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LIQUIDTHINKING IS: Stephen Zedler Jimmy Doyle Andy Mullins Current Sountrack
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Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Relativism? So, we learned from the last post that relativism is this huge problem because it's keeping people from voting Republican. Okay, I jest. I must say that the boogey-man of relativism occassionally scares me, too. It's rather amazing to sit in a room full of students and have them tell you that it's okay to cheat on high school tests because "high school doesn't really count anyway. We're never going to really use this stuff, so it really doesn't matter if we cheat a little. What matters is that we get good grades so we can go to college. THEN it really matters." These words are from a conversation that I had in my philosophy class last semester, and it was agreed to by about 60% of the class. That, I admit, is frightening. However, is it really relativism that we're worried about? I would argue that it's ultimately something deeper. It sure LOOKS like relativism. Yet, if you ask any typical citizen, high school age or otherwise, if they think that what Hitler did could ever be justified, much less by the perceptions of the society that condoned it, the vast majority would say "no." So our kids DO have absolutes, whether it's fashionable to recognize them or not. There are places where they will draw the line, and they reveal this in their speech and in their lifestyles every day. So what IS it, if not relativism? Once again, Thomas DeZengotita advances a theory that I find highly plausible. Now consider this, drawn from research done by a seventeen-year-old senior on the origins of ethical relativism in lower grades: he gives a precocious ten-year-old Lawrence Kohlberg's famous "you find a lot of money in a paper bag on the sidewalk what do you do?" dilemma. The fifth grader decides (completely predictably, though he sees himself as defying convention) that it would be right for him to keep it, but, for another person, it might be right to take it to the police, for another, to donate it to charity -- and, in general, that there are different rights and wrongs for different people and who can say more? In an inspired moment, the interviewing senior suggests maybe God? The fifth grader asserts his (again, completely predictable) agnosticism in magnanimous tones. He knows that weak and ignorant folk somewhere out in the boondocks might find his enlightened views unbearable. But he is willing to entertain the hypothesis that God exists and acknowledges that, if he does, "God could have a different opinion from mine." Now that's empowerment. This is a kid who definitely feels good about himself. This is a kid to whom a lot of people have been very nice. This is a flattered self if there ever was one. By the time that fifth grader is finishing high school, he will get the joke, but his sense of entitlement will be just as absolute; indeed, it will have merged completely with is sense of personal autonomy. He wants to believe that anything is possible for him, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone else - for others enjoy the same entitlement, we are talking about the decent majority here, kids with domesticated ids. What the flattered self enjoys by way of options in the mediated world in general gets expressed philosophically as that notorious "relativism" that conservative critics -- ever suspicious of theory, glued always to the surface of phenomena -- blame for everything they don't like and/or understand about contemporary culture. Which is a lot. So what is the deeper issue? What's fueling this relativism? The ability to pursue individual enrichment through the use of private resources by convincing other people how necessary your product or service is... the fact that our needs and wants are constantly appealed to so that we might give others the opportunity to satiate them... the fact that we have attempted to make every aspect of our lives a matter of choice... the availability of options in each of these areas growing in number, exponentially, each contributing to the answer to that single, all-important question, "Who do you want to be?" Our kids do not completely lack a sense of morality; they're overly flattered! It's not that kids don't believe in absolutes. They simply believe in options. It's not relativism that's the problem. It's the fact that everything about our culture (and conservative Christians contribute to this mightily) screams for freedom. Objective reality limits our options, which is one absolute: people's options should not be limited.
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Jimmy Doyle is a dad, husband,
teacher, friend, and other things. Currently he's just trying to figure out what it means to follow Christ and be in community with others. He enjoys having conversations with fellow pilgrims on the journey.
Stephen Zedler has a wife and three kids who he loves very much. He has been called by God to study and teach history, particularly U.S.
history. He also believes that God has called him to reform the way children are educated in America.