Sep 29 Mon
Are all moral systems equivalent? The Madness of Moral Relativism
Some field questions like: “What’s true for you isn’t true for me”; “Morality is cultural”; “There are no absolutes.” However, truth exists beyond our preferences.
Moral relativism is the belief that right and wrong depend on personal opinion or cultural perspective. It sounds tolerant. It flatters our desire for autonomy. But it crumbles under the force of its own contradictions. If all morality is relative, then there can be no condemnation of anything, anywhere—not genocide, not slavery, not rape. If morality is just a cultural costume, then the Nazi uniform is no worse than a business suit, and the gulag is no worse than a schoolhouse. Relativism, when stripped of its disguises, defends nothing and permits everything.
Consider the common defense: “But what about other cultures?” Yes, cultures differ. The Greeks practiced infanticide. The Aztecs performed human sacrifice. Do cultural differences make these practices acceptable?
If you say yes, then you have abandoned all moral ground. You can’t condemn the slave trade or the Holocaust, because someone, somewhere, considered them culturally valid.
If you say no, then you have already admitted a universal standard by which you judge. Either way, relativism collapses.
Relativism also pushes some excuses. Theft is treated as an expression of poverty. Assault is excused as a response to oppression. Murder is softened as the by-product of “different values.”
If morality is subjective, then the criminal is just an alternative moral agent, and punishment is nothing but cruelty. But when morality bends, justice disappears. Victims vanish into the background. Communities decay. And law enforcement becomes an empty display. A society that excuses crime through relativism abandons its citizens to predators.
Some others claim that morality evolves. This sounds sophisticated until you look closely. You can’t say we are better for abolishing slavery unless you assume a standard outside of shifting opinion. Without absolutes, moral progress is impossible. History becomes nothing but a string of empty costume changes.
Still, others retreat into empathy: “Can’t people decide for themselves?” That works until one person’s decision destroys another’s life. If morality is just preference, then a criminal’s desire is equal to his victim’s plea for justice. Try telling a mother whose child was murdered that the killer merely had “different values.”
Others insist: “I have my morality, you have yours.” But morality, by definition, governs how we treat others. It cannot be locked into private bubbles. If morality is private, then courts are tyrannical, laws are illegitimate, and the weak have no claim on the strong. If you believe murder is wrong only for yourself, you protect no one else. Society disintegrates under that logic.
The truth is this: moral relativism is never acceptable—not in theory, not in practice, not even a little. Because once you accept that morality is relative, you have no ground to stand on when the tests come—when a dictator crushes dissent, when a terrorist slaughters civilians, when uncontrolled immigration erases national culture. Either you say, “This is wrong”—wrong everywhere, for everyone, always—or you say nothing at all.
Excerpts from John Mac Ghlionn