Just as Paul Johnson began Modern Times with the opening shot of “moral relativity,” Allan Bloom famously began 1987′s The Closing of the American Mind by noting, “There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.”
A quarter century later, it’s come to this (graphic image at link, but it’s already been used as a Time magazine cover last year):
“Moments Of Startling Clarity” Dr. Stephen L. Anderson
“The picture is horrific. Aisha’s beautiful eyes stare hauntingly back at you above the mangled hole that was once her nose. Some of my students could not even raise their eyes to look at it. I could see that many were experiencing deep emotions.
But I was not prepared for their reaction.
I had expected strong aversion; but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture.They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.” One student said, “I don’t feel anything at all; I see lots of this kind of stuff .”
Another said (with no consciousness of self-contradiction), “It’s just wrong to judge other cultures.”
“While we may hope some are capable of bridging the gap between principled morality and this ethically vacuous relativism, it is evident that a good many are not. For them, the overriding message is “never judge, never criticize, never take a position.”
In 1984, when Winston could see that 2+2=5, and couldn’t decide if O’Brien was holding up four or five fingers (recreated in Star Trek: The Next Generation’s famous “There! are! four! lights!” moment, along with Picard later admitting he was willing to see anything his tormenter wanted him to see by then), he had been officially broken as a man. We’ve reached the limits of multiculturalism when a group of kids can stare a photo of a woman with her nose sliced off and reply blankly at the horror, “It’s just wrong to judge other cultures.”
And yet his teachers (other than Anderson, assuming he’s still employed) will have no problem making this young tike make all sorts of judgements about his own culture — all of them wrapped in a black armband.
Perfect observation at a critical moment in civilization. This is the same observation I’ve made regarding the Penn State scandal – everything is relative. How sad, ignorant & self-serving to not recognize evil for what it is. But over the years people have been taught that moral equivalency trumpted all else. The better you are at arguing or seeing both sides of an issue, the better you are as a human – how asenine.
I would like to see this experiment repeated with the additional condition that prior to being shown the photograph, the students are assured that they absolutely will not be judged or scolded and shall not judge or scold. I believe the morality is there, but voicing it has been condemned.
I think the word you’re looking for is “nadir”.
my son’s teacher got a letter of reprimand in her file when the superintendent for the district walked into her classroom. She was writing a timeline of American history on the blackboard, so that the kids knew at what time the story they were reading was set.
the other son’s teacher was told to stop teaching beginning civics, b/c civics were no longer on the curriculum. the parents wanted her to continue-she’d spent 20 years refining the curriculum.
and, well, if you judge, you’ll get that spluttery ” judge not…” it’s the only verse stoners know.
Victor Frankl has a catechism. It’s based on belly lint, but writers find it captivating.
Bringing out Luther’s catechism, or the Catholic catechism, or even what rabbis say, is really, truly stunning. I know most of my punk-rock, gothic, heavy metal friends have ended up profoundly religious b/c it is so stunning a set of propositions and dialogues. which is hilarious,b/c I grew up hearing about how bad these kids were, myself included, for running around in black clothes.
and judgment- justice is heavy. mercy is light. if one gets used to mercy, judgment can hurt- you want to choose mercy, and you do, and then the snake gets larger and more muscular, and swells. It’s awful, realizing that someone you know is probably going to hell. You feel like that scabrous cartoon hick fundamentalist drawn by Matt Groening. Just even thinking it- someone you know is likely going to hell- feels like hubris. It takes sorrowful step after sorrowful step to say ” Oh, I can’t throw pearls before this swine- I’ve been rent before by this particular pig. I love this person, and I can’t help their willful corruption.” It’s awful.
so, kids have been brought up in a corrupt catechism. It’s exactly like patrick facing ireland. what to do?
I see this in my college classrooms, where I teach composition. The rhetorical form they struggle with most is argument. Most of the students are afraid to take a stand on ANY issue, not just the hot-button ones. They’ve been so conditioned to accept moral relativism that taking a specific position–and even worse, refuting a competing position–is foreign to them. However, it’s so satisfying when they “get it” because I’ve given them a crucial tool for their survival as adults.