In 1992, at a time of growing concern that the American society was invaded by and afflicted with drug use, teenage pregnancy, suicide and violence, William Kilpatrick, professor of educational psychology at Boston College wrote a book entitled ‘Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong: And What We Can Do About It.’
Kilpatrick explained the moral depravity of the American society of the 1990s as a consequence of lack of lack of education for moral competence, symptom of absence of good role models. Johnny can’t tell right from wrong because Johnny has not been educated on the basics of morality. He has not been taught how to differentiate right from wrong.
Johnny goes to school, the best of schools, where every other thing is taught and learnt except how to differentiate right from wrong. In other words, Johnny has acquired technical competence without ethical competence, and he is unable to acquire ethical competence because the possibility of acquiring spiritual competence has been severely eroded, if not completely displaced, misplaced and replaced by the elevation of materialism into a sacred religion.
Kilpatrick was writing about Gen X, referring to those born between 1965 and 1980. Since then, we have had the Millennial or Gen Y, born between 1981 and 1994. And now we have Gen Z, born between 1995 and 2010, the internet generation.
Three decades after Kilpatrick wrote that book, let us look at our own Nigerian society. What do we see? We see our own Johnnies, young and old. And there are many of them. They swim in the vast ocean of moral depravation, of drug use and sexual promiscuity. Beyond the oftentimes sanctimonious posturing of many, not all, of the Millennial and Gen Z, believing and professing the unscrutinised Credo that their generation is holier than preceding generations, their role models are some of our celebrities, pseudo-politicians and pseudo-pastors.
Their place of worship is the internet. There, good and not so good messages are proclaimed from cyber pulpit. There you can gain free access to texts of great philosophers, just as you can gain free access to pornography and directions to drug joints
Nigeria fits into the profile of a society where morality is distorted, and where morality is distorted, politics is affected. It is said that charity begins at home. So does incivility. Distortion of morality begins in the home. It begins with low grade parenting. Homes make cities, and cities make nations. Where the home is the starting point of moral depravation, where parents are not exemplary in good things, it is extremely difficult for their children to be otherwise. Where homes of distorted morality produce citizens of depraved morality, chaos and banditry become national hobbies.
This is a society where a youngster is caught on video doing drugs, and he and his parents say he is falsely accused. This is a society where a political office holder is caught on video collecting bribe in dollar notes and he and his supporters say he is innocent.
A society where morality is distorted is one in which what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right. And that is what we have become. Distorting morality, we distorted politics. Once our politics got mixed up, once brigandage is paraded as politics, violence and fraud became means of getting into public office and remaining in it. The wealth that belongs to all is stolen by a few and the majority lives in penury. Our moral life got damaged before our politics and our economy. Our ethical infrastructure was destroyed before our technical infrastructure.
The economic malaise visited on us in the present has impoverished many. Not only politics and the economy are affected, religion is not untouched. Corruption of morals and corruption of religion are two sides of the same coin. In a land of want, a land where moral depravity has brought upon us banditry in government, theft of our common wealth, corruption of religion is paraded as piety.
Ours is a land where all kinds of characters manipulate venerable texts of religion, promising prosperity, touting miracles, and peddling false prophecies. Fake prophets form an alliance with unscrupulous politicians and stage manage miracles and deliverance sessions before an impoverished, traumatised, confused and gullible audience. Fanatics instrumentalise religion and use it to terrorise our already terrorrised collective psyche. Conmen melodramatise prophecy. They are called men of God when in fact they are gods of men.
We talk of corruption. But we must know what it is and what causes it if we are sincere in wanting it out of our society. Where there is degradation of consciousness of right and wrong, what follows is depreciation of capacity to act rightly. One who cannot differentiate right from wrong cannot be expected to act rightly. Corruption is degradation of moral consciousness manifest in uncivil behaviour.
A nation is an aggregate of its citizens. A land inhabited for the most part by persons of degraded ethical consciousness and depreciated capacity for good conduct is a land where what is right is wrong, what is wrong is right, the criminal is lauded, honoured and elevated, while the law-abiding is condemned, dishonoured, and demoted.
The future is now. The future of a country is written in its homes and schools, in the ways the Johnnies of the land are formed. If we turn our land into a place where hard drugs and illicit sexual pleasure are cheap, if we are willing to defend our children rather than correct them, if we do not believe in the adage that examples are better than precepts, if we turn our back to what is right, to what is true, to what is truly loving and noble, indeed, the future is now.
The Johnnies of today, who have not been taught how to differentiate right from wrong, will, in the nearest future become our presidents and governors, senators and assembly men and women, judges and CEOs, and parents. The final scores of the match we are playing can already be predicted.
Virtue, the good quality of the mind that disposes the human person to act rightly, cannot be acquired without good role models. But where bad behavior is rewarded, we are telling our children that the best way to live is to misbehave. The ball is in our court. Either we provide exemplary spiritual and moral leadership or we don’t. We cannot sit on the fence.
Father Akinwale, OP.
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