By Roshan Jayasinghe
There is a quiet danger that destroys nations long before any headline does. It is not war. It is not recession. It is not even corruption.
It is the moment a society starts living inside what it knows is not true, because the lie is comfortable and the truth is demanding.
America is not one people. America is the whole world living in one house.
Walk through any neighborhood, any schoolyard, any workplace, and you will hear the globe breathing through one nation. Citizens. New citizens. Permanent residents. Refugees. People who came with nothing. People who came with credentials. People who came chasing safety. People who came chasing opportunity. People who came chasing wealth, because in the modern world wealth often feels like the doorway to stability.
And before all of us, before paperwork and borders and national myths, there were the Native peoples of this land. That truth is not a slogan. It is the ground beneath the conversation.
And that brings me to the line I keep returning to.
So when I say, “America should become the beacon of the soul,” I am not trying to dress up a sentence. I am naming the level of responsibility this nation carries if it is going to hold the world inside it.
Anything less is asking less of human beings. Of all races. Of all backgrounds. Of all the countries gathered here.
Because if the world is here, the purpose of this place cannot be only money.
It cannot be only titles, degrees, passports, property, and the endless craving to “make it.”
If America becomes only a marketplace, then it becomes a polished machine where the strongest extract, the weakest carry the weight, and the human heart slowly becomes secondary.
I say this as an immigrant who came here with the same fascination many carry.
I studied in the United States in the 1980s. Like so many, I was drawn to the promise of opportunity and the belief that honest effort, guided by values, could create a clean future. Many immigrants arrive with the main intention of bettering their life, and most often that means wealth.
There is nothing wrong with wanting stability. There is nothing wrong with wanting success.
But there is something deeply wrong when success becomes the only objective, and the human is sacrificed along the way.
Because then we recreate the very thing many of us thought we were escaping, only in different clothing.
Many people leave countries where corruption, favoritism, class systems, and abuse of power have damaged the dignity of ordinary life. Then they arrive here and see similar patterns, not always as bluntly, but sometimes dressed up in the language of policy, regulation, procedure, corporate structure, and legal loopholes. It can look respectable on the outside while quietly doing harm underneath.
Yet many don’t recognize it at first. Not because they are unintelligent. Not because they are immoral.
They don’t recognize it because they are busy.
Busy surviving. Busy competing. Busy proving. Busy climbing. Busy trying to become “somebody” in a land that quietly trains you to feel you are “nobody” unless you achieve.
And in that performance, something gets lost.
We lose patience with each other.
We lose tenderness.
We lose civility.
We lose the ability to look another human being in the eyes and remember: this is a life, not an obstacle.
So I want to ask America something that is not a party argument.
I want to ask something moral.
Why am I here?
What is my main objective as a human being living among other human beings?
If our answer is only accumulation, then we will keep chasing wealth while becoming poorer in the only way that matters.
A WAKE UP CALL FROM CANADA, AND AN ECHO FROM CALIFORNIA
Something was said recently on a global stage that deserves a deeper hearing because it puts a moral mirror in front of us.
Canada’s Prime Minister, Mark Carney, stood at Davos and described the world as entering a new era. Not a gentle transition. A rupture. A time where power is being exercised more openly. A time where economic tools can be used like weapons. A time where the old comforts of rules and restraint are no longer guaranteed.
But the part that stayed with me was not the geopolitics.
It was the mirror he held up to human behavior.
That is why Mark Carney’s warning about living within a lie matters. Because it describes how a country loses its soul without realizing it.
Carney brought forward a line of thought from Václav Havel, the danger of living within a lie.
Havel spoke of the ordinary shopkeeper, the greengrocer, who places a slogan in his window that he doesn’t believe. Not because it’s true, but because it’s safer to comply. Because it signals obedience. Because it helps him avoid trouble. And because everyone else is doing it, the system persists. Not only through force, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know are false.
That, right there, is the moral infection that destroys nations.
Not one leader. Not one policy. Not one election.
The slow acceptance of what we know is wrong, because we prefer comfort over conscience.
Carney’s message, in essence, was this: the system’s power comes from our willingness to keep the sign up. Its weakness begins the moment even one person takes the sign down.
That is not just a warning to governments.
That is a message to every citizen, every immigrant, every resident, every worker, every parent living in America right now.
Because the real question is not simply what our leaders do.
The real question is what we normalize.
What are we quietly complying with because it is convenient, profitable, or safe?
What do we tolerate because “that’s just how things are”?
What do we excuse because it benefits our side?
What do we laugh off because we’ve turned serious life into entertainment?
A nation does not lose its soul by accident.
A nation loses its soul when its people become fluent in self justification.
And because I live in California, I noticed something else as well.
Governor Gavin Newsom, watching the same global theatre, made a blunt remark that cut through the noise. At a certain point, you have to stop treating events like entertainment and start recognizing them as signals.
I’m not quoting him to recruit anyone into anyone’s political camp. I’m pointing to the atmosphere.
You can feel it in the air. People are adjusting their expectations of America, not because they hate it, but because they no longer know what it will choose.
So I ask it again, but sharper now: what am I willing to normalize while I’m here?
THE WHEEL AND THE HUNGER
America is full of hungry people.
Not only hungry for food. Hungry for meaning.
But meaning cannot be purchased. So we buy substitutes.
We buy status. We buy followers. We buy titles. We buy distractions. We buy the appearance of success. We buy the illusion of certainty.
And still the heart remains unsettled.
Because the human soul is not asking, “How do I become impressive?”
It is asking, “How do I become true?”
A nation becomes strong not when it becomes richer, but when it becomes truer.
Truth is not a weapon. Truth is a mirror.
And moral truth is the simplest mirror of all:
How am I treating the human being in front of me?
THE FIRST REQUIREMENT
REMOVE SELFISHNESS FROM THE CENTER
If America is going to carry the soul of the world responsibly, we must admit an uncomfortable truth: we have placed selfishness at the center of modern life and then tried to build unity around it.
That cannot work.
A nation made of every race and every country cannot survive on private obsession alone. Not on “me first.” Not on “my gain at any cost.” Not on the disguised selfishness we call ambition, branding it as virtue while it quietly erodes our ability to live together.
Living amongst all is the key. And living amongst all requires one inner decision:
I will not treat other humans as background to my personal story.
When selfishness is removed from the center, something sacred becomes possible: people start to see each other again.
Not as categories.
Not as threats.
Not as competitors.
Not as strangers.
As human beings.
THE COMPASS OF BEING HERE
A SIMPLE OBJECTIVE, IN ORDER
If America is to become the beacon of the soul, each of us needs an objective that is bigger than craving.
So I offer a simple compass. Not as a slogan. Not as a moral flex. As an order that keeps a human being clean inside. Something you can hold in your hand when life gets noisy.
1. Preserve the Human
Before anything else, I must not lose my humanity. No amount of success is worth becoming cold, cruel, numb, arrogant, or indifferent. If I cannot treat people with dignity, whatever I build is built on rot.
2. Build the Self
Discipline. Education. Skill. Health. Emotional maturity. Integrity. Not to impress others, but to become stable inside. A strong inner foundation creates strength without domination.
3. Contribute to the Whole
I am not only living in America. I am shaping America. Every interaction, every deal, every choice, every act of fairness or dishonesty contributes to the culture. To live here is to carry responsibility for the tone of this nation.
4. Leave a Moral Legacy
What am I leaving behind because I lived here? Not just assets, but decency. Not just a house, but a standard. Not just a personal success story, but a society that becomes more humane because I passed through it.
If we break this order, even prosperity becomes corrupted.
If we respect this order, prosperity becomes clean.
THEN COMES EDUCATION
BUT NOT THE EDUCATION WE THINK
After selfishness is put in its rightful place, the next pillar is education.
But not education as a trophy.
Not education as a ladder only meant to produce high income lives.
Not education as memorizing information while remaining morally untrained.
I mean education as the foundation of what I call a Human Manual.
A simple grounding that teaches the core values a human being must carry in order to live among other humans without harming them.
This is how we build the future from the present.
A nation does not collapse only from bad policy. It collapses when children grow up without an inner floor, without the ability to think clearly, evaluate honestly, analyze without bias, and recognize what is humane and what is not.
So the question is not only: are our kids educated?
The deeper question is:
Are our kids becoming human?
Can they see dignity?
Can they recognize manipulation?
Can they feel empathy without performance?
Can they tell the difference between confidence and arrogance?
Can they spot cruelty hiding behind legality?
Can they pause, reflect, and correct themselves without shame?
Because the future will not be saved by smarter minds alone.
It will be saved by clear minds with good hearts.
THE HUMAN MANUAL
WHAT EVERY CHILD SHOULD GROW UP WITH
The compass is for the adult. The Human Manual is for the child.
If I could place a manual into the hands of every child in America, immigrant and native born, rich and poor, it would teach four things in order:
First: live among others without selfishness.
Your freedom is real, but it is not permission to harm. Your success must not require someone else’s humiliation.
Second: learn how to think.
Not just what to know, but how to evaluate, how to question, how to reason, how to detect falsehood, how to correct yourself.
Third: learn how to be human.
Dignity, compassion, fairness, responsibility, patience, courage, restraint. Not as slogans. As daily behavior.
Fourth: build the future without repeating the past.
Your life is not only your private journey. You are building the culture of tomorrow through what you normalize today.
This is how children become grounded. Not in fragile identity. Not in inherited hatred. Not in fear. But in an inner moral floor that can’t be shaken every time society changes its trends.
That is the foundation America must create if it wants to claim any higher purpose than consumption.
THE REAL THREAT IS NOT OUTSIDE
The real threat to America is not only enemies outside its borders.
The real threat is moral confusion within its people.
When we no longer know what matters most, everything becomes negotiable.
Truth becomes negotiable.
Justice becomes negotiable.
Human dignity becomes negotiable.
Compassion becomes negotiable.
And once dignity becomes negotiable, a nation begins to lose its soul.
America does not need more noise.
America needs moral clarity.
Not the kind that shouts. The kind that lives.
COMPLETING THE WHEEL
So I return to my own immigrant heart and ask the same question I am asking everyone:
Why am I here?
If my answer is only to accumulate, then I have missed the point.
If my answer is to become fully human, and to help this place become a home for humanity, then I have found the purpose that no economy can give and no crisis can take away.
A beacon of the soul is not built by comfort. It is built by truth.
America should become the beacon of the soul.
That begins when each of us chooses a higher objective than craving.
Preserve the human.
Build the self.
Contribute to the whole.
Leave a moral legacy.
Remove selfishness from the center, then build education as a moral foundation, a Human Manual, so the next generation can think, evaluate, analyze, and recognize the human in the human.
If we can live in that order, the wheel completes.
And America becomes what it was always meant to be: not a land where people arrive only to take, but a land where people arrive, awaken, and become better human beings together.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I am not writing this as an expert above anyone. I’m writing as someone who came here with fascination, who has benefited from America, and who has also watched the quiet erosion of the human spirit beneath modern success.
This is not an attack on America.
This is a call to America.
A call to remember that the real greatness of a nation is not only its economy, its military, or its global influence.
Its greatness is its moral orientation.
And moral orientation is not a theory. It is daily life. It is how we speak. How we choose. How we treat people when it is inconvenient to treat them well.
America can still become the beacon of the soul.
But only if we stop living inside comfortable lies, and start living inside demanding truths.
…
About the Author
Roshan Jayasinghe is a writer and observer of human systems. His work explores the gap between man made constructs and lived humanity, with a focus on how economics, trade and everyday choices intersect with questions of fairness, responsibility and inner alignment. Through essays for publications in The Morning Telegraph, he aims to remind readers that they are not passengers in a fixed machine, but active custodians of a shared world.
