So, yesterday I was in Mangasync's IRC channel (What's that? You don't know what IRC is? Ha! Go here to find out. :). Now I normally go there to get a Japanese Anime that's fan subbed (which isn't illegal to my knowledge beceause it's not lisenced in the states and the people who sub don't make a profit from it), and I like to chat with people too.
Well, one day when I was on their and someone posted this quote talking about how President Bush opposed homosexual "marriage". He (Bush) was saying how homosexual "marriage" manipulated the meaning of an institution that is the building block to our society. The guy (or girl?) said "bush soooo needs to be beaten in nov".
Now, I wasn't particularly in a mood for a debate, but there's this saying that goes "Silence can be taken as a form of agreement". So I spoke up and said I agreed with Bush, and you can imagine what happened after that. I really should have known, because the people in the chat were primarily college students in California. (Why does California always get the good anime and manga?! WHY!?)
What I came across deeply unsettled me. These people believed there were no moral absolutes. Everything was based on culture or religion... and that doesn't mean that morals mean anything anyway. Heck, one person was so morally "neutral" that they said murder wasn't wrong! (Talk about alarming..)
So I started thinking, "How do you deal with people like that?" Really, how do you deal with people who are so utterly selfish that morality doesn't matter as long as it's not hurting THEM? (And sometimes I wouldn't if they even care whether it hurts them...)
I don't understand, first of all, how anyone could believe that morals are all relative. There are some areas in life that are sketchy and up for debate, but that doesn't mean all things are in "the gray".
For instance, to say that murder is wrong to me, but not for the next guy who murdered his wife and kids is lunacy. Murder is wrong on so many levels, not the least of which are that it destroys innocent lives. There is no excuse for murder.
And then there's the whole "moral" issue of the difference between murder and killing (which is apparently lost on many people). For instance, when a man goes to take your life and in self-defence you kill him, that is not murder. Or when a wire you tied holding a plank accidently breaks and falls on your friend and kills him, that is not murder. When soldiers are fighting each other, and one (or both) die, that is not murder.
The reason there is a difference is because morally, it is wrong to take someone's life because you're angry, vengeful, bitter, or they are "in your way". If there were no moral laws, absolutes, there would be no reason for people not to murder.
When you take away moral absolutes, you take away the fabric that holds a nation, a community, a family, a person together. And when you take more absolutes away, you're essentially giving people the excuse to do anything they want.
And maybe that's what it's all about. Without moral absolutes, you can lie (white lies), cheat (just on this test), steal (just this one CD), and a number of other things... It lets the utterly selfish and spoiled people do what they really want, SIN.
Perhaps people are also very lazy. They don't want to have to deal with absolutes. If there are moral absolutes, how do you find out which ones are the right ones? Is a moral absolute determined by how good it is for one person, or many? Do you find it in a religious book, or in nature?
It makes me said to watch people erode the very fabric of their being away by thinking that way. It's such an illusion too. No matter what a person says, everyone lives by a moral absolute, and it effects what they do, and that in turn affects what other people do. If you can't acknowledge this, and try to find the TRUTH, then you're doomed to destruction.
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