Relativism

I've recently, divine providence or demonic curse, been reading Ethan Watters' "Urban Tribes" and some of the ideas reflect very much my own theorisations and postulations. Upon reading them, I could quite literally hear them resound and reverberate with such 'truths' that are so aligned with mine own.

I belong to a generation that has lost its moral compass. We are a generation of choice, of affluence, of superfluity and of unlimited potential. We have been told that we could be anything we wanted to be - and we believed it. As Watters noted, "all paths were open" yet we were facing the "challenges of lives navigated without signposts ..."

My generation lacked any absolutes (as Postmodernists would clearly dictate). There are no longer any grand meta-narratives, no grand recits, no absolute theory of everything, no clear right and wrong. We, as Watters sardonically remarks, "stitched together our life philosophies from song lyrics, sacred texts, our college social psychology classes, our parents (if at all), our bosses and co-workers, The Simpsons, snippets of wisdom forwarded to us in e-mails, and things we overheard on the bus. ..."

"For us, the answer to the question How do you live a good life? was not something handed down from on high. We were making up answers - rifting them - as we went along."

I look back upon myself and realise with apprehensive curiosity the 'truth' of what he wrote. I have no real absolute answers handed down from 'on high'. I've stitched together my values and principles from all over - it was like a pastiche of moral forms. I don't really know THE answer to life as well. I'm, as when I tell others how I am when they ask, trudging along.

I told a student today - that the terrible mistake they make is to think that teachers need to be adored by them. Well, I think many do ... the teaching profession does, at the end of the day, draw the most insecure people, but I don't. He hadn't quite expected that answer. I do, as I said distinctly, what needs to be done, what I feel should and must be done, what I think is a principled thing to do. But honestly, what is that? By whose principles should we live by and why should these students live by mine (and I was lecturing about commitment and responsibility)?

Yet the virtue of my vocation requires that I do take some moral absolutes for if I don't I lapse into amorality - like many who run this school and particularly the ONE who runs it so. So where do I stand? How do I resolve this contradiction or is not meant to? Can relativism be the reason for amorality? I don't know ...

But we try our best, even if it means floundering as we go along. And so we continue to navigate even without signposts and make some 'purpose' and 'meaning' of each day hoping that regret and malice does not return to haunt our later years.