Twisted Morality of Our Current Society

In Indonesia, morality is held in high regard, or, at least on paper. Scratch the surface, and it starts to look less like ethics and more like crowd-sourced outrage. It’s selective, contextual, and conditional. We like morality, but only when it flatters us. Only when it serves the mob.

We pride ourselves on being a nation of values. Strong faith, collective spirit, community ties. We condemn corruption, we cry out for justice, we shout about dignity. But these values start to look suspiciously thin once you examine how we behave when no one’s watching—or when the mob is watching, cheering us on.

Exhibit A: many of us believe corruptors should be executed. No trials are long enough, no punishments harsh enough. That same moral outrage evaporates the moment an oil truck tips over on the highway. Suddenly, looting is fine. Everyone’s got a jerry can. The camera rolls. Laughter. No one calls it theft. Because when the masses do it, we call it kesempatan, not a crime.

This is the kind of moral code we’ve built: one where "right" and "wrong" are determined not by principle, but by whether our side benefits.

We’ve become fluent in mob morality—a blend of collective sentiment, vengeance, and self-interest, dressed up as virtue. And in this system, morality itself becomes flexible, conveniently immoral when it serves the majority. In a perverse twist, public consensus starts to override any notion of ethical consistency.

When Fire Looks Like Divine Justice

Exhibit B: when Los Angeles was hit by a massive fire recently, you could find Indonesians—online, in threads, in comment sections—gleefully describing it as azab. Divine punishment. Karma. A cosmic response to the US’s complicity in the genocide that’s currently happening in Gaza.

No questions were asked. No concern for the people who lost their homes. No thought about firefighters risking their lives, animals losing their habitats. Just pure, unfiltered satisfaction. Because in the binary worldview mob morality creates, suffering becomes deserved if the people are “on the wrong side.”

We stop seeing humans. We start seeing symbols. Americans are no longer individuals; they’re walking embodiments of empire. Their pain becomes political currency.

This is the danger of mob morality—it numbs empathy and incentivizes cruelty. It tells you that the more angry, vengeful, and unforgiving you are, the more righteous you must be. And in the age of virality, this kind of emotion spreads faster than thought.

Why Mob Mentality Dominates Our Morality

So how did we get here? Why are we so quick to moralize from the comfort of the crowd? Why are we so vulnerable to celebrating pain when we think it benefits “our side”?

In my attempt to dissect the phenomenon, I would highlight these three things that I felt lacking in our current society.

1. We’re a Society Living under Oppression (Real or Perceived)

Most Indonesians grow up under systems that feel oppressive—whether politically, socially, economically, or religiously. And even for those who aren't directly oppressed, the sentiment of powerlessness is still pervasive. It’s inherited. It’s structural. It’s cultural.

Again, the two cases served upfront might provide clear notion on how this oppression works. In Exhibit A, people are, generally, fed up with the way the Indonesian government is dealing with corruption, and also about how our politicians and businessmen collude with each other to get their hands on virtually anything they can corrupt. In Exhibit B, the Indonesian society might not necessarily directly oppressed, but they are oppressed in solidarity with the people of Gaza who suffers from the unlawful occupation that lasts from the inception of the Israel nation, and the current genocide.

Now this feeling, the collective feeling of being oppressed, matters because people who feel powerless often crave control. And one of the easiest ways to reclaim a sense of power is to moralize against others. To stand on a digital soapbox and condemn. Especially when the enemy is large, abstract, and untouchable—like a foreign government or a Western nation.

But this desire for justice, when it isn't processed critically, curdles into vengeance. We begin to believe that hurting the “enemy” is inherently good—even if the enemy is a random person in LA who lost their home in a fire. We call it justice, but it’s really just displaced rage. In some twisted way, we became miniatures of corrupt politicians we despise the most, or, the Israelis officials, IDFs, and (some parts of) its society that terrorize and genociding the people of Gaza in retribution of the October 7th attack.

Paolo Freire actually has warned us about this. The oppressed, if not educated into a different consciousness, will mimic the oppressor once roles are reversed. Without transformation, revolution simply replaces who holds the whip.

2. We Don’t Really Have Empathy—At Least Not the Real Kind

We like to think of ourselves as empathetic. But most of the time, our empathy is tribal. We care about people who look like us, worship like us, or suffer like us. Everyone else? They’re extras in our movie.

True empathy is harder. It requires the ability to see humanity in everyone, even those we disagree with or feel hurt by. It requires nuance, and nuance doesn’t go viral.

In mob morality, nuance is a threat. If you say something like, “Yes, Gaza is being bombed—but that doesn’t mean a fire in LA is good,” you’re accused of being naive, pro-West, or tone-deaf. You’re silenced. You’re unfollowed. You’re dragged.

So people learn to suppress their empathy. Not because they’re evil, but because empathy is costly when the mob wants blood.

But let’s be clear: morality without empathy is just performance. It’s not rooted in justice—it’s rooted in ego. It exists to protect “us” and punish “them.” Which is not morality. It’s moral tribalism.

3. We Still Don’t Take Education Seriously (And When We Do, We Get It Wrong)

It’s common to hear that more education will fix our moral problems. That if people just “go to school,” society will be better. But that’s a shallow take. Because what we teach—and how we teach—is just as important as access.

Indonesia’s education system, while expanding in coverage, might still be lacking one of the core tenets of good society, that is, compassion. I’m not saying that our education system is inherently wrong or undermining the great work of our teachers. Nonetheless, arguably, our current society is also a product of our education system. That is, a society that agitated with discourse, one that has moral tribalism, might strongly indicate that comprehensive moral teaching is in fact critically needed.

We need to be open to complex moral dilemmas. We need to talk about injustice in a more nuanced terms. We need to teach compassion. That kind of moral imagination—where you can put yourself in the shoes of someone on the other side of the world, with a different religion or history—requires rigorous emotional training. It doesn’t come naturally. It has to be cultivated.

And what about critical thinking? Granted, it’s already part of the curriculum—on paper and in intent. Nonetheless, what we need now is a stronger emphasis on nurturing it in practice. Students benefit most when they are encouraged to engage with different perspectives, to ask questions, and to reflect critically on the narratives they encounter—whether from media, peers, or even their own communities. Cultivating this habit of thoughtful reflection is essential. Because in a society where people are trained to think deeply and listen openly, the space for mob mentality naturally shrinks.

Some education experts argue that introducing moral philosophy—yes, even the hard, ancient stuff—can help. Teaching Aristotle’s virtue ethics, Kant’s duty-based morality, or even Islamic philosophical traditions like Al-Farabi or Ibn Khaldun could spark richer discourse in classrooms. These aren’t just abstract theories—they are frameworks that force people to ask hard questions about justice, empathy, suffering, and responsibility (this backed up by research by the way!).

In short: more schools won’t fix us. More degrees won’t save us. We need a system that dares to go deeper—to teach people not just how to make a living, but how to live among others with integrity, humility, and grace.

Because if we fail at that, then we’re just raising more clever mobs—smarter, louder, more educated maybe—but mobs all the same.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This isn't a call for false neutrality. It’s not about balancing the scales between oppressed and oppressor, or at the very least, not yet. It’s a call for moral consistency. For empathy that survives even when it’s uncomfortable. For justice that isn’t addicted to the adrenaline of outrage.

Because the more we normalize mob morality, the more we abandon actual ethics. And when that happens, it’s not just our enemies who suffer—we lose something essential in ourselves.

Indonesia is a country with deep cultural wisdom, spiritual richness, and a long tradition of solidarity. We’re capable of better. But only if we resist the comfort of the crowd and choose the harder path of principle.

Justice isn't about cheering when someone burns. It's about stopping the fire—no matter who it threatens.