Moral relativism

While reading Obama's "The Audicity of Hope" I came across the concept "moral relativism", a term I didn't know existed, but which is a nice concise description of how I see things. It's nice to find a glove that fits: I am definitely a moral relativist. In fact, in spite of my general aversion of any extreme or fanatical position, I would say I am such a relativist that you might start to wonder whether I can distinguish between right and wrong at all. I think I can, but to me, right and wrong only exist in context. I am not talking so much about how ethics change with time (although they do), but more about the fact that there are different levels. There is right and wrong for the individual, the family, the group or class, the nation, the species ... and we spend a good part of our lives trying to resolve the conflicts that arise as a result.

Of course, it would be much more convenient to have universal rules of conduct, but I have yet to find them. Take our attitude towards life, for example. As a general principle, we want to protect it. This is seen as "only natural", and the drive is so strong that I still feel bad about a few tadpoles that I caught with my daughter some weeks ago, and that died because I didn't know how to take care of them. But there are situations where the general "life is holy" principle might be justifiably suppressed. I have great deal of sympathy, for example, for rape victims who do not want to have the child of their aggressor, especially since in most cases, it will mean taking care of them for years. And I have even more sympathy for the mothers of children who are the result of incest, where - in addition to having a constant reminder of what can only have been a traumatic experience - there is a significant risk of having a child with serious health problems. And I am not at all sure that life should be prolonged as long as possible, no matter what the condition of the patient. So here we have a conflict between the group interest, and the interests of one or a few individuals.

Or the disagreement about immigration, which arises from a number of different conflicts at the same time, namely between the rich (who stand to benefit from cheap labour for menial jobs), the immigrants (higher income), the lower class in the receiving country (unhappy about the competition from the outside), both nations (evening out of the income differences), the human race as a species (mixing of genes, when the immigrants stay and interrmarry), etc. etc.

I have no solutions for the above problems, but I would like to suggest that we try to avoid being unduly swayed by our emotions when deciding on them. Not that I am against emotion per se: as a survival mechanism, it has served us well for millions or years. But there are at least three problems with emotions: they are very imprecise and error-prone (having been badly frightened by a clown as a child may leave you with a lasting fear of all clowns), and they are or can be "contagious" (which can lead to mass hysteria, for example), and, like everything that has been hard-coded by evolution, they are slow to adapt to changing circumstances. In fact, thought is the only survival mechanism that can keep up with change. Which is why we rely on it so much. But there is a problem with thought as well: it not only helps us keep up with change, it can actually cause it. But that is a different story ...