Moral Relativism
Untethering ourselves is scary
Journal: 19 August, 2024, morning.
I looked up the definition of a word this morning, as I often do. I am drawn to precision and clarity in writing and speech and the context in which this word was used made me want to find that precision.
The word? Aberrant. The definition? “Departing from an accepted standard.”
Not necessarily morally right, not necessarily morally wrong, just departing from an accepted standard, which (depending on the person doing the assessing) may be viewed as morally right or morally wrong. It’s a subjective call, “based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.”
It’s really difficult to accept that not everyone thinks as we ourselves think. Our need to affirm ourselves as “right” in our beliefs and opinions leads us to see others who may disagree with us as “wrong.” Not different, wrong. And to entertain the thought that we ourselves might be wrong leads to that scary path toward relativism, where hardly anyone wants to go since we must discard certainty to go down it and discarding certainty leaves us adrift, like the terrifying image of that first person floating in space not tethered to the spaceship.
I’m just thinking this morning of the things we tether ourselves to, and of how scary it is to cut those tethers, or even to contemplate cutting them.
Click, and the kaleidoscope turns, and everything looks different.
Everything.
#journalingalife
