Chapter 3.     (continued) 

For millions, the old moral code was done. Obsolete. It didn't work. It had led the world to "this". The only viable alternative people had to look to – Science – flatly refused to say anything about what right and wrong are. 

 

Before the scientific revolution began to erode God out of the thinking of the citizens in the West, even if people hadn’t been able to grasp why bad things sometimes happened in the world or why bad people sometimes got ahead in spite of, and even because of, the suffering they inflicted on others, people could still believe God had reasons and the code of right and wrong still held. God was watching. Matters would be sorted out in time. The liars, thieves, bullies, and killers would get their just deserts in time. We just had to be patient and have faith. The people, in large majority, believed the authorities’ official spiel.

 

But WWI was just too big. With the scale of the destruction, the pathetic reasons given to justify it, and the amorality of Science gnawing at their belief systems, people began to suspect and fear that, just as Science had said, there was no God, the Bible was a set of myths, their leaders were a bunch of deluded incompetents, and the old moral system was a sham. And then things got worse.

 

     

        British bulldozer burying bodies at Belsen (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

                                   

         

   

      British soldiers forcing German concentration camp guards to load bodies

                                           (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Following the First World War, to exacerbate the moral confusion and despair, the man-made horrors of the twentieth century began to mount. They are many and ugly. The Russian Revolution and Civil War. Many other smaller wars. The worldwide Depression. World War II, six times as destructive as World War I. Hitler’s camps. Stalin’s camps. But we don’t need to describe any more.

 

The point is that these were the actions of a species that, by its science, had gained great physical power at the same time as it lost its moral compass.

 

The big question, “What is right?” keeps echoing, and the big fears that go with it keep growing. Where will the code come from now that we need to guide our behavior in business, international affairs, or even everyday life?