I'm growing to be more and more of a relativist. Some people totally dislike that (and some of you readers might not know what that is at all), but hear me out before you blackball me!
Wikipedia says, "Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration." It's often applied to issues of morality, which is what I'm going to deal with here.
When I was growing up, I learned that there was right and wrong like everyone else probably has, right? So I thought that I should do right and not do wrong, which is (I presume) a perfectly logical assumption. The problem is that I wound up having absolute, black-and-white decisions on what's good and what's bad. And that made it simple and clean. I mean, yeah -- you swore, so that's bad. You helped your brother take out the trash, so that's good. You smacked that kid in the face, so that's bad (unless he really deserved it, of course).
Where the problem exists is that I realized I was punishing myself for not doing something better. Never mind that I took out the trash -- I didn't take the trash out sooner. And while I was taking out the trash, I didn't put in a new trash bag until after I got back inside the house!
What hit me was that my black-and-white view of morality just screwed itself over. I did a good thing, "Take out the trash," but it was a bad thing because of my current situation of "I was playing Mega Man X and forgot about it." It seems obvious to me now that that's already a relativistic point of view, but I was somewhat blind and never really noticed that I viewed something as good or bad based on my situation at the time.
Long story short, that's how I view most issues of morality nowadays. The goodness or badness in a deed done is based in the motive, circumstances, and the knowledge of the individual at the time. (Picture this: A Nascar racer backs up incorrectly and hits his mailbox, and on the same day a 16-year old driver backs up incorrectly and hits his parents' mailbox. The new, inexperienced driver's mistake is more understandable than the professional driver's, right?) Things like that seem pretty obvious and simple -- nobody punishes a first grader for spelling expelliarmus incorrectly.
Wikipedia says, "Relativism is the concept that points of view have no absolute truth or validity, having only relative, subjective value according to differences in perception and consideration." It's often applied to issues of morality, which is what I'm going to deal with here.
When I was growing up, I learned that there was right and wrong like everyone else probably has, right? So I thought that I should do right and not do wrong, which is (I presume) a perfectly logical assumption. The problem is that I wound up having absolute, black-and-white decisions on what's good and what's bad. And that made it simple and clean. I mean, yeah -- you swore, so that's bad. You helped your brother take out the trash, so that's good. You smacked that kid in the face, so that's bad (unless he really deserved it, of course).
Where the problem exists is that I realized I was punishing myself for not doing something better. Never mind that I took out the trash -- I didn't take the trash out sooner. And while I was taking out the trash, I didn't put in a new trash bag until after I got back inside the house!
What hit me was that my black-and-white view of morality just screwed itself over. I did a good thing, "Take out the trash," but it was a bad thing because of my current situation of "I was playing Mega Man X and forgot about it." It seems obvious to me now that that's already a relativistic point of view, but I was somewhat blind and never really noticed that I viewed something as good or bad based on my situation at the time.
Long story short, that's how I view most issues of morality nowadays. The goodness or badness in a deed done is based in the motive, circumstances, and the knowledge of the individual at the time. (Picture this: A Nascar racer backs up incorrectly and hits his mailbox, and on the same day a 16-year old driver backs up incorrectly and hits his parents' mailbox. The new, inexperienced driver's mistake is more understandable than the professional driver's, right?) Things like that seem pretty obvious and simple -- nobody punishes a first grader for spelling expelliarmus incorrectly.
I also feel that applies to larger, more society-wide things. A Christian girl with a long dress and some cleavage would be viewed as immoral, while a stripper with the same dress would be viewed as a prude. Along those same lines, a tribe of naked aborigines are viewed as "normal" while a thong bathing suit is generally thought of as racy. Taken even further, I would even say that profanity would be 100% fine with me if everyone that spoke the language didn't care and even used it themselves. Profanity would lose its offensiveness, and therefore just be another expression.
This, however, has made me wonder on occasion -- what makes something good?
I've been using a basic foundation of "That which improves is good and that which harms is bad [subject to relativism]" for a while, but it's a very vague foundation. Yet it seems to work, so that makes me believe that... right and wrong are largely determined by the group or culture. Which means that it's, like... superfluous, almost.
Therefore, lately, I've sort of settled down to a neeearly nihilistic view of "there is no right and wrong" and just viewed everything as "beneficial, not beneficial, wise, and unwise." I still think good and bad exist... I just think it's so flexible that it flops and changes from one circumstance to the next, making it a "softer," less harsh subject.
So that's why I'm somewhat a relativist. However, it still doesn't fully answer my question of where good and bad come from -- and why we view some things as good and some things as bad, even though they seem to be similar. (Like smoking is bad because, among other things, it gives you cancer. But so do tanning beds and no one minds them.)
Yet, until I learn more, I think this is the best life-like model of morality I can work with. It's not perfect and I'll likely rewrite it in the future, but it seems good for now.
Just another step in the path of life, I guess. O.o
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