The moral state of modern Russian society

The moral state of modern Russian society

Annotation. Based on the findings of philosophers, economists, psychologists, lawyers, sociologists, etc., the moral level of Russian society at the beginning of the 21st century was determined. — “moral degradation”; developed quantitative indicators are used - the index of the moral state of society (INSO), on the basis of which the dynamics of the evolution of Russian society during the years of reforms is traced; the causes and consequences of the decline of morals are noted; paths of spiritual revival are outlined as a key factor and prerequisites for the improvement of the economy and, in general, the spiritual revival of the nation.

Film "Repentance"

What is this road for if it does not lead to the temple?

The film “A.S. Konchalovsky"

Be terrified of yourself

Keywords:

moral state index (INSO) * morality * law * moral degradation * suicide * drug addiction * alcoholism * corruption * violence * crime * anomie * liberalism, pseudo-liberalism * freedom * control - social, moral * moral regulators * social interactions.

Symptoms of moral degradation

Despite economic successes (pre-crisis), internal political stabilization and other positive trends, the general state of modern Russian society in recent years looks very alarming. Thus, the number of murders per 100 thousand inhabitants in our country is almost 4 times higher than in the USA (where the situation in this regard is also very unfavorable) and approximately 10 times higher than their prevalence in most European countries (Lysova A.V., Shchitov N. G. Systems of response to domestic violence // Sociological Journal, 2003, N 3, pp. 99-115). In terms of the number of suicides, Russia is 3 times ahead of the United States, ranking 2nd in Europe and the CIS not only among the general population, but also among young people under the age of 17 (in this case, after Kazakhstan).

At the same time, for a number of reasons (for example, such as the desire of relatives to present suicide as an accident), the undercount of suicides in Russian regions is about 13%; There are also such alarming trends as a decrease in the average age of those who commit suicide, committing them in increasingly cruel ways, etc.

According to the corruption index for 6 years (2002-2008), Russia moved from 71st to 147th place in the world, and the total volume of corruption in the Russian Federation is estimated by experts at 250 - 300 billion dollars per year. The number of victims of accidents, such as accidental alcohol poisoning and road accidents, indicates, if not a massive “unwillingness to live” (the psychoanalytic interpretation of such situations), then at least the indifferent attitude of many of our fellow citizens towards their own and others’ lives.

The annual number of traffic accident victims in modern Russia exceeds our country’s losses during all the years of the Afghan war, and the situation on our roads is called “road war”, “civil war”, etc.

Taken together, the data presented form a holistic picture (Table 1), indicating the painful state of society, but it is surprising that in the public consciousness they are perceived with less acuteness than, say, the number of medals won at the Olympics (which in itself is an indicator state of society, as well as gifting expensive cars to already wealthy winning athletes).

Table 1. Indicators of the state of modern Russian society (2006)

Sources: Human Development Report 2007/2008. Published for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) / Trans. from English M.: The whole world, 2007; Russian statistical yearbook 2007. M.: Rosstat, 2007; Transparency International.https://www.transparency.org/

The indicators given in Table 1 are supplemented by other data demonstrating what kind of society we have built under the beautiful slogans of freedom and democracy:

• Every year, 2 thousand children become victims of murder and suffer serious bodily harm;
• every year 2 million children suffer from parental cruelty, and 50 thousand run away from home;
• Every year 5 thousand women die from beatings inflicted by their husbands;
• violence against wives, elderly parents and children is recorded in every fourth family;
• 12% of teenagers use drugs;
• more than 20% of child pornography distributed around the world is filmed in Russia;
• about 1.5 million Russian school-age children do not attend school at all;
• the children's and adolescent "social bottom" covers at least 4 million people;
• the growth rate of child crime is 15 times faster than the growth rate of general crime;
• in modern Russia there are about 40 thousand juvenile prisoners, which is about 3 times more than there were in the USSR in the early 1930s. (Analysis of the situation of children in the Russian Federation. M.: UNICEF, 2007; State report “On the situation of children in the Russian Federation”, M.: Ministry of Labor and Social Development of the Russian Federation, 2006)
  Quantitative data can be supplemented with everyday illustrations from life society: the practice of criminal “roofs”, raiding, “black real estate”, financial “pyramids”, various types of fraud, etc. is still widespread. Organized crime has actually been legalized, and the so-called “authoritative businessmen”—essentially legalized thieves—arrange public presentations of their “literary” works, in which hired writers colorfully depict their criminal adventures (according to a survey by the Public Chamber, more than half of our fellow citizens do not feel themselves in any way protected from crime), corruption is truly total, and both officials themselves at all levels of government and administrative positions are sold; You can buy drugs in schools; public speech, including on television and radio, is replete with profanity and criminal jargon; homeless people are an indispensable attribute of stations, trains, subways, etc.

The Internet is full of films that show in detail how students beat their teachers, how elderly people are killed in order to take over their apartments; drunken mothers throw their babies out of windows; there is a slave trade (in the 21st century!), and in the literal, and not at all in the metaphorical, sense of the word; cheeky-aggressive youths defiantly do not give up their seats on transport to older people, and sometimes are capable of killing for a remark made to them (in the city of Kolchugino, a company of scum, drinking vodka at the memorial to the heroes of the Great Patriotic War, killed and burned on the “Eternal Flame” a man who tried to reassure them); There are widespread sects that practice, among other things, human sacrifice, and the typical reaction of a significant part of our youth to a person dying nearby has become... laughter. All this is not scenes from “horror films”, but our life. What is striking is not only such phenomena themselves, but also the tolerance towards them, the perception of them as familiar, and not as out of the ordinary, as the norm of our life. “Every day, faced with blatant facts of lawlessness and arbitrariness, people lose the severity of their reaction to them and gradually become indifferent to what is happening,” writes O. T. Bogomolov [4, p. 19]. And K.N. Brutents [5, p. 396 - 397], this is how tolerance to evil

and humility before it, contributing to its assertion in increasingly cruel forms.

With all the diversity of the described phenomena, as well as the processes characterized by the above statistical data, they can be brought under a common denominator, which is called “ moral degradation”

"of modern Russian society or, using the famous expression of E. Giddens, "
evaporation of morality
."
O [4, p. 19]. And it is natural that, according to the results of sociological surveys, the decline of morals is perceived by our fellow citizens as one of the main problems of modern Russia; they regard the “ deterioration of morals”
as one of the worst results of our reforms [6].

The moral degradation of modern Russian society is stated by representatives of a variety of sciences, and it can be considered a truly “interdisciplinary” fact. Psychologists demonstrate that “Russia for many years turned out to be a “natural laboratory” where the morality and legal consciousness of citizens underwent severe tests” [7, p. 17]; sociologists show that “at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries, Russian society, plunged by the state first into “perestroika” and then into “radical reforms,” constantly experienced moral deviations and a deficiency not so much of social, economic and political, but of moral guidelines and values and patterns of behavior; emphasize the “moral aberration” of the thinking of our politicians - its distancing from moral values ​​and guidelines, which are replaced by categories of an economic nature, such as economic growth, GDP, inflation rates, etc. [6, p. 225]; economists, emphasizing the “intensive eradication of the moral and ethical component of their social existence” [8, p. 588]; art critics state that “we have formed a totally immoral system” [9, p. 73]; philosophers connect what is happening in modern Russia with the obvious fact that freedom leads to the release of not only the best, but also the worst in a person, and, accordingly, must imply restrictions on the release of the worst. “What will a person make of political freedom who is not ripe for it and experiences it as unbridledness? — I. A. Ilyin asked the question and answered, “he himself becomes the most dangerous enemy of someone else’s and common freedom” [10, p. 146]. This is what happened in our country in the early 1990s.

Rice. Dynamics of the moral state of modern Russian society

The Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in line with the quantitative macropsychology developed there [See: 14, etc.], has developed an index of the moral state of society (INSO), based on the integration of such indicators as the number (per 100 thousand inhabitants): 1) murders and 2) street children, 3) corruption index, 4) Gini index, expressing the uneven distribution of income (see Appendix). The dynamics of the moral state of Russian society quantified in this way during the years of reforms is shown in the figure.

As you can see, the moral state of our society (1991-1994) deteriorated every year, then improved until the “default” year of 1998, after which it deteriorated again (until 2002), and then again showed a tendency to improve annually (for 2007 - 2008 index has not been calculated due to the fact that the corresponding statistical data are not yet available - Without interpreting the identified dynamics, we note that it almost completely corresponds to the dynamics of the macropsychological state of modern Russian society, assessed on the basis of other indicators [See: 11], and also temporal development of its characteristics calculated by sociologists (social sentiments, social optimism, etc.), which indicates the synchronous manifestation of such dynamics in a variety of areas)).

Attention is also drawn to the fact that the quantitatively assessed moral state of our society in the first years of reforms deteriorated at a high rate, which indicates the connection of its deterioration precisely with the reforms and with the events accompanying them, and over the subsequent years, although it revealed a non-linear, “ wave-like dynamics, was almost 2 times lower than the 1990 level.

Causes and consequences of the decline of morals

Among the main reasons for the decline of morals in post-reform Russia, the following are usually noted. A general weakening of control over the behavior of citizens, the transformation of which, as history and the experience of other countries show, is characteristic of “turbulent”, changing societies, and inevitably accompanies radical reforms. The moral qualities of the reformers, many of whom were recruited into the “democrats” from party and Komsomol workers, turned the resource of administrative power into access to property and generalized their personal immorality into the convenient ideologeme of “the uselessness of morality” for a market economy.

Naturally, not everyone. It is customary to distinguish, for example, between “romantic democrats”, who sincerely defended democratic values, and the “pragmatist democrats” who replaced them, who used democratic slogans in their personal interests, for example, to justify privatization that was beneficial to them [12].

The specific nature of the “three sources and three components” of modern Russian business, which were: a) former Soviet “guild workers”, i.e. underground producers of goods and services, b) representatives of the criminal world, who in the Soviet years imposed tribute on the “guild workers” and applied their experience in a market economy, c) party and Komsomol workers, who with amazing ease replaced socialist morality with pseudo-capitalist ones, and, in fact, to criminal. Distribution in the early 1990s. such ideologies as “everything is possible that is not prohibited by law”, “one must live according to the law, not according to conscience”, “the main thing is money, and no matter how it is earned”, etc., essentially denying any morality - the solution the long-standing Russian alternative “by conscience or by law?” in favor of the latter and led to the fact that our society began to live not according to conscience, and not according to the law, but “according to concepts.”

This result turned out to be inevitable: firstly, because “a holy place is never empty,” and the rejection of generally accepted morality in the context of the criminalization of society resulted in its replacement by the morality of the criminal world; secondly, due to the fact that law and morality are two basic, mutually supporting systems for ensuring social order, and the destruction of one of them inevitably leads to the destruction of the other, the law does not act without support from morality, and morality is destroyed without support from the law. In particular, as Metropolitan Kirill noted, “the law has a chance to work only if it corresponds to a moral norm” [13, p. 375].

The pseudo-liberal ("pseudo" - because it is very far from true liberalism, which spread at the beginning of the reforms, represents its highly distorted (in the interests of the most immoral sections of society) version. And the founders of Russian liberalism - B.N. Chicherin, M.M. Speransky, S. Witte, whose followers the authors of the “Russian Liberal Manifesto”, developed by the leaders of the Union of Right Forces, call themselves, would be very surprised by those who are called “liberals” in modern Russia.), based on the “doctrine of vulgar liberalism” [14, p. 417], the understanding of freedom as non-compliance with any rules and prohibitions, as unbridledness and irresponsibility, is readily assimilated by some layers of our society.

Let us note that such an understanding of freedom is not our Russian “invention.” So, for example, freedom, promoted by the French salons of the Enlightenment, “was of a purely negative nature, turned into the freedom to deny all moral principles - faith, authority, traditions, experience, respect for authority, declared prejudices” [15, p. 412].

Criminalization (not only in the generally accepted sense - an increase in crime, etc., but also in the expanded sense of the word - the criminalization of “all public life”), including an abundance of films about “good bandits”, the popularity of criminal vocabulary (“assaults”, “showdowns”, etc. etc.), the tightening, “brutalization” of this life, the widespread use of forceful schemes for resolving controversial situations, the prestige of emphatically aggressive behavior, etc.

Increased aggressiveness as a norm of our life has even affected the Internet, which is natural, since “culture sets the norms of aggression and is the primary source of the formation of delinquent behavior” [16, p. 65].

The attractiveness of negative patterns of behavior perpetuated by the “amnesty of the past”, created by the most successful people of modern Russia, who made their fortunes by violating laws and moral norms (it doesn’t matter that the name is a bandit in the past, now he is a “respectable businessman”, and his past has no values).

Anomie is the destruction of the system of moral norms and their discord with each other, characteristic of all post-socialist societies and which has replaced hypernomy - over-normalization - of socialist regimes.

People started talking about the anomie of entire societies relatively recently. Previously, this concept was applied to individuals and was introduced by E. Durkheim to describe the state experienced by a person before committing suicide [17]. In this regard, it is appropriate to recall the thought of O. G. Drobnitsky that “the requirements of morality ... can also be addressed to socio-historical processes and conditions” [18, p. 248].

Abolition of social institutions

moral control, the role of which in Soviet society was played by party and Komsomol organizations, comrades' courts, people's control, etc., which, with all their well-known shortcomings, performed a very important social function - moral control.

The dominance of “economic determinism” in approaches to solving the main problems of our society.

This style of thinking and vision of what is happening in society, when the main thing is economics, and everything else, including morality, is secondary, was subjected to destructive criticism by A. Tocqueville [19], K. Polanyi [20] and many other famous thinkers, and M. Ratz called his “belching of Marxism,” emphasizing the derivative of “stubbornness in the economy” [21] from the Marxist division of society into an economic base and a secondary social superstructure.

The fact is that although the unity of teaching and upbringing was considered one of the cornerstones of the domestic education system, since the beginning of the 1990s. Our state has essentially left the sphere of education.

Without having the opportunity in this context for a detailed presentation and discussion of these reasons, we emphasize that the moral state of society

, which supporters of “economic determinism” tend to ignore, referring, in their clearly derogatory expression, to the “so-called social sphere”, has essentially a multicomponent status in the system of social processes, representing simultaneously three aspects: a) an indicator of the state of society, b ) a consequence of the processes occurring in it, c) the basis of what this society expects in the future. The latter is especially clearly manifested in the low birth rate, which in recent years has been identified, including by government authorities, as one of the key problems of modern Russia.

As studies show, purely economic measures to stimulate the birth rate can increase it by 15-20%, since the main influence on the reluctance to have children is exerted by non-economic factors. Among them, as surveys show, one of the first places is occupied by the reluctance to give birth in such a country

, the moral ill-being of which is emphasized by respondents [22]. A. Yu. Shevyakov provides data that “changes in fertility and mortality trends in Russia are 85-90% due to excessive inequality and high relative poverty of the population,” expressing the moral state of our society, and emphasizes that “the connection between socio-economic factors and demographic indicators are mediated by people’s psychological reactions and behavioral attitudes resulting from these reactions” [23, p. 305]. And V.K. Levashov explains the “catastrophic depopulation” of modern Russia with a “moral gap between society and the state” [6, p. 259] [ibid., p. 426].

According to surveys, the majority of our fellow citizens believe that the modern Russian state expresses mainly the interests of the state bureaucracy and the wealthy, rather than society as a whole [6]. However, even with a more positive idea of ​​our state and attributing pro-social intentions to it, we have to admit that “the state is losing the war against social vices” [ibid., p. 426].

As R. S. Grinberg states, “demographic studies show that more than two-thirds of the causes of depopulation in Russia are associated with such socio-psychological phenomena that arose in the post-Soviet period as social depression, apathy and aggression” [8, p. 588], some of which (for example, mass aggressiveness) are direct manifestations of the destruction of morality, others - apathy, depression, etc. - a mass psychological reaction to its destruction. In particular, a permanent feeling of immorality, hostility and aggressiveness of the environment causes stress, apathy, depression, etc. in a person, which in turn gives rise to mental disorders, diseases of the nervous system, cardiovascular, gastrointestinal and other diseases. According to the World Health Organization, from 45% to 70% of all diseases are associated with stress, and psychosomatic diseases such as neuroses, cardiovascular disorders, ulcerative lesions of the gastrointestinal tract, immunodeficiency, endocrinopathies and tumor diseases are directly dependent on it [24].

The decline of morals plays an important role among the motives for suicide, and is also directly related to the depressing statistics of drug addiction, alcoholism, accidents, etc., which are the main manifestations of the physical self-destruction of our society. A. Yu. Myagkov and S.V. Erofeev o [25, p. 54]; state that “the continuing increase in suicides is the price that we are still forced to pay for uncivilized forms of transition to the market” [ibid., p. 50].

Similar patterns can be traced in history, in particular, “history provides many examples, starting with the death of the Roman Empire, when generally economically prosperous states perished as a result of a decline in the moral level of the population” [26, p. 9]. And B. Kuzyk, based on the material of the most important historical cycles of the evolution of the Russian state, shows that each of its political and economic rise and fall was always preceded, respectively, by a rise or decline in spiritual life and morality [27].

Contrary to the thesis proclaimed by domestic reformers about the “uselessness” of morality for a market economy, their close connection is shown in the classical works of M. Weber and his followers. It is also obvious to representatives of modern Russian business. Thus, the president of the group, S. A. Petrov, emphasizes that “moral requirements are not some kind of appendage to business, imposed on it by certain social forces, that is, from the outside, but the key to its successful development” [28, p. 422]. The pattern is that “the higher the level of spiritual and moral development of the bulk of the population, the more successfully the economic and political system of the country develops” [29, p. 367], “the state of the economy directly depends on the spiritual and moral state of the individual” [14, p. 416], receives multiple confirmations. And the data we obtained demonstrate that the moral state of Russian society, quantitatively assessed in the manner described above, reveals high correlations with various indicators of its innovative activity (Table 2).

The level of morality also has a significant impact on socio-political processes. In particular, it is difficult to disagree with the fact that “ethics is the heart of democracy” [30, p. 394], since the latter presupposes trust

citizens to its institutions, which is impossible without subordinating the activities of these institutions to basic ethical principles. According to the former President of the USSR M.S. Gorbachev, “without a moral component, any system will be doomed” [31, p. 14]. And Metropolitan Kirill expressed himself even more categorically: “Morality is a condition for the survival of human civilization - no more and no less” [13, p. 372].

Table 2. Relationship between the moral state of Russian society and indicators of innovation activity

Ways to revive morality

Despite the positive changes in recent years, Russian society is still “traumatized by chaos” [32], and one of its main problems is not the lack of freedom, which we are constantly accused of from the West (as always, poorly understanding what is happening in Russia), and the exact opposite is a lack of control, first of all, control

internal - moral.
This key need
of modern Russian society is refracted in the mass consciousness: the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens, as polls demonstrate, are in favor of tightening laws,
moral censorship of the media
(which its opponents pass off
as ideological
, deliberately substituting concepts) and other forms of moral control.
Similar intentions are observed in government bodies, as well as in the Public Chamber, whose members declare that “the main problem of modern Russia is the decline of moral culture,” etc. All this suggests that a corresponding need has matured .
Of course, try to give a simple answer to the traditional Russian question “What to do?” in relation to the moral state of our society it would be absurd. It is also obvious that declarative calls for the revival of morality and morality sound like a voice crying in the desert, and given the nihilism of a significant part of our youth, accustomed by pseudo-liberal ideologies to “do everything the opposite” in relation to the calls of the older generation, they can give the exact opposite effect. “For now, the progressive public both here and in the West continues to sound the alarm about a deep moral crisis. But there are no clear ways to overcome it,” states O. T. Bogomolov” [29, p. 368].

However, the key directions for the revival of morality are “effective therapy for the decline of morals” [5, p. 395] - can be outlined.

Firstly

, a revision of the understanding of
freedom
that we inherited from the first years of reforms and which is extremely distorted in modern Russia.
Freedom presupposes its reasonable restrictions, implanted in the mentality of citizens, in terms of psychological science, internalized
by them. A similar understanding of freedom, spelled out in the works of I. Kant, I. A. Ilyin and other outstanding thinkers, should be implanted in the minds of our fellow citizens with the help of the education system, which since the early 1990s. practically abstracted from solving moral and educational problems.

Secondly

, the revival
of institutions of moral control
, which are practically absent in modern Russian society.
One should hardly strive to create institutions reminiscent of Soviet party and Komsomol organizations (in a democratic society this is impossible), however, schools, universities, and public organizations could perform the functions of moral control, for which they need a mandate from society
to fulfill them. (For example, it is reasonable to make admission to and stay in universities dependent on the behavior of students in educational institutions and beyond. And public organizations, including our leading political party, should attach importance to the moral qualities of their members.)

Third

, in the conditions of the deficit of internal
moral regulations
, one should resort to their “externalization” by giving moral norms the status of laws.

A striking example is the law adopted by the State Duma prohibiting the drinking of beer and other low-alcohol drinks in public places. In this very instructive case, the internal - moral - prohibition was translated into external form. And it “worked,” although in accordance with the Russian attitude to laws: our fellow citizens, of course, did not stop drinking beer in public places, but still began to do it much less often than in the absence of a legally formalized ban. The same should be done with regard to swearing in public places, which has already been done to some cities in Russia (under the ridicule of media representatives who poorly understand the destructive impact of “weak” forms of deviant behavior on society), demonstrative insults to elders and other forms of rude moral violations.

As O. T. Bogomolov writes, “until moral norms and principles become part of the general culture, it is necessary to force lawbreakers to obey the law, to comply with the rules of society, using the authority of the authorities, the press, and television” [4, p. 25].

Fourth

, decriminalization of our society and its everyday culture.
It is wrong to think that this problem is relevant only to law enforcement agencies. In particular, the decriminalization of mass consciousness
involves not only the cleansing of our vocabulary from criminal jargon, etc., but also a
radical change in the system of relations between the population and law enforcement agencies
, including the attitude towards informing them about violations of the law, which in our culture, under the obvious influence of the criminal world, are classified as “denunciations”.

In this regard, the example of Finland, recognized as the least corrupt country in the world, is very instructive. One of the cornerstones of the fight against corruption in this country is the simplicity and effectiveness of informing law enforcement agencies about any cases of corruption, i.e., in our terminology, “denunciations” of officials. Any citizen can do this using the Internet without filling out any paperwork or bureaucratic obstacles. “Blacklists” of officials convicted of corruption are also posted there, and being included in them will deprive them of the opportunity to get a good job.

We still have not learned to distinguish between ideological denunciations and reports of violations of the law, which are essentially an expression of civil responsibility, moreover, considering its “minor” violations to be insignificant and not worthy of the attention of law enforcement agencies. It is noted, in particular, that “what some call law-abiding, others call denunciation”, “information is not welcomed here... you can’t knock, because the law is “alien” [33, p. 77]. There is also no such concept as a “professional criminal,” although a significant part of our fellow citizens, being free, are capable of engaging only in criminal activities and do not hide it.

Fifthly

, the widespread
involvement of scientists
- sociologists, psychologists, etc. -
in the development of laws
, which in our country is considered the sphere of competence of only professional lawyers and ubiquitous politicians.

The fact that athletes and showmen are abundantly represented in our legislative bodies, expanding the social base of those who make laws, only worsens the situation.

Laws are not just legal norms, but the most general rules of social interaction

, which must be developed and introduced taking into account its social, psychological, economic and other laws revealed by the relevant sciences.

It is easy to predict what fierce resistance such measures would evoke from our pseudo-liberals, who have extremely distorted the reasonable understanding of freedom, and from those criminalized social strata who benefit from this. However, the risk of new ideological collisions in this case is clearly justified, because “whether we want to admit it or not, morality really underlies everything” [13, p. 375], and, in particular, “it’s time to realize that in Russia moral education and spiritual revival are a matter of national survival and one of the necessary prerequisites for improving the economy” [4, p. 20].

From the editors of Psychologos

We agree with the opinion of one of the readers: from the conversation “who is to blame” it is important to move on to the specifics of “what to do.” Namely, to decide what each of us needs to do personally, at least on an everyday level, in order to begin to correct the situation and make Russia a more worthy country. For example, COMPLETELY give up alcohol, cigarettes and drugs - Do exercises every morning - Smile at people on the street - Give up your seat on the bus to older people, pregnant women, etc.: simple, clear and understandable things. Maybe someone will write such a plan for working on themselves, such a list? We will be ready to publish this on Psychologos so that people can compare their lives with how they should live.

Life is made by people. What will we do?

The role of morality in the life of society

Some people mistakenly believe that morality is important only for life in another world, and in this world it does not play any significant role. According to them, it turns out that a person who tries to acquire a good character will reap the fruits of his efforts only after death. And in this life he will not receive any benefit from his labors. In fact, this opinion is a big mistake. Most moral qualities, one might even say all of them, have a huge impact on a person’s stay in this world. And even more. Not just for one person, but for the whole society. If the value of morality disappears in a society, then this society begins to decay and, in the end, will destroy itself. If we look at the history of mankind, we will find a huge number of examples of how various nations died and disappeared. And one of the most important reasons for their disappearance is the oblivion of morality. When people do not encourage each other to do good and do not restrain each other from evil, deception, debauchery, and theft increase in society. Immoral people come to power through deception, and then the people begin to suffer even more. The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family) said in one of the traditions: “As long as people encourage each other to do good and restrain each other from evil, and are distinguished by virtue and piety, then they will live in happiness and goodness. But if they stop doing this, they will lose all the benefits, and some of them will begin to oppress others. And then there will be no helper for them either in heaven or on earth” (Tahzib al-Ahkam). Therefore, the Islamic religion claims that there is a very close connection between morality and the life of human society in this world. Whenever members of society have good character, their worldly life will only improve. But if they forget about morality and turn to bad deeds, then the whole society will suffer. In order for a person not to forget about morality, parents must instill it in their children from childhood. “One of the rich princes was a friend of the Byzantine emperor. Without his advice, he did not do any work. One day he sent a messenger to the emperor to consult with him about his children. In his letter, the prince wrote: “I thought about the future of my children. I left a large inheritance for each of my sons and daughters so that in the future they would not need anything. What do you think about it?" The Emperor wrote back to him: “It seems to us all that only wealth will bring happiness to our children, but very often wealth brings only grief to its owner and those around him. The best service you can render to your children is to instill in them good character and godliness. Good character prolongs the life of empires in this world, and serves as forgiveness of sins in the next." Numerous verses of the Holy Quran indicate the connection that exists between a person’s life in this world and his presence of morality, or lack thereof. One of the verses says: “If the inhabitants of these villages believed and became God-fearing, We would open for them the gates of good from heaven and earth. But they considered it a lie, and We punished them for what they did” (Sura “Barriers”, verse 96). This verse says that faith and fear of God, which are the basis for the emergence of good character, are the reason for the sending down of blessings from Allah. If people wholeheartedly believe in the true religion, are God-fearing and pious, then Allah promises them an abundance of blessings. Conversely, their lack of faith and piety only entails punishment from the Almighty. Whenever people have faith and good character, Allah will bestow upon them many mercies both in this life and in the next. Imam Ali (peace be upon him) said: “The treasures of this world are hidden in good character” (Bihar al-Anwar). The same Imam said in another legend: “If a person has a bad character, then his lot will decrease” (Gurar al-Hikam).

An example of the above is the following story.

“In ancient times, there lived a righteous peasant in Yemen. He lived in a village and had several orchards. Every time after harvesting, he gave part of the harvest to the poor and needy. The peasant was never stingy, and was always happy to help the disadvantaged. In this way he thanked Allah Almighty for the blessings bestowed upon him. The doors of his house were always open to those in need, and they could always turn to him for help. The righteous peasant instilled this tradition in his sons. He gathered them around him and instructed them: “My children, know that all the mercies and blessings in this world are from Allah. Never forget about good deeds for the sake of Allah, and help people.” His children listened to these instructions, but there was still some arrogance in them. Soon the peasant grew old and left this world. The sons forgot all the instructions of their father and agreed that they would divide the entire harvest among themselves and not give anything to the poor. During the harvest season, the poor, as usual at this time, came to the peasant's gardens in the hope of help. But the children of the deceased refused them and rudely drove them away. Allah Almighty was angry with them for their stinginess and sent a thunderstorm with lightning to their gardens. Lightning burned all the trees and destroyed the entire crop. When the sons of the deceased peasant came to the garden in the morning, they saw that not a single whole tree remained.” Rudeness and stinginess do not contain any good. People have never liked a rude and stingy person. On the contrary, good character and generosity carry the love of people and the pleasure of Allah. One of the legends says: “One of the sons of Imam Sadiq (may peace be upon him) was called Muhammad. One day, after purchasing everything he needed for his family, Muhammad had a small amount of money left in his pocket. Imam Sadiq asked him: “How much money do you have left?” He replied: “Forty dinars, father.” The Imam said: “Give this money as charity.” “But other than that I have no more money,” said his son, “If I give it away, I’ll be left with nothing.” Imam Sadiq told him: “Go and give them out as alms. Allah Almighty will return them to you. Don’t you know that everything in the world has a key, and the key to heavenly blessings is alms?” Muhammad listened to his father's advice and distributed his forty dinars to those in need. After this, not even ten days passed before he had four thousand dinars. The imam said to his son: “You see, you gave Allah Almighty forty dinars, and he returned you a hundred times more.” The next verse also shows the connection between good character and the lives of people in this world. “Good and evil are not equal. Repel evil with what is better. And then the one with whom you are at enmity will become like a close friend to you” (Sura “Explained” verse 34). This verse offers Muslims the best way to get rid of enmity. He says: repel evil with what is better, that is, with goodness, a good disposition. And then you will see that the one who felt enmity towards you will stop enmity with you and will become a close friend to you. Indeed, a good disposition has an amazing ability to extinguish the flames of hostility and malice. Good character attracts people to each other and contributes to the emergence of friendship between them. Anger and enmity have been and remain the greatest difficulty of humanity. Only a pious person is able to extinguish the flames of anger and enmity with goodness. Imam Ali (peace be upon him) once said: “A person who has a good disposition will gain many friends and people will become attached to him” (Gurar al-Hikam). The Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family) said on this occasion: “Good character strengthens love and friendship” (Bihar al-Anwar). And vice versa, if a person has a bad character, then everyone around him will turn away from him. Allah Almighty addresses his Prophet in the Quran: “By the grace of Allah you were gentle towards them. If you were rude and hard-hearted, they would certainly leave you” (The Family of Imran, verse 159). Who wants to communicate with a rude person who has no morals? Imam Ali (peace be upon him) said about such people: “If a person has a bad character, his friends and acquaintances will run away from him” (Gurar al-Hikam). Luqman Hakim also told his son: “My son, avoid irritability, bad temper and impatience. For if you possess these qualities, then you will not have a single friend left” (Bihar al-Anwar). Thus, the existing connection between the presence of morality on the one hand, and friendship on the other, is obvious. In this case, no one can say that good character has no fruit in this life. We have already named two benefits that come from having a good character in this life. This is the sending down of blessings from Allah, and friendship between people. And how many more there are, it’s impossible to count them all.