The emptiness of our time

Across societies, we have perfected the art of selective moral outrage. Institutions, communities, and even faith traditions denounce certain sins with theatrical fury yet remain disturbingly silent about offenses that devastate human lives. We attack what is easy. We excuse what is useful. We sit quietly, tolerating exploitation, dishonesty, abuse of power, and the daily erosion of human dignity. 

This fracture between what is legal, what is ethical, and what is truly just is the ancient tragedy philosophers warned about -- not tragedy as misfortune, but tragedy as the collapse of coherence. Plato and the Greek tragedians saw societies falter when their values contradicted their behavior. Rizal saw it when a nation shamed minor faults but allowed hypocrisy to thrive. And Jesus exposed it with surgical precision: “You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” We fixate on small, symbolic errors while swallowing whole the injustices that deform our collective soul.

No wonder moral discourse today feels empty. Many people use morality to attack others instead of reflecting on themselves. Our convictions bend with our alliances, our biases, and our conveniences. To reclaim justice is to confront the sins we quietly protect as fiercely as the sins we publicly punish. Until then, we will remain trapped in this tragic condition -- where laws feel separate from ethics, ethics feel separate from kindness, and doing what is right becomes just a matter of preference, image, or the fear of seeing our own flaws.