The following snippet will illustrate how the world changed in the last 30 years. It will be difficult for generations to come to believe what happened to me on a day in February 1982. That day I landed in Kennedy Airport in New York on an Air India flight from Mumbai. As the flight was late, I literally ran to the Domestic Terminal from the International Terminal to reach a connecting flight to St. Louis, Missouri. I knew at least a dozen close friends including my future wife would be eagerly waiting for me at the airport, and I did not want to disappoint them and myself. With the flight coupon in my hand - no boarding pass as the counter had already closed – I rushed through the door of the airplane just about one minute before it closed shut. I do not think that day will ever return since the event of September 2011. And a long air-travel from Munnar, India, to St. Louis, USA, can take up to 40 hours depending on the ticket, and can include five to six take offs and landings and change of 3 planes. Plane journey now has become so tiring and unpleasant with numerous checks, re-checks, and verifications. The worst demoralization and assault on the spirit is: Whereas previously everyone was innocent and trustworthy unless proven otherwise, now everyone is guilty and suspicious unless proved otherwise. This great reversal for humanity, this 180 degree turn-around in the wrong direction needs to be urgently stopped. This sorry state of affairs is totally unacceptable, and does not become a people such as we who call ourselves civilized, cultured, and spiritual.

             The paranoid culture is the silent cancer that is eating up the vitals of spirituality that is so essential for humanity to survive. It makes deception easy. It gives so-called respectability to deceit. Often I hear people say that persons in all strata of society engage in corrupt practices or take bribes, and that it is difficult to find an honest person, and it is difficult to survive in society as an honest person. Certain learned helplessness and hopelessness indicating their impotence are detected. This reversal has to be arrested with all our heart and all our strength. The moral high ground of the United States quickly eroded. The detention center at Guantanamo Bay, the morally reprehensible methods used at Abu Grab prison in Iraq to extract information from the inmates – all showed how our savagery is covered only with a thin veneer of decency and humanity, how our democratic leaders deceived us and betrayed our trust. We have not still learned that a good end does not justify a bad means. Developments in technology and medical field unleashed a whole slew of procedures that would change people’s appearances. We are constantly bombarded with overt and covert or subliminal advertisements where we are told we are saving while we are actually losing. For instance, we are being persuaded to buy something that we do not need at a rebate sale and save. The consumer culture is anything but phony. It ingeniously caters to our wants, and tries hard to make us believe that our wants are truly our needs. It is also a coercive culture in that it markets to children and sweet-hearts who do not have their own financial resources, and creates wants within them, that can only be satisfied by parents or lovers. Expensive items such as houses and cars are bought in a competitive spirit to show off one’s material standing or to catch up with or exceed one’s neighbors or competitors. Competition not cooperation is the name of the game. The culture of lie is our making. We can unmake it if muster all our energy and will to change it in the light of the Theology for the Modern Age I have earlier propounded.

Symptoms of a Lie Culture

             Once we come to the realization that our current culture of lie leads to spiritual death, we can do something about it. A disease can be treated only after a correct diagnosis. Children living in the midst of some of the biggest slums in the world in Mumbai, and playing and having fun in the worst foul-smelling garbage are not aware of the rotting stench and foul odor. They get desensitized and get accustomed to that environment. Even though we live surrounded by air, most of the time we are not aware of the medium that we live in. In effect, we may not be aware of the toxic culture that we live in. Signs and symptoms in our society that go into the making of a Syndrome of a Culture of Lie are:

        Persons often do not keep their word.
        Persons including even relatives and close friends betray trust in small and big things.
        Persons pass the buck and do not take responsibility for their wrongs or mistakes.
        Persons find convenient scapegoats for their misdeeds.
        Big or small lies, white lies are said to deceive, escape, evade, and avoid unpleasant situations or consequences.
        Persons have recourse to opportunistic statements and behaviors.
        Favors are bought.
        Valuable gifts are given or showered to buy others or their silence.
        Persons in government or responsible positions compromise their integrity by freely or routinely accepting gifts or bribes to do things that they are hired and paid to do with fairness and without favoritism.
        Corruption and discriminations are rampant.
        The rich and the powerful influence the political life and the legal system.
        Great values and principles are proclaimed but not practiced.
        There is scant regard for human rights.
        Threats and intimidations are used to curtail or suppress freedom of expression or behavior.
        Persons keep others from truth that they have a right to.
        Persons pretend to be someone other than who they really are.
        There is great show and pomp outside, but no substance within.
        Persons minimize, exaggerate, enhance, or distort facts to present and justify their position and conduct.

             In a culture of lie there is no passion for truth, there is very little search for truth, and truth becomes the first casualty.