We can no longer be so confident that we have found the secret of organising life and society, freely ignoring ancient truths distilled for us in our religious traditions.

Some of the financial foundations of our Western society are being shaken. Our confidence may also be shaken that we had found the secret of organising life and society, freely ignoring ancient truths distilled for us in our religious traditions. We are rediscovering our interdependence.

It is a truism to say that our financial system depends on trust. But we have not given much attention to what creates trust: moral behaviour. For decades the word 'moral' was taboo. It seemed to represent the prison that everyone had escaped from in the 1960s. It seemed to represent a repressed, restrictive lifestyle which society had grown out of. Everyone could behave as they wanted and think only for themselves, and society would take care of itself.

Since those heady days, the respectability of the word 'moral' has gradually been rehabilitated. We have seen the cost of rampant individualism in unstable family life and the effects of purposelessness and meaninglessness. Now we are beginning to count the financial cost of putting the pursuit of money before morality.

We may realise that we were benefiting from, and are close to exhausting, the capital of trust, built in the days when a person's word was their bond, whether in business deals or marriage vows. We didn't realise how important it was to replenish that capital. With global warming, and now with markets, we cannot predict how long a particular trend will continue. But if we take the current situation as a wake-up call, there may still be time to change our ways and start replenishing the capital of trust.

What do you think? Send your comments to Caux Initiatives for Business.