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weeping up after we'€™d finished playing in the gazebo at a local mountain resort, I realized that what my wife and I were doing was considered very strange in Indonesian society.

After we and the boys had done playing with make-believe Play-doh food (a fun game to be sure to play with your children) bits of Play-doh had broken off and were strewn and stuck all over the nicely polished wood floor.

Packing up our snack bags to leave for lunch, I immediately picked up the broom under the gazebo and started sweeping and cleaning up our mess.

When studying in Austin, the US, due to habit I hastily left my table for class, leaving behind the detritus of my lunch. Everyone else picked up their trays and rubbish and promptly discarded them in the bin.

No one reprimanded me or demanded I throw away my lunch leftovers, nor even gave me a look. Nonetheless, I felt instantly ashamed. Returning sheepishly to my table I gingerly picked up my lunch tray and quickly deposited its contents into the nearest rubbish bin. Feeling immensely proud of myself, I made a hasty getaway for the exit.

Why is such an inconsequential sense of responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves frowned derisively upon by so many of us? Perhaps it is a misplaced sense of entitlement; that '€œroyalty'€ does not do what the commoner does?

But this does not explain this behavior among the poor. Could it be a basic lack of manners, or the failure of teaching responsibility from authority figures: parents, teachers?

Perhaps this marks an erosion of basic ethics in our society; an erosion of a sense of community and responsibility toward the well-being of ourselves and those around us.

Ethics keeps us as a society cohesive. Without them society would vanish. Laws, as they are established were initially enshrined codes of ethics: Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill etc.

Perhaps '€œthou shalt not litter'€ as local and national law should be really enforced. But this does not address the root of the larger issue that a sense of responsibility is missing from the sensibilities of this society. A sense of community, and thought for others.

The Balinese take pride in having every aspect of their lives clean, organized, orderly and beautiful. Other examples are the Japanese, Germans, the British, Malaysians and so forth. In fact, cleanliness and aesthetics are the hallmark of every civilized, healthy and purposeful society. Is this lack of regard for beauty, for aesthetics and cleanliness a manifestation of hopelessness, of a bleak outlook for the future?

In essence it is the love of beauty, and of the welfare of others. But it needs to be acted on. Not just consumed. It is the mark of a productive society that produces. Has Indonesia become a society dedicated solely to consuming and not enough producing?

Beauty must be created, planned, maintained, that is the whole of appreciation '€” not just consumed. Our society cannot appreciate beauty because beauty is something that has to be envisioned, molded and maintained.

By knowing and understanding and experiencing that it has to be made, only then can a society appreciate beauty. Such a society is a productive one.

Our society'€™s lack of appreciation for physical cleanliness and beauty mirrors a manifestation of acceptance of and permissiveness toward sloth, corruption, disrespect for others and moral decay.

Research has shown that immoral behavior is more apt to be displayed in a setting of unhygienic conditions. A place covered in graffiti and festooned with rubbish makes people feel uneasy '€” with good reason, according to a group of researchers at the University of Groningen, Netherlands.

They deliberately created experiments designed to discover if signs of vandalism, litter and low-level lawbreaking could change the way people behave and found that the number of people who were prepared to litter and steal doubled.

With President Joko '€œJokowi'€ Widodo'€™s successful movement as Jakarta governor to beautify and clean-up the capital, could this be an indication of a clean heart? If so, then there is hope for the clean-up of the nation'€™s morally bankrupt cultural atmosphere and governance.

If there was an index of cleanliness and pollution correlated to good governance, the current administration would show it is the cleanest '€” and striving for ever more cleanliness '€” in the physical and mental sense of responsibility.

Cleaning up after oneself and a concern for the outer physical conditions of society reflect a deeper moral concern for right and wrong. Good moral acts create a sense of cleanliness and purity. At least, that'€™s what my mother taught me.
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The writer is a social impact finance consultant and a Fulbright Scholar from the University of Texas at Austin.