Morality, humans rights, and all that the topic encompasses, has always been fluid. What we call human rights today is vastly different from notions that just a couple of generations ago where believed to be common sense.
I do not think morality is fluid and regardless of what people might have once believed to be 'common sense', there are things that have always been morally wrong and will always be wrong and at no time in the past or future could ever be right. Slavery is one example, murder another.
Am I misunderstanding what you are saying?
One would imagine so, but this is sadly not the case. Slavery, as you probably know well, was moral and legal for centuries. As a matter of fact, here in America, the Bible was used as a way to justify it's morality. (Bible has examples of slavery in the old testament)
Along the same lines, but much longer ago. Murder was completely Ok, as long as those being killed deserved it for not believing in the correct God. Now... today, with very little exceptions of course, humanity agrees Slavery is wrong and Murder is despicable... Even so, they are not completely abolished either.
It might have been legal and even accepted as normal by many but slavery has always been morally wrong. How could it have ever been right? How could any man ever have had the right to own another man? Who gave him that right? The same goes for murder. How could any man ever have the right to steal another mans life that did not belong to him? Who gave him that right? Can you think of a circumstance in which it would be morally right for someone to take your life from you when you were not harming them?
A right could be defined as any action that is taken that does not cause harm to another sensient being. If the action you take does cause harm to another being (that is not threatening or causing harm to you) then you do not have the right to take the action. It's that simple.
Moral relativism allows people to excuse whatever behavior or action they see fit as long as they believe in thier heads it is ok or that the people around them believe its ok.
but we don't disagree Jim... Knowing what we know today, we clearly see all these old practices as unacceptable... but we are living today, and that distinction is key.
It seems obvious now... I mean... I'm with you 100% but if we read some of the ideas being espoused by revered thinkers, political figures and leaders of years past, we might feel shocked and confused.
For example, Jefferson is remembered as a founding father, as our third president, as a man who helped lay the first bricks to create this great nation. But... he also owned slaves. In his day, nobody thought of him as a monster... and we try to be fair to the context of time.
It doesn't matter what we know today because slavery has always been wrong. By keeping slaves Jefferson was behaving immorally. He might have believed that he had a right to take away a mans freedom but how could he have ever actually had the right? The majority of people didn't think he was a monster but some forward and right thinking people did because there is no justification for keeping slaves just like there were forward thinking people in the deep south in the past who knew it was morally wrong to lynch a black man (or any man for that matter).
If there were 50 white men at a Klu Klux Clan meeting and a black man walked in, the majority of people at the meeting would agree that the black man had no rights and that they had the right to harm the black man but the black man would disagree. Who would actually be correct? Did the Klu Klux Clan actually have the right to harm the black man because the majority believed it and because there were racist laws in existence that allowed them to justify their actions in their heads?
Yes Jim, we don't disagree.
But again we know this today, they didn't know better back then.
Using a different example. If we judged let's say Socrates for thinking the earth is flat, we would be unfair. The knowledge of the time was what he had at his disposal. We would not call him crazy or delusional. We know the truth now.
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If you believe that at some point in the past or at some point in the future, slavery could/would be morally right simply because 'times change' or because the majority believe it to be so than we do not agree. Slavery has never been morally right, can never be morally right and will never be morally right, regardless of what you or anyone else believe and what laws might have been written by men to justify it. Nobody has the right to take another mans freedom from him because theft is wrong in all circumstances and at all times and places in the Universe. If you can think of an example of where slavery was actually morally right and not just percieved to be right I will be interested to know it and also how you came to the conclusion.
Socrates belief that the earth was flat did not cause him to take actions that harmed other people so he wasn't doing anything wrong by asserting that belief and aside from that how do you know it is true that it is round? I'm guessing you haven't personally verified it for yourself and depend on NASA and other sources to tell you what is true.
The idea of moral relativism along with the neo Darwinsim are both dangerous ideas that provide people with an excuse for immoral behaviour and I believe they have been pushed/encouraged deliberately to move humanity away from the truth that morality is fixed. Anyone who believes that they get to choose what is right or wrong has the potential to be a dangerous individual if they get into a position of power and couple that with the idea of 'survival of the fittest' and you have a recipe for disaster. It saddens me just how many moral relativists there are in the world but it goes some way to explain why the world is in the shit state it is.
I get your point, but I seem to fail to make mine clear.
Slavery was never ok, people were ignorant of that truth, period.
Who knows, a thousand years from now everyone might think that we were monsters in the 21st century, because we ate animals.
What you describe when you say relativism, is the parallel conversation that justifies regressive ideologies in the name of tolerance. The stoning of homosexuals for example by Islamic nations. Nobody in their right mind should tolerate barbarism.
I'm mostly referring to the constant shift in social norms that affect our moral glass minutely every generation.
Here's another example of recent times. In my grandpa's generation, women would get married commonly at 16 years old and start having children right away. Today, we would say that a couple who's still in their teens has no business getting married.
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