trend that was, in many ways, both understandable and commendable. Back then, it seemed that wholesale change was long overdue. Now, however, we have arrived at a loathsome stage in our history: a foul time when nearly every kind of evil is excused, and thereby rendered palatable, as people blindly rush further and further down the path of careless perdition that they have created for themselves.

Most people want to have it both ways: to pretend that their actions are governed by a framework of moral guidelines, but to also be able to do whatever they please, without being held to account. They regularly twist and stretch their superficial values into brazenly immoral shapes, adjusting them to suit the worldly demands of a particular situation. By doing so, by stubbornly refusing the necessity of choosing between right and wrong, between morality and selfishness, they are wantonly degrading the essential integrity of human life itself.