BY MENGESHA AMARE
It is crystal clear that Ethiopians have been well known for their hospitality, respecting one another, sharing culture, sense of fraternity, among others. However, these core social values have been dwindled for known or unknown reasons of late.
Needless to state, values are core to one’s social, economic, political, and even moral outlook. True, Ethiopians have had entrenched essential moral values and societal standards. Starting with own homes, then the schooling system, the streets, work places, daily interactions as well as formal and informal ways provide Ethiopians with a series of choices to which they respond based on their value system. Obviously, values are built and continuously serve as a beacon for both internal and external personality.
Too often, Ethiopians need to find systems investing a lot in awareness of values with a careful planning and discipline in percolation to ensure that values flow down to all generations to come. The most important question to be asked here is how does a generation gap return and is bridged in alignment of values? And what role can the current generation play in maintaining the dilapidated norms and social values?
Taking these pivotal queries into consideration, this writer approached Tenna Teshome, a psychologist graduated from Addis Ababa University and working as a social worker, to have some sort of clarification.
He said, “As to me, we have to focus on scenarios, when using them in learning, values can be interwoven to make sure the young generation understand their purpose and how they are instrumental in achieving the objective of maintaining societal values and norms built in history.”
As to Tenna, using the power of stories based on entrenched cultural values, essences and norms with an overarching value theme, to not only touch upon the fundamental cultural essences but also on how alignment to the values has helped bridge differences amid societal cohesion. For example, exhibiting our core value of respecting and helping one another comes at the forefront.
Frequent engagement and steady societal integration is the fundamental step to roll out values and to embed them in generational production, a mechanism to continuously engage the youth, who can take over this country with its future and bring them back to the value focus is critical for coming up with civic minded, thanking, competitive and cooperative posterity.
Walking the talk has to be applied among the generation. Leadership-based gaps can be the largest failure of a value system that the country is trying to build. Yes, walking the talk is something leaders have to do. This could be by volunteering time and contributing in the creation of telling mechanisms such as using media about civic virtue, virtue ethics and moral aspects that help align the values, leadership thoughts, and generational understanding, Tenna stated.
“Values are our guidelines for living and each of us has a set of deeply held beliefs about how the world should be. For some community sects, beliefs are largely dictated through a religion, a culture, a peer group, or the society at large. For others, it has been developed through careful thought and reflection on experience, and this is unique. For most of us, it is probably a combination of the two. Values often concern the core issues of our lives: personal relationships, morality, gender and social roles, race, social class, and the organization of society, to mention just a few.”
“We have to underline social values since they are usually the basis for the work we do in the future; and our values are the reflections of the way each of us sees and addresses the world,” he opined.
Strong religious ethos, the will of young population for taking part in the dialogue, the prevalence of traditional institutions like Geda System, yehager shimagliewoch, cimeeyye (in Sidama) and other crucial communal essences are opportunities that will enable the nation to achieve successful dialogue thereby coming up with virtuous generation.
He further said that many organizations have to gather information from different social classes to know the spirit of citizens on what to do to help the country successfully transit to a nation with civic-minded generation respecting one another.
He underscored that the Ministry of Culture and Sport and other concerned ones have to identify the youth, contending political parties, civic organizations and representatives of the government who have shown interest to participate in discussions of how to create righteous generation, which believes in respect, fraternity and close talks—strongly believed to bring about national consensus.
Currently, he stated, there is also enabling legal framework that helps the nation achieve successful dialogues exemplifying the current proclamation of civic organizations that boost the participation of civic organization in multilateral spheres. This would bring the rundown social interconnection back.
“Without a shadow of doubt, among the hallmarks of a civilized society is the possession of strong moral values and ethics. Such a society shows honor, compassion, solidarity, loyalty and love for all of human kind let alone fellow citizens; a society shaped in such a way differentiates virtues from vice, right from wrong and acts accordingly,” he underlined.
He said, “Strong moral values cherish justice and equity, and abhors ethnic, racial, religious, gender and cultural discriminations. It has also been said quite often that preceding generations of Ethiopians had high moral and ethical codes as well as many have now deplored the erosion of these admirable values over the course of the country’s recent history. Surprisingly, citizens committed to give up everything for their beloved nation are vexed by this disconcerting development.
According to Tenna, the abysmal failings besetting the political, economic and social spheres threaten to leave behind a terrible legacy. The lack of appetite on the part of religious and educational institutions, the government and civil society, which bear the solemn duty of shaping the present generation, has exacerbated the problem. The burgeoning of challenges that are gravely imperiling the fate of the country needs to be tackled soon.
He further underscored that the principle of ethical business whereby each person gets the fruit of their labor has been abandoned by most in favor of amassing wealth through shortcuts. Such moral decay is a cause for alarm given it potentially jeopardizes the very survival of Ethiopia as a cohesive polity.
“Restoring moral and ethical values requires a concerted as well as combined effort of all. Moral decay destroys a nation and cripples its people. Frankly speaking, unless the political elite forsakes power mongering and adhere to the highest moral and ethical standards, it is pointless to talk about civic minded generation with rational thinking and real national change,” he underlined.
He said, “Anyone who has a responsibility towards the youth needs to give the utmost attention to identifying the underlying causes behind the deterioration of moral and ethical values and finding lasting solutions to them.”
He wrapped up his idea saying that shared values are deemed necessary as a solid foundation for social cohesion by pundits and witnesses in many societies. However, when examining what kind of values have to be restored, as Ethiopians, our forefathers and foremothers offer some clarification through both a notional explication and a pragmatic exploration concerning the general role of values for social cohesion.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 8 JANUARY 2023
