I was making coffee this morning and I was suddenly struck by this thought: how can there be good if there is no evil? This question of whether there is evil has been bothering me. I’m sure everyone knows about the initiative to frame discussions in terms of “my truth” and the idea that everyone’s experience is different.
“That may not be right for you but it’s okay for me” is often said. But what I was thinking about this morning is this. If nothing is wrong is anything good?
When everyone’s experience is different and equally valid it tends to obscure the idea of right and wrong because what is right for one person is wrong for another, correct?
This is good as far as it goes but it really only goes as far as your own mind. We cannot have a society in which my truth is different than your truth in a court of law. If my truth is different than your truth in a court of law then I don’t have to abide by the court’s rulings. Right?
Moral Relativism Leads to Fractured Communities
So there must be more than that. If we are a society we have to arrive at a central truth on various issues. Taxes. Parking tickets. School curriculum. This is so we can function as a community. This has become a problem, as we all know, with competing news services claiming different election results, for example. Whether we argue about it or not, one person actually won the election and one person actually is the president. Information sources may have broken down. But there was a true final number of votes. We’re just not sure we trust the people who counted.
And if nothing is good then what are we living for?
Seeking what is right true and good is the foundation of being human as it has long been conceptualized by thinkers. Even if it was not practiced by kings, queens, princes and presidents. And the truth is, for the everyday person, seeking what is good might be the only way to stay same.
We Know What is Good and Bad for Us But We Don’t Want to “Force Our Views” on Others. Thus good and evil make us nervous.
We know there is good because when there is good we feel a positive sense of things getting better. Something is simple as getting over a cold shows this. We all know it is good when we wake up and say “Thank God, I’m better.”
In the sphere of our own mind at least, this change in our world is an improvement, and it is empirically good.
Saying something is evil, on the other hand, is implicit when something goes the opposite direction. If recovering from a cold is good, hurting someone is bad. Or evil. If we don’t have this belief we cannot as a society compel people to stop hurting other people. Therefore without a conception of evil we cannot have a civil society.
This seems obvious to me and I think it’s obvious to many people but the clever arguments of the relativist have cut into our understanding of the basic existence of good and evil. Perhaps they were desperate to have people look at things a different way and to say “My perspective is valid; my experience is valid; and it too bears on what is good and evil.” But no one should be asked to accept that what is good for one person is evil for someone else. In the deepest analysis this cannot be true.
Not, at least, if we plan to form a consensus. This perhaps is why we need to have a united vision of our culture so that we can work as a people. In our schools and institutions, radicals who insist on their way with clever arguments are themselves cutting down the very existence of real community.
If you want justice you have to work for a communally accepted truth. No other metric is compelling enough to make people behave fairly. And you have to work for an understanding of good and evil, the equality of all souls. If you look at this with open eyes you will see that moral relativism is the problem it is never going to be a solution.
A Couple of Articles for Further Reading
What Actually is Evil? And What Makes People Carry Out Evil Acts? Psychology Today. In which discussions of how generally-regarded evildoers perceive themselves put forth the argument that “Evil is ignorance.”
Moral Relativist: The argument here from Lonerwolf enters somewhat into relativism, but pulls back from the edge when he writes that “Good could be said to be conscious, loving and wise behavior while “Evil” could be considered egotistical, fearful and unconscious behavior.”
