This article investigates how the decay of traditional authority figures, combined with AI-era information overload and hyper-individualistic corporate culture, has severed youth from moral purpose and social responsibility.
Dr. Jernail S. Anand
With the explosion of knowledge and the smart apps in the form of AI and Grok, I feel our kids are living in an atmosphere of hyper ideas, thoughts, words and phrases which represent global passion for the post-technology slang. The child of sixties and seventies who was not aware of words like ‘compartment’ and ‘scholarship’, now knows all about almost everything. The parents, in the past, had minimum five or six kids, and they were so busy with their living chores that they had little time for the kids’ mental development. Everything was left with the teacher. But, today, things have been reversed. Everything now rests with the mother, the father who is no longer the autocrat he used to be. His position in the family has melted to a friend, and even below that, to a homourist, who must buy costly toys, and eatables to keep the little boss in good humour.
The kids now start with a huge store of knowledge available from the mobile, and soon grow into young men and women with a brain loaded with millions of smart ideas. They keep busy with hundreds of apps, which, no doubt, give them a lot of exposure and knowledge too, but without any understanding of life, which was to come from a direct touch with books and a respectful attachment with teachers, – they have neither time for this, nor any inclination. In a way, kids are now growing up in an atmosphere of moral non-committal. May I call it moral vacuum. Parents, who are all out to please them, because they have either only one son, or only one daughter, express unalloyed love for these kids, who are growing up unhindered, and uncorrected in their mental reflexes. Love is not only to please the child, if we do not correct them when they go astray, it is not love, it is irresponsible behaviour, which affects not only the life of the kids when they grow up, but also puts the future of mankind at risk, because unchecked human passions open the doors for gangsters and mafiados who do not believe in human decencies. Can parents be expected to be ethically irresponsible?
In the absence of any moral compunctions, either from parents, or from the teachers, who have been reduced from being moral guides and role-models to facilitators, [every paradigm has suffered a downslide: parents, teachers, preachers], the youth have a free for all in the bazaar of ideas and ideologies. Apart from mental freedom from parental control and moral restrictions, they have only one worry: to train themselves for a job. The consumerist culture of today, and the corporatization of work culture have now said goodbye to settled job routines of seventies and eighties, when people would spend fixed hours in offices, come home at the set time, and have tea in the open verandah of the house with their spouse. Everything has been turned on its head. Pensionless jobs, insecurity, job hopping, passion for packages, have made our youngsters a rolling stones, the more they roll, the greater is the moss they carry. Stability is a negative virtue, not only in office, but also in life. How can you spend entire life in the same house, in the same office and in the same environment? Change is always for the better. There is some truth, of course, but not the whole truth.
Inversion of Intelligence
In this atmosphere of crass insecurity, where all the measures of social security have gone to winds, the intelligence quotient of the younger generations too has taken a turn away from the ideal of social welfare, living for society, and working for society. Nobody looks at his job now as serving a social cause or doing something socially useful. A job is now shorn of all social responsibility. It is meant only to sustain the man who holds it. Job is meant for your family, for your kids, and close relatives if you have a good human relationships record. If you are in business, is it run for helping the society or the country? I beg to differ. The sole purpose of setting up any business, even if it is a University nowadays, is how to cycle and recycle your wealth, and multiply it. All the knowledge, all the wisdom that a man gathers from the mobile, Google, Chatgpt, and from his experience with other people, is piped into forming a hyper-personality, where you are meant only for yourself, your family and your close circle, and beyond it, who is dying, suffering and crying, – the society at large – it is not your worry. Let the people fend for themselves. Who has stopped them from doing what you are doing. And when intelligence is suffering such an inversion, who bothers about the cosmic balance? Who bothers about God, who, even writers have said in desperation, is dead. God is dead because he has realized it is useless to argue with men who are too intelligent. After all, they the byproducts of the forbidden fruit of knowledge.
The epicenters of morality have been deliberately weakened. Teacher has been removed from the scene. Family has been destroyed. And the holy shrines suffer erosion under the pressure of materialism and physical delight. Everything that made the old times good, has gone with the wind, leaving behind a life which is lived for the self, in the most selfish manner.
The Smart Intelligence
The intelligence that we now come across is not vertical. It is horizontal. People believe in moving around, discussing and debating their thoughts, and thus gathering some points for their CVs. They are not interested in intelligence for its own sake. Only he is considered intelligent who can show up in high voltage journals. Wealth is playing a great role in the acquiring of intelligence. If you have land, you can set up a University. You do not need any other accomplishment. If you want to make it a business proposition, no problem. What type of education you are providing, who bothers? What the students need are certificates. Go and get. The virtuosity of intelligence that is being bartered here is suspect, because it is horizontal, not vertical. Who can sit at his home and think and meditate deeply on any issue of social, moral and cosmic relevance? After Swami Vivekananda, and Kalam, how many more intellectuals have been born? We had great scholars, in the western world, but they were disillusioned with life, and some of them did themselves in.
Imparting Sense to the Absurd World
Who will lend sense to this absurd world? The intelligent people, the men who know. Not the men who only know how to get jobs. Life is lived beyond that. Job is meant for eight or nine hours. A day has twenty four hours. How to live those hours? Who will tell? Who will guide? Mobile? Very well. There are still nations which believe in their poets as prophets. But, the corporate world does not believe in prophetism. They believe in profit, and they are going strong.
Read: Cultivating Global Ethics for Next Generation
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Dr. Jernail S. Anand, with 210 books to his credit [20 epics] is a Chandigarh-based top ranking author, whose seminal work ‘Lustus: The Prince of Darkness’ challenges the moral complacency of our era. He is founding President of the International Academy of Ethics, and Laureate of Charter of Morava [Serbia], Seneca [Italy], Franz Kafka [Germany, Ukraine, Czeck Rep] and Maxim Gorky [Russia] Soka Ikeda and Mahakavi Bharati (India) Awards, his name is inscribed on the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. Email: anandjs55@yahoo.com.
