In defense of moral relativism

Nothing really matters, anyone can see!

I occasionally like to irritate people on the internet by arguing that unsolicited dick pics disprove the Golden Rule. The argument goes like this: The Golden Rule says “Do unto others as you would have done unto you.”

People who send unsolicited dick pics are, theoretically at least, saying, “Hey, I’d like to see naked pictures of you. So here’s a naked picture of me.”

@betterstrangersbooksNot everyone wants to be treated the same way! #humanrights #morality #goldenrule #dountoothers #grassroots

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It is not a popular opinion, and for pretty good reason. There are all sorts of other reasons people send unsolicited dick pics — as a creepy sort of power move, as a form of indecent exposure, as an act of sexual compulsion, etc. — and the “Golden Rule” application is, I admit, theoretical, as I have never sent an unsolicited dick pic, and don’t bring the topic up much among my guy friends.

But I like it as a way of illustrating the point that living one’s life by moral laws is tricky, as it pushes you into all sorts of weird corners. The Golden Rule is the closest thing we have to a universal moral law, as it’s appeared in most major cultures in some form or another over time. The most famous other universal law (in philosophy, at least) is Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, which is less clearly worded:

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

In short — if something is right, it must be right for everyone always. Kant argued that one should never lie, for example. Which sounds nice in theory, but is psychotic in practice. It would require you to snitch on friends to cops, it would require you to tell axe murderers where your family is hidden, it would require you to tell grocery story checkout clerks, when they ask “Got anything fun planned this weekend?” that you planned on sitting in the dark and jacking it to rough porn.

Universal moral laws are impossible to formulate, because they require that you think of every possible scenario in which they could be applied.

The impossibility of Human Rights

I say this with some authority — my master’s degree is in Human Rights. And the thing that you learn when you study human rights is that human rights as a concept are really nice and noble but are absolutely impossible to apply.

This was a bummer to hear after I’d taken out $70,000 in student loans to get the degree. It was also a contributor to my post-Catholic depression. When I left the church in my teen years, I thought, “Okay, so all of that bullshit was wrong, time to find the ideology that’s right.”

What human rights taught me was that philosophers have grappled with moral laws for all of human existence, and while some people declare that a certain rule is universal — and attempt to apply it through the force of the state — no one has ever agreed on a universal law. In the capitalist west, for example, we tend to focus on “Freedoms from.” So freedom of speech is, for example a protection from the government interfering with what you say.

In communist or socialist countries, there’s more emphasis on “Freedoms to.” So the freedom to access affordable healthcare would be more of a priority.

Regardless of what you think about either type of rights, the truth is this: humans can’t agree on them. And unless you want to say, “Well, one type of human (American) is right, the other type of human (Chinese) is wrong,” and commit to an eternal power struggle with that other type of human, possibly ending in the destruction of all people, then you have to abandon the concept of universal laws, and accept that different societies have different priorities on what morality is, and that morality should be something that evolves based on context and experience, and which societies always have under discussion.

(I wrote more on the origins of morality in the article below:)

Moral relativism vs. Moral absolutism

There’s a problem with this view, too, though: it’s called moral relativism. Religious people in particular hate it, and any philosophical conversation about it will eventually return to the words of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who wrote in his epic work The Brothers Karamazov:

“But what will become of men then? …without God and immortal life? All things are permitted then, they can do what they like?”

This is a common refrain when you’re becoming an atheist and are getting into arguments with the religious: God — whom the religious see as the entity that chooses the universal laws — is what protects us from chaos by giving us incentives to do good (heaven) and punishments (hell) for doing evil.

Otherwise, humanity would just fall to pieces. We’d murder people left and right, pedophilia would be rampant because there would be no one to say it’s wrong, and the world would turn to chaos.

This argument is really convincing if you put no further thought into it, but the reason it’s wrong should be obvious: moral relativism’s opposite, moral absolutism, has killed significantly more people than moral relativism. The moral absolutist Catholic Church committed (is still committing) countless acts of pedophilia under the cover and moral authority of the church. All of the religious wars in history have killed more people than every depressed nihilist who’s insisted that nothing really matters. Stalin and Mao — who are often used as an example of Godless mass murderers — were also moral absolutists, though their religions were a particularly dogmatic brand of Marxist-Leninism.

Photo by Duncan Cumming

The problem with moral absolutism is that it takes the moral authority from within us and it puts it out there. Nominally, the believers say, into God’s court — or whomever your moral authority may be, the Founding Fathers, Marx’s historical materialism, the “science” of Social Darwinism, etc. — but in practice, into the court of God’s¹ representatives here on earth. Which means they can (and often will) do whatever they want and say it’s God’s will.

To commit to moral absolutism is to delegate your own ability to think and decide what’s right to someone or something else.

Taking responsibility for yourself and your society

If you reject that, then you have to admit that the ability to decide what’s right and what’s wrong is inside you, and inside your community. It means you have to talk to the people you live with and come to a consensus on how to behave.

Likely, some of the first rules you’ll agree on are “no murder” and “no pedophilia,” as any society that values personal autonomy would recognize those two things as being wild violations of autonomy.

But you would also have to prepare yourself for morality to evolve. Something that seemed like a no-brainer when you were a young Boomer in the ‘60s, like the Second Amendment, would now seem entirely unreasonable in the face of multiple daily mass shootings and widespread ownership of AR-15s.

As someone who is responsible for their own moral judgments, you would be morally obligated to pay attention to changing contexts, and adjust your opinion to new information as it arises.

Here’s the rough part: You’d also need to be okay with other communities making different decisions than yours. This does not mean you’d need to condone openly repugnant behavior. Say your next door neighbor outlaws abortion. You could subvert that by offering sanctuary and abortions and aid to anyone from their community who makes their way to yours. You still get to choose which people and which positions you show solidarity towards, which people you trust.

But your true responsibility is to yourself and your community. And you can’t take that responsibility if you hand off your authority to someone else, out there in the ether.

1. et. al.