Thursday, August 5, 2010

MORAL RELATIVISM

MORAL RELATIVISM – DEPENDS ON THE PRIMACY OF THAT TO WHICH ONE RELATES:


I'm not confident the stumbling block for moral concerns pertains to moral relativism, per se. I think the problem pertains more to how moral relativism is defined and related. Should moral relativism be in the service of God, without intermediaries (scientists, prophets, popes, and imams), or should moral relativism be in the service of Big Brother, without God?

Should we regard one another as potential lamps of God, or should we regard one another only as tools of Big Brother? If we regard one another as potential lamps of God, what is the common moral light (or Source of empathy) to which we are all invited to relate? If we regard one another only as tools of Big Brother or his regime, to what means will we not stoop to accomplish his ends (i.e., "save the planet")?

Do we live only to be collectivized to secular purposes of the regime (Big Brother or Big Imam), or do we collectivize only to live, i.e., to pursue our common interests as God gives us individually the light to see them? Do we fashion government to preserve individual dignity and freedom or to scourge us with collective enslavement? Do we rely on inculcating self respect and encouraging individual alms to charities, or do we rely on “government-forced-charity” and reduction of people to public entitlement beggars? Those are ways to state the dilemma.

Maybe it’s semantics, but I’m not sure I quite see respect for individual freedom as being counter either to moral values or to rationalism. IOW, I see a dilemma, but it may be over thinking the problem to see a double dilemma. Simply put, it is not the government’s place to enforce every moral value. It is the government’s place to provide only a limited framework for preserving the general expression of moral values by individuals. That said, I do agree that some values (some family values) may be so essential to our continued assimilation as a viable and moral nation as to necessitate “group action” (protection and advocacy) both by government and by spiritual and moral leaders.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

RECONCILING WITH GOD: But for respect for God, however you may be given to respect God or principles of God (Golden Rule?), either expressly or in unstated background, how can you reasonably deign to communicate criticism of anyone else's conduct or goals, much less the goals of a regime? What is the reconciling basis or source for your perspective on individual morality and social planning? Without inculcating belief in, or respect for, a reconciling basis, how do you hope to check the prevailing regime against its own temptations or to sustain the trust that is crucial to civilization? Why should not every sociopath simply feign to be principled, either in religion or in Marxism, in order to con trust and milk marks? In practice, is that not always the result when sociopaths' promises encounter their temptations?

Anonymous said...

GOD VS. MATERIALISTIC ENVY: From A.T. -- @pa guy said, "I have to believe that part of the reason for the "God gap" between the Left and the Right is that religion gives us an inherent sense of worth that is incompatible with envy."
Indeed! Whether you call "it" God or higher values, without it, you have no means by which to criticize the king or the regime. If the only moral value is based on how humanity is organized, planned, and regimented, then duckspeakers will reason that there must be a correct form of regimentation, which their elite scientists will find and prove, which proles have no moral right to question. Of course, this reduces the dignity of being human to that of being sheep.

Anonymous said...

Calls to "prayer" and loud rap "music": All it takes to "get along" is to submit to work for thug gangs bent on pillaging from producers, in exchange for 12 promised raisins or munchies, depending on whichever stash speaks to your inner codependency.