Wiki of the day

Everything you need to know about the philosophy of morality, here - but to get a big picture understanding, you'd have to spend some time and click through the links and read dry material that explains different ways to view morality.

Now.. I don't consider myself a moral relativist.. but I can certainly see how the philosophy came about. Consider the simple act of human sacrifice. It's immoral, right? Well.. the Mayans would disagree - therefore the morality of human sacrifice is relative to your cultural point of view, right? That is an idea that is abhorrent to most people, but makes sense if you simply set aside your personal viewpoints and take a historical or anthropological view of various cultures.

I have a hard time buying into relativism.. though the case is persuasive. Am I unable to buy into it because of my own cultural bias? It's possible.

I guess I'm more of an Ayn Rand Objectivist, where morality is subjective to the point of reasonable negative effects. "Reason" being the operative word. In other words.. it's all good to the point that it negatively affects something else... and I use "something" as opposed to "somebody" intentionally. For example, drilling in ANWAR is a relativist point of view. I think there is a universal immorality in damaging the environment. Drilling is fine until the point of obvious harm to a thing - and in this case, the thing is the environment.

As Rand wrote;

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

Congratulations.. you just passed Philosophy 101.