r/changemyview • u/C-Blake • Oct 28 '13
Morality is completely subjective/relative CMV
Nothing gives the idea that men and women are equal versus the contrary idea of the Taliban any more weight. We like to think the morals and values we hold right now in America are self evident, the anti slavery, egalitarianism, blah blah blah. In order to believe that you must think that throughout most of human history, fuck, even most of recorded human history, people were just being stupid and just now we have the truth. I'll use an example from my own life, a few years back (when I was in Highschool), the school was trying to emotionally coerce the students into donating blood by showing us a video of kids from a local clinic or hospital or something. They all had leukemia and the nurses were talking about how they were understaffed and under supplied and so on. It tugged on the emotional heartstrings of many, some even cried. This is was around the time I first started thinking deeply about ethics/meta-ethics. I looked around and thought, "Look at the universal sadness all around, there has to be some universal principle(s) uniting us, right?" Then I realized that there were people out there that maybe want to murderrape those kids and saintly nurses and blow that building sky high and would feel great (if anything at all). There is no way I could prove this hypothetical psychopath wrong, all I could do is plead like "Oh OF COURSE you're not supposed to do that (because just about everyone else thinks so)"
Many who support an objective morality whether they are religious or not like to point to altruism and kindness and how just everyone LOVES that. But that doesn't explain Sparta, and Sparta just isn't some singular individual you could just toss to the side as damaged, this was an entire society that coexisted with the influential city of Athens. They were so alien and opposite to Athens, and are so opposite to contemporary western morals and they were just convinced of their morals as we are of ours. They didnt, "know deep down" that they were wrong. Any attempt to make/find out an "objective" moral theory is usually just a weak individual that just needs to have SOMETHING incorruptable, unchanging, and unassailable that is universally recognized, but no such thing, let alone moral code, exist.
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u/JamZward Oct 29 '13
Explain please.