Gringo view: Have our moral compasses stopped working?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) Imagine a first-century mariner whose lodestone compass has ceased to function. He is suddenly dependent solely on the heavens for his navigation in a world in which little has yet been discovered and accurate maps do not yet exist. He is alone in a mysterious universe with only the stars and his intuition to guide him. Will he survive?

Two years into the Covid-19 pandemic and despite the encouraging statistics showing a real decline in infections, more and more people throughout the world appear to be in the doldrums. I’m one of them.

Our moral compasses can be said to be the values that inform our decision-making and define the direction for each of us. When we make critical judgments, when we decide what is true and what is false, we must rely as much or more on our moral compasses as on other indicators. We ignore them at our peril.

The moral compasses with which we were born appear to have ceased to function. It gets harder and harder to fathom how they went out of whack.

It seems like just the other day our reality was framed and focused by common belief systems, our expectation was that we could tell the difference between right and wrong, our leaders would tell us the truth, and we could believe what they said.

Sadly, no longer. As reported in the ‘Guardian’, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish environmental activist put her finger on a principal cause of our universal doldrums:

“Build back better. Blah, blah, blah. Green economy. Blah blah blah. Net zero by 2050. Blah, blah, blah. This is all we hear from our so-called leaders. Words that sound great but so far have not led to action. Our hopes and ambitions drown in their empty promises.”

It is not only the proliferation of empty promises that is so disturbing. Politicians have always made these. But in today’s dystopian environment, leaders are no longer held to account for big lies or small ones. Brazil’s statement to the Glasgow COP26 environmental conference –  that deforestation had been reduced, when it is actually up 45% – is a big lie broadcast with reckless abandon.

Even official reports documenting government incompetence don’t appear to get any attention. The 1,288-page report by the Senate’s Covid CPI, detailing Bolsonaro’s total mismanagement during the pandemic, seems to have disappeared soon after its publication. As a Brazilian journalist wrote in rage: “We seem no longer even interested in the ‘reality’ or assigning accountability.”

How have our moral compasses become unable to differentiate ‘reality’ from the crude illusions that have replaced it? Is it possible that the self-serving statement by Bolsonaro (taken from Trump’s election playbook) – if the next election results do not show him as the winner they cannot be trusted – will garner the same level credibility as the 32% of American voters who believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the Biden victory in the last presidential election was ‘rigged’?

When there is no popular distinction between the contrived fiction of the TV ‘reality show’ and fact-based observable reality, we descend into what French theologian, Jean-Yves Leloup has labeled ‘normosis’, being well adapted to a sick society. It is as infectious as Covid and perhaps more dangerous.

How are our moral compasses supposed to deal with that? How can society regain the courage to make the difficult decisions and take the needed actions to nurse this sick society back to health?

It is sadly ironic that the largest delegation to the COP26 conference was over 500 lobbyists with links to fossil fuel interests, lobbyists whose bread, butter, and copious jam depend on convincing the world of the lie that fossil fuels do not endanger the environment.

Bill Gates, vacationing on his 107-meter fuel-guzzling luxury yacht Lana, chose the same time as the COP26 conference to celebrate his 66th birthday with 50 guests. They were privately helicoptered from yachts to Sea Me Beach in Turkey’s southwestern province of Muğla Fethiye.

The event was an unfortunate example of the insensitivity of the planet’s richest to its potential demise. Or perhaps Gates, Jeff Bezos, and the other guests were moved by Corinthians 15:32 which advises: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Can our moral compasses be brought back to life, and can we avoid the cataclysm just over the horizon? Only time will tell.