The reverse renaissance?

For millennia, the human quest and consciousness have centred on evolving ways, tenets and actions that refine the state of nature. These efforts impose necessary restraints - rooted in dignity, honesty, courage, non-harm, truthfulness and rationality - that transform the individual's inherently absolute freedom into a form of collective freedom. The restraints that have survived the tests of time have given humankind a heritage which, when acted upon, yields both individual and collective dividends. Those who follow these virtues, often refrain from wronging others and from being wronged, and ultimately attain greatness. Then there are those who, against the order of this human heritage, openly engage in wrongdoing and ultimately meet their downfall. Nevertheless, they remain clear about their means and ends. They owe all they are to the vices.

And there are others who seek self-defined righteous rewards and outcomes by travelling a righteously paved path of evil. That is, for all their vicious ends, they pursue them through means that righteous societies would otherwise engage in. These people and groups possess a righteousness of their own shade; they portray their evil acts as justified and paint them in the language of virtue. They tend to seek the wages of virtue without necessarily practising the lofty principles of human heritage. They do not outright reject virtuous values; instead, they turn those values into a mask for their designs. They are righteously wrong, wrongfully right, and, in a few instances, righteously wronged.

Today, we as a society have all three types of people. The first group, the fewest in number, rarely holds a say or sway in the country. Yet they bear the sins of the other two. The second, though also in the minority, holds a high say in the country. Both as groups and as individuals owe their stakes and sway in the country to evil acts. They, for all their supports to and from the rulers, enjoy absolute impunity and include feudal and tribal warlords, parasitic pirs and electables.

Then there is the third, largest and dominant group, which engages in all evils yet wants to remain in the good books. Members of this group wish to democratically autocratise. They trade fallacy truthfully. They enslave people to serve them. They practise injustice in just ways and vices in pious ways.

How does this group dominate and sustain itself? In two phases: first, through pretensions and misinterpretations. This group initially tends to present its acts as justifiable in the light of virtue - through misquoting, selective representation and framing themselves in sync with ideologies they overtly advocate. But as everything has a limit, they eventually fail the test of time and sanity, and risk culpability in the people's eyes. It is after this that this group enters the second phase and justifies its vices by pointing to those of others. That is, their evil acts are blamed on the evil of those around them. "They do this, this, and this; what if we have done anything wrong? Isn't it merely a fraction of what others do?" They console themselves - and, of course, others - with this reasoning. In this way, every wrong is justified with a greater evil.

Thus, evil acts are becoming sources of prestige, and prominence is being redefined as committing wrongdoings. Power is becoming the new truth. Meanwhile, democrats turn on democracy, journalists on truth, protectors on security, clergy on piety, judges on justice and civil society on the oppressed. Religion becomes a source of worldly riches and impunity. Yet all they are doing is right, just and legitimate in their own right. Who, in the midst of all these wrongdoings and the wronged, is actually doing wrong? Perhaps the virtuous and the public.

Today, our society is undergoing a reverse renaissance that distorts the exalted values evolved over millennia and turns them into masks for wrongdoing. For most of us, real wrongs are not the ones the majority commits, but the ones left undone. And no wrong is currently left undone in society. Are there any?