Absolute Right my CREDENZA

[Pete Hartman <bradley!bucc2!pwh@uxc.cso.uiuc.edu>]

>" . . .their own moral decisions."  Ah, Relativism rears its ugly head
>again in America.  Morals and ethics are not a matter of individual
>opinion.  There are ABSOLUTE standards of Right and Wrong, which individuals
>can discover and know.  In this case, it is "It is wrong to steal."  Somehow
>today (in our state of ethical decay), that has been perverted to, "It is
>all right to steal as long as you don't hurt the victim that much (and
>especially if you don't get caught), otherwise it is bad."

Are there Absolute Rights and Wrongs?  Or is it just that some people feel
that there must be absolute rights and wrongs, else all is chaos, and
they feel all alone in the great big universe....  I'd opt for the latter.

Just look at all the good things Absolute Rights and Wrongs have brought
us:  Absolute Solutions (as in the Final Solution), Absolute Dictatorships
of various sorts, Absolutely Correct Religions (Jim Jones was told by GOD
to have all those people kill themselves, and the Ayatollah was only acting
as God's Messenger, pronouncing His death sentence on Salman Rudshie...)

I don't often see absolutes doing anything but providing excuses for people
in control to pronounce sentence on those they can't control.

[ comments about zappa and specific complications of "relativism" deleted ]

>Read _The_Closing_Of_The_American_Mind_ by Allan Bloom.  It shows how
>Relativism (and, as a result, nihilism) have taken over Western thought.
>The theme is that eveyone accepts as fact that "everyone should come up
>with their own value system and decide for themselves what is right and
>wrong."  It is, in fact, the only idea that most Westerners accept as an
>absolute right--and that is why their mind is closed, since they cannot
>even accept some other system of thought (why bother--it is known absolutely
>that everyone has the right to decide their own value system).
>
>-andy

What other systems of thought are we talking about?  *I* think that "everyone
should come up with their own value system...", based on the information
they can get from the world around them (like the value systems shown them
by church and family) rather than blindly accepting that what everyone else
says is "RIGHT".  To do otherwise is to reject your freedom to choose your
own life.  I don't think this makes me close minded, except perhaps insofar
as I tend to resent people who have made the "RIGHT" decisions and feel it
is their obligation to force those decisions onto myself.
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	Pete Hartman		......noao >!bradley!bucc2!pwh
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