#relativism

In our most recent chapel Q&A, someone asked our panel what the biggest issue of today's culture is. Mr. Barrett brought up relativism. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, we weren't given a full explanation and many students were still left confused.

So of course we had to seek out an exclusive interview with Mr. Barrett to help clear your confusion and clarify what he meant.*

Relativism is, simply put, the belief that there is no objective truth. Relativism is subjective in that it says, "it's right, not because it's right, but because people think it's right."

But what do those words mean in this context?

Objective means that it is true no matter what anyone thinks of it. We believe in objective truths all the time. When you go to a pharmacy, you want your pharmacist to have objective truth. They know that certain medications work for certain things, no matter what. One does not look at the person ahead of them in line and say, hey, Aspirin works for you, but it doesn't work for me. No! Aspirin works for everyone! There are things that we just know are right and wrong, no matter who says otherwise.

Subjective truth says that there is no objective truth. Every right and every wrong is based on opinions. "The slaughter of Jews by Hitler? That's just bad because our opinion of it is bad, but there was nothing really evil about it.That's just society's opinion of genocide." But let's be honest here. No one really believes that deep down. There was a real evil to that. That's why we still talk about it to this day.

Relativism is an issue because many young students don't know how steeped they are in it. In fact, we don't always notice it either - it's just become part of our cultural backdrop. It's very subtle in the media. Turn on any Netflix show, any movie, and you will see pervasive relativism in the way they display morality. So when we talk about relativism, all we're really talking about is the idea that there is no objective truth.

True relativism says that all matters of right and wrong are opinion-based. Just look at the media's fixation on sex and sexuality. There's been a growing trend of re-igniting the American 1960s version of free love and loose morality, allowing people to be able to define their own sexuality, and wanting everything within the realm of sexuality to be included and for nothing to be excluded. In this area, especially, relativism runs deep. Some may argue that "homosexuality is wrong just because you say it's wrong. Oh, and by the way, that's a bad opinion. The right opinion to have is that all opinions are permissible."

In other areas, though, they're still very objective. Murder is still objectively wrong, no matter how you look at it. It's wrong because it's wrong because it's wrong.

We have a culture right now that's sort of at an impasse. Something is going to happen because you can't have it both ways. You can't have subjective truth in only one realm of society, especially in the realm of sex and sexuality, but have objective truth in another realm. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you believe in objective truth, it's objective truth all the way, man. In every area. And if you believe in subjective truth, you should be prepared to accept its implications. How else are you going to have integrity in your beliefs?

Don't be that one guy from The Simpsons Movie. 

- Jenny Kheng (19/09/18)