Moral Relativism

According to my dictionary, 'relativism' is a philosophy, it is 'the philosophical doctrine that all criteria of judgment are relative to the individuals and situations involved.' Moral relativism is thus morality tailoring to your specification. 'What do you moralize?'

We live in an age of selective moralizing. It is as if the principal doctrine is there really is no right and no wrong. In Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, Brandon, the psychopathic killer, openly, and proudly, eclairs that he believed not in right and wrong but in a superior race of men who were so because of their intellect, a race of men who were entitled to kill less intelligent men. To Brandon the idea of right and wrong were for the stupid masses. The first time I read about 'no right and no wrong' I was eighteen and it was in a second hand bookstore, I was browsing through the philosophy section when I picked up a book called Upanishads and randomly I opened it. Instantly I was averted, and yet, I was very curious. It was the idea that some believed in such moral neutrality in a world where such horrific things take place that beguiled me rather than the idea itself. It is as if they were denying the existence of free will, of the multiple choices that one is presented with, and with the moral will, or lack thereof, to choose good from evil, or vice versa. Free will. It was as if they believed a choice was like a pattern pre destined, rather than, in a given context, an act of courage. Rather than say, this man who died for his brother was a kind man, it is as if they were saying, he simply possessed more stamina! I can't think of a more loathsome concept than of no right and wrong. It is a soulless concept, like a being devoid of character and only capable of sensory stimulus. Horrifyingly, we now live in an age that glorifies such an unemotional and mechanical nature.

The consumer goes into a department store and is presented with a series of choices. He or she can choose between a number of different makes of a given product. He or she can spend more or less, depending on what suits their budget. But when confronted with emotional issues, such as right from wrong, one can hardly say the choice is being made to tailor their budget. The choice is being made for something that can only be felt inside, which is not something one can measure or put a value on. Without the distinction between right and wrong though, all there really is to choose from is product A from product B.