Earlier this year, a major diet company advertised a fairly new product that it claimed would help suppress the appetite. It was right. It is an African grass turned into a capsule for Western use and is bought by obese North Americans who find it difficult to stop putting super-sized lumps of meat, bread, and candy into their mouths. The reason we are aware of the effectiveness of the thing is that emaciated African mothers give the original form to their starving children to chew on so that the agonies of genuine hunger are slightly diminished.

We in the developed world, of course, then proceed to tell black and brown people living far away that their problems are their own fault because they have too many children, fight too many wars, and are led by dictators. Ignoring the fact that, as we eat even more unnecessary junk, Africa is under-populated; that we arm and fund their wars; and that we appoint most of their leaders. But we are a moral people.

Great Canadian Pamela Anderson put on her clothes, or some of them, for a while to explain that the seal hunt is awful and that animals and people are really just the same. Then, she has even more cosmetic surgery and breast implants to prove to men that women are merely bouncy castles to be used for fun, that females are bimbo sex objects, and that if a woman doesn’t fit into some grotesque stereotype, she’s a failure.

But to Pam and her moronic comrades, the cuter the puppy, kitten, or baby seal, the more vital the cause. How odd that these same celebrities so seldom speak about the murder of hundreds of thousands of people in the Middle East, Sri Lanka, and West Africa or, for that matter, the conditions of the very native people in Newfoundland they would make even poorer by ending the seal hunt. But we are a moral people.

When our parents and grandparents grow old, we put them away in homes or encourage euthanasia to be legalised and pretend it’s about death with dignity rather than about the increasing marginalisation of the disabled and the unattractive. We’re offended when asked for money by mentally ill people living on frozen streets, but weep as we watch millionaires acting out sob stories on the big screen. But we are a moral people.

Moral compass? Not only have we lost it but we no longer have any sense of which direction morality lies. A parent can spank a loved child gently on the leg once and be arrested as an abuser, but a ten-year-old can be dressed as a miniature pimp or hooker and is encouraged to swear and act disrespectfully, and we say nothing.

We have developed a climate and a context in this country where people are more concerned with reality television than with reality. People find excuses to put self-interest before the greater good and assume that doing the right thing is for the weak and needy. Heroism is perceived as being old-fashioned and values are now relative. No more absolute truths and absolutely no person to tell me I’m wrong.

The tragedy is one of illusion. Because our televisions are larger, our vacations longer, and our lives less painful, we comfortably assume that we are making progress. In fact, an argument can be made that we value life, genuine freedom, and civility less than ever before. We’re being morally killed with kindness and, horror of horrors, don’t even know it’s happening. But yes, we are a moral people.