We live in a world where the lines between good versus evil, right versus wrong; moral versus immoral, ethical versus unethical is getting more and more blurred. You can get away from facing the consequence of your actions, by simply, rationalizing your wrongs and make it right. Worse, the society accepts such rationalization and turns the other way. In fact, if you do something wrong, your first reaction will be to find the “right” reasons as to why you did it and trust me, there’s no shortage of that :-(.
It’s because what’s right is what’s “right” for you. There’s no absolute truth in this world, except the truth that there’s Earth and there’s sun and that we are human beings who live on this earth. Even God is not an absolute truth.
It’s always amazed me how our culture can support such behavior and to my surprise, I found that people have already coined a phrase for this behavior!!!
It’s called Relativism and it can apply to Moral, Social and cultural aspects. Of course, I am not talking about Einstein’s theory of relativity. So, don’t run away:-). I am just going to provide my thoughts on Moral relativism.
So, what is relativism? Relativism is the idea that all points of view are equally valid and that there is no absolute truth. It states that whatever an individual determines is truth is true for that individual even though the same exact situation might be untrue to another. In other words, there’s no real right or wrong. If you extend this concept, all religions are right or all of them wrong. So, technically, having a religion makes no sense since there’s no absolute truth in anything that your religion teaches and all your values depend on the social group that influences your life.
Relativism is a very popular concept in our culture and only continues to grow. Now, why wouldn’t it be? Think about it, if there really is no real right and wrong, you don’t have to be accountable for your actions. This means, anything is acceptable in the right circumstances and justifiable: cheating, lying, infidelity, adultery, robbery, assault, rape and even murder.
Moral relativism, in particular, contiunes to grow exponentially. Just look around you and you will see people coming up with excuses for what you would have considered unethical a few decades back and you would see their social group encouraging such behavior. Now, I don’t know which is worse: someone doing something wrong and calling it right or someone patronizing the actions of that someone who did something wrong.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The social group that encourages such things have a very good reason to be indifferent to the wrong actions of one of their own and that is, they don’t want to judge. So, their standard question is, “Who am I to judge”?
Here’s a rhetorical question: if that’s the case, we need to change our legal system which is based on a jury system, where people “judge” and just let people decide for themselves if what they did was right or wrong. When it’s not OK to take a moral stance, when, your friend or family does something wrong like lying, cheating, being dishonest etc…, it’s not OK to take a stance when someone commit a crime in the eyes of law like murder, rape, robbery etc... Moral law, legal law; what difference does it make, when there’s no right or wrong?
Moral relativism allow our culture to escape from our moral responsibilities and draw us into this vicious circle of life filled with iniquitous practices. It's time to start listening to your conscience and become accountable for your actions! The world is a much better place when there’s a clear line between right and wrong, good and bad, moral and immoral.
