Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest, child labor in Bangladesh, famines in places the names of which many in developed countries have never heard – these and numerous others are problems about which I do not care about. Having to stand in a crowded subway train, a rude barista in a coffee shop, slow Internet access, and battery running low issue more poignant in my daily life. Why should someone care about problems they cannot effortlessly resolve? Permanently, pathology is the philosophy of my immediate surroundings, as caring about something not directly related to me is physically and mentally exhaustive. Despite not being sufficiently versed in philosophy and ethics, I reluctantly understand what someone talks about when moral poverty is mentioned.
I do not remember my first encounter with moral poverty and corruption, but I do recall the work that encouraged my curiosity in it. Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” crystallizes decay that preoccupation with physical and material values entails (Stern 211). When one’s moral compass is skewed, the portrayed in the novel material abundance in which the aristocracy of Victorian England lived, combined with a complete lack of consideration for others, can inspire envy instead of righteous indignation (Stern 210). The contrast between the unsettling Great Stink of London on a hot summer day and the smell of Indian roses in the private gardens of Lord Henry’s mansion have the power to make a person revisit their principles (Stern 213). Upon the first reading, Dorian Gray’s morbid obsession with polished to a sheen jewelleries, sophisticated sounds of classical opera, intoxicating fragrances, exotic tastes, ancient dusty tapestries, and his eternal youth resonated with me. Although I have little interest in jewelry, opera, odors, and tapestries, I comprehended the appeal of opulence, moral poverty’s primary associate.
After reading “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” recognizing the phenomenon in question became somewhat more straightforward – with a trained eye, one can see it wherever they go. In this regard, shopping malls represent a training ground. Garish signboards of fast fashion stores, popular technology brands, and food courts offer an excessive variety of products to distract from the need for a meaningful existence (Shen et al. 3498). Mall visitors consciously or subconsciously understand that the relatively cheap clothes and gadgets are affordable due to endless hours, miserable wages, and people inhaling fiber dust and causing chemical damage to their lungs in crummy buildings on the other side of the world (Shen et al. 3498).
All this suffering so that a teen in a developed country could afford to buy a new pair of high‑waist blue jeans that accentuate the curve of their buttocks and the length of their legs. Moral poverty has a signature scent – the unintelligible stifling mixed aroma of mall visitors, perfume shops, recently cleaned floors and a whiff of leather and coffee from a boutique nearby.
Moral poverty appears to thrive in big corporations that create an appearance of benevolence at the same time draining and degrading the planet and population of the developing countries. The notion results in myriads of individuals who primarily worry about having bad phone signals and not finding anything they like while shopping. Some seem to sluggishly lose themselves in the ideas and needs that have been imposed by ubiquitous advertising and do it gleefully. Moral poverty can be found in dim lights of bars after three in the morning, in piles of empty alcohol bottles accumulated in a corner, and in deep purple circles under eyes that did not close for many nights in a row. The causes that lead to these sleepless nights spent at midnight walking around the block can be traced back to moments of moral weakness and either inability to distinguish wrong from right or choosing wrong nonetheless.
Once one can recognize the phenomenon from meters away by its smell, it is useful to learn its other numerous facets. First of all, moral poverty is an experience, one of dull contentment, complacency, constant regret, self-righteousness, lack of respect, unwillingness even to try, and not challenging one’s beliefs. It is an experience of not being able to share instances of joy and pain with parents, as they have not called in a year since a fierce quarrel during Easter that shattered family bonds that used to appear indestructible. Not being able to call first and express all the remorse about the time spent in arguments and a year of sore silence that followed should also be categorized as moral poverty. When I walk past a person lying on the street pavement, automatically assuming that they are drunk instead of checking whether they need medical assistance and regretting it later is another experience that skewed moral compass warrants. On the other hand, resolution and the ability to overcome past regrets needed to mend broken relationships are incompatible with it.
Moral poverty is living with regret and guilt that eclipse warm memories and reach the most distant corners of daily routine. In school, I had a friend group with a kid who wore glasses for myopia, and for the entirety of elementary school, we, as a group, went unnoticed by local bullies. Upon reaching middle school, the somewhat nearsighted friend started to be the focal point of unwanted attention. Suddenly being near the epicenter of continuous ridicule and snarky comments perturbed me as well as not being able to alleviate the friend’s distress. Among all the possible and available options, I chose the worst. After gradually distancing myself from my friends’ group, I once again was sitting alone during lunch. Nonetheless, this moment is not the apex of the story of my wrongdoing. Months after slowly breaking the friendship and witnessing the mockery, I noticed that I was smiling at one of the lousy jokes aimed at my former friend. Sometimes even during the most mundane tasks such as cutting celery for a soup, this memory hits me with the force of a freight train.
The lack of ethical and philosophical education does not impede understanding morality despite its being an exceedingly complex notion. Moral poverty can be defined through literature, corporate greed, consumerism, or personal instances of weakness. Rising purchasing power may counteract destitution, yet it does not necessarily diminish the moral one. The phenomenon can be defined as a condition in which a person or whole communities lack resources and the system of principles related to the distinction between good and evil, ethical and unethical behaviors, and the will to act according to them. The world’s current state appears to be generally morally corrupt, and possibly it has always been. Moreover, moral corruptness is not necessarily joyless.
Works Cited
Shen, Lixin, et al. “Evaluation of Barriers of Corporate Social Responsibility Using an Analytical Hierarchy Process under a Fuzzy Environment – A Textile Case.” Sustainability, vol. 7, no. 3, 2015, pp. 3493–3514.
Stern, Kimberly J. Oscar Wilde: A Literary Life. Springer Nature, 2019.