The Comfortable Shadow of Relativism
To be human is to carry an invisible pair of scales in your chest from the day you are born. We call these scales morality: that pure, that quiet impulse which sets us apart from savagery and makes us feel, in our own heart, the thorn that pierces another’s skin. For centuries we have laboured to keep these scales in balance. But the modern world has set before us so ornate a poison that our balance has been upset: moral relativism. We have grown very fond of saying ‘Your truth is yours, mine is mine’. How could we not? It sounds so polite, so civilised. Yet relativism is tolerance only as long as it has a limit; the moment that limit is lifted, it turns into the most comfortable bed ever laid out to silence the conscience. The scales are not broken.
Good and evil have not vanished. We have only made the line between them portable; now it slides to wherever we press it.
In the twentieth century Einstein came along and said that time and space are relative. The modern human being seized on the idea at once: ‘Look, even in this vast universe everything is relative!’ Yet they missed the very heart of the theory. In the theory of relativity, while everything stretches, there is an absolute centre that never changes: the speed of light. If even physics needs an absolute constant in order to stay standing, with what audacity do we try to stretch that light at the centre of morality, that is, human dignity? I know: physics does not prove morality; no virtue comes out of an equation. But a question does: if, even in a universe where everything stretches, one thing must remain constant, what is that constant in a human being? The universe cannot live without a constant; nor can a human being live without a conscience.
The Search for an Unchanging Centre
Physicists were not the first to ask this question. A voice echoes from centuries ago: ‘The starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.’ Kant’s morality was not a bargaining table that bends to circumstances; it was a constant, just like the speed of light. But what did humanity do? It fled from that uncompromising, upright stance and hid behind relativism. For absolute morality is heavy; it demands a price, it disturbs comfort. The slippery ground of relativism, on the other hand, is the most restful shade to shelter in. Moral values gain meaning only through the responsibility they carry. The moment you stretch good and evil to suit the wind, you spread a silk cloth over immorality.
Forget the thick philosophy books; look at the street. At one end of the world a girl who is still only a child has her doll taken from her hands and is married off. If we can shrug this off by saying ‘It’s their culture; we have to respect it’, then we have never, even for a moment, felt that child’s pain in our own conscience; and relativism, for us, is not tolerance but complicity in paedophilia.
Or look at those luxury office towers right under our noses. A boss tramples over an employee and walks on. Then he takes a sip of his coffee and absolves himself: ‘The rules of business are harsh.’ Every mortal who gets power into his hands sells us his own savagery as ‘what circumstances demand’. Now let us speak plainly: limitless relativism is not tolerance but a colossal lie.
Remember George Orwell’s Animal Farm. When the pigs seized power, they erased the principles on the wall one by one. What remained was that ominous sentence: ‘All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.’ The modern human being who hides behind relativism silently watches this chameleon morality in the hands of those in power; for wherever power turns, morality takes on its colour. But we forget: what feeds that chameleon is that comfortable silence of ours.
The Blind Spot in the Mirror
We assume the blind spot is theirs. Now let us hold the mirror right up to our own faces and ask that unsettling question: just how many of us are moral only because we have never truly been tested?
Dividing the world in two has always been the easiest thing. On one side, the perpetrators who hide their own flaw behind those pretexts; on the other, us – that is, the ones who stayed clean. Yet we are all in the same boat; what is more, while the boat takes on water, we all know very well how to trim our sails to the wind instead of plugging the holes. When our own interests take the slightest knock, are we not the first to run to the pretext of ‘But my circumstances were different’? So the problem is not only the brazenness of the wicked; it is also that we hide our own untested flaws behind the same pretext. What you call relativism is in fact that secret, that silent bribe we all carry in our pockets. And besides, beneath that silk cloth we hide not only ‘others’ but, most of all, our own rot.
The real blind spot is not theirs. The one place you cannot see when you look in the mirror is the part of you that has never been tested. You need not go far to see how a person who stays honest only as long as he is not tested sells off his principles once he is cornered. Untested honesty is not honesty; it is merely that the opportunity has not yet come. Guilt and shame are two burdens the modern human being longs to throw off; yet at times they are the only thing that keeps us standing. The real art lies in daring to be tested even as you judge.
The Fixed Line of Conscience
The real task for all of us is to hold that mirror up to our own brow first. What you call morality is not a wind vane. Justice cannot rise and fall like shares on a stock exchange screen. When you pull off that intellectual mask of relativism, what lies beneath is not tolerance or anything like it; it is laziness of conscience, cowardice and a collective complicity. Remember the golden rule: do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you. Virtue begins where we do not bend and twist that rule for our own interests. Humanity can climb out of this muddy swamp, where everything is deemed permitted, only by holding on to those ancient truths that accept no bribe and will not bend or yield. We are in the same boat; if we sink, we will sink along with our philosophy. It is time now to lift those silk cloths. For true morality is not the one that looks for pretexts in dark corners; it is the one that can hold its head high even in broad daylight.
The scales still sit in our chest; they are not broken. We pressed our finger on the pan. The question is this: how many of us are left who have not pressed? The rest is just talk.