Relativists & Sociopaths

Written by Gregory Koukl

Yesterday morning I saw something in the paper that happened in Florida. It absolutely disgusted me and ought to have surprised me, but it didn't. A small piece in the L.A. Times says that a youth has been charged in slaying a motorist who ran into a girl.

Here's basically what happened, ladies and gentlemen, a man had a collision with a pedestrian. The pedestrian was a small girl, apparently. She was banged up a little bit, but not seriously injured. He'd gotten out of his car to help her and was immediately mobbed by a number of youths who beat him up, robbed him of something like $23.00, and shot him dead; killed him. You might think they were bugged because he hurt the girl. No. They were just a mob. They were a bunch of youngsters, basically. They mobbed him, beat him up, robbed him and killed him.

If that isn't bad enough, the other aspect of this – and this wasn't in the L.A. Times today but I heard it on the radio yesterday – is that there were a number of pedestrians, people standing around, watching it happen that were adults. Not only did they not intervene, but they also wouldn't cooperate with the police unless they were paid, apparently. In other words they wanted the TV crews to interview them for cash before they would give any material information that would lead to the apprehension of any of the people involved in this brutal slaying.

This is another one of those things we hear that cause us to cluck our tongue, shake our head and say, "What's becoming of the world?"

Last week I had occasion to speak a number of times on the issue of moral relativism. Even though this is a disgusting event, in some ways it doesn't surprise me when people espouse moral relativism – that people are, by in large, responsible for their own moral values and responsible for making their own moral rules.

This is expressed in government and educational programs like values clarification in schools where kids are led through moral exercises to decide for themselves what they think is right and wrong. It doesn't surprise me when those who hold to an absolute morality are vilified and criticized and condemned in public for their position, not just for their personal moral views, but for the fact that they think their morality applies to everyone.

When we champion those kinds of things in a culture, ladies and gentlemen, why should it be surprising to us when young people in our society begin practicing what we're teaching them. We teach them ultimately that values are individual, that morals are subjective and relative to every person's view of right and wrong. When we say, "Don't force your morality on me," and, "Who are you to say?", well, we're essentially teaching our children that they need not be accountable to anyone. Why are we surprised, then, when they're not accountable to anyone.

I want to share with you two particular points I made in my talk that I think relate to this incident that happened in Dade County, Florida, this last week. The first one has to do with an overall critique of relativism as a moral point of view.

I outlined serious flaws with moral relativism, individual ethical relativism, the idea that people make up their own moral rules and that we ought not force our morality on other people. All of the eight flaws, though they are expressed differently, really hinge on the same basic idea. The idea is this: that in order for certain concepts we hold dear and valuable – concepts that seem to be intuitive, that seem to be true concepts on the face of them, things like praise and blame, the existence of evil in the world, the value of justice and fairness, the reasonableness of personal accountability, the idea of moral discourse and moral improvement and reform, and the idea of tolerance – all of those things are tied to a particular idea.

The particular idea these notions rest upon have as their foundation the very idea repudiated by those who hold to moral relativism: There is a moral standard of some sort that stands outside us and that judges us whether the we accept it or not.

In other words, for those concepts that I just listed to make any sense whatsoever there must be some kind of absolute standard, some morality that is not utterly subjective and not utterly personal. That's why if we hold moral relativism – let everybody make up their own rules and decide for themselves what's right and wrong and let's not push our morality on any one else – if you're going to be consistent, you have to abandon the idea that there is anything like an absolute right or wrong and this has logical consequences.

Your language of wrong-doing has to be excised from your vocabulary. The language of things being evil in themselves or wrong in themselves must be removed because there is no such thing. There are only things that you like and dislike, so your moral assessments are merely reduced to expressing personal preferences: what feels good or bad to you, not what is morally right or wrong in itself.

You have to get rid of the idea that there is blame and praise because you can't blame or praise people unless you have a standard by which blame and praise make any sense. You can't ask for justice or fairness because that implies that there is a moral standard that stands outside of everyone that says, for example, we must treat people equally or we must not punish the innocent and let the guilty go free.

If relativism is true then there is no objective standard of right and wrong, so ultimately there can be no genuine justice or fairness. There's no accountability. Everybody does their own thing. There's no possibility of moral improvement or moral discourse. You can't even discuss morality in an intelligent fashion because in relativism no one’s morality is any better or worse than anyone else’s.

Ultimately, there's no tolerance, either, because the rule that one ought to be tolerant is an absolute rule that stands outside of our individual tastes. If there are no absolute rules then there can be no absolute "Be tolerant." Therefore relativism – the idea that everybody is entitled to make up their own rules – ultimately does not lead to tolerance either.

My point is that if relativism were really true, we would be living in a world in which nothing is wrong, nothing is considered evil or good or worthy of praise or blame, a world in which justice and praise are meaningless concepts, in which there is no accountability, no possibility of moral improvement or even a moral discourse. Also, it would be a world in which there is no tolerance.

When I usually give my talk on relativism I usually add that the belief in and practice of relativism produces the kind of world I just described. Last week, though, I left that out of some of my talks. I thought it was too strong of a statement. Just because you believe in relativism is doesn't always mean it's going to produce this kind of world. Maybe there's something else of goodness, something inside you that will redeem you in the long run so you don't end up living consistently with your alleged world view.

Now I think this was too optimistic. Belief in and practice of relativism does produce a world like this and we're seeing the fruits of that in this example from Dade County, Florida.

One of the things I mentioned as I was talking about relativism last weekend is that you can, in a sense, assess the significance or the value or worth of a particular moral point of view by asking what kind of moral champion this point of view produces.

For example, say your moral point of view is that you should take no thought for yourself, but always think of other people first. When a person lives that out most consistently, this ethic produces someone like a Mother Theresa. Or take the belief that one of the highest moral goods is non-violent, passive resistance. When that is lived out consistently, it produces a Gandhi. If the ethic is to obey the Father in all things and you live that out thoroughly, it produces a Jesus Christ. When we look at the moral champions of these different viewpoints it speaks well for the standard they espouse.

Now, how does relativism fare by this analysis? What about those who espouse the view that no one should judge another, that each person should live by his own moral rules? What kind of moral champion does that give us? What is the best that relativism has to produce? What do we call a person who marches most thoroughly to his own personal moral drum and is most thoroughly unconcerned with the moral attitudes of other people?

We have a word for that kind of person in our language. We call him a sociopath, a person without any conscience or any morals or scruples whatsoever.

Think about it. There's got to be something wrong with an allegedly moral point of view that produces a sociopath, someone without a conscience, as its goal.

This is the problem I think we are seeing. Relativism has taken more and more root amongst the rank and file, and in fact is being absorbed from our culture by our children and is even taught directly to them. Why are we surprised when young people then produce what amounts to sociopathic behavior, like this behavior in Florida?

Then you have the wilding event a couple of years ago in Central Park, New York, where a woman was severely beaten and raped by young men who were "wilding." Statistically, every once in a while you are going to find somebody who is just morally weird, who has no moral conscience whatsoever. But it's not likely that all of these strange cases are going to show up in one group at one time. No, what happened in the wilding event in New York City a few years back and this thing down here in Dade County near Miami Beach in Florida is sociopathic behavior exhibited by a group of people.

My point here is that this behavior wasn't a result of some bizarre abnormality each of these people was born with. These kids are learning this behavior. They are learning it's okay to do whatever you want. They are learning that values are entirely up to them and are completely subjective, that there is no absolute morality.

How are they learning that? We are teaching them. And this is why you can do a poll like the one of young people just after the Los Angeles riots, and you can ask them, "How many of you would have stolen something if you knew you wouldn't have gotten caught?" And a statistically significant amount said, "I would have." I think it was something like one-third to two-thirds who said they would do that.

Young people's morality has been reduced to mere pragmatism. In other words, don't do it because you'll get caught. Don't do it because you'll get punished. And if you don't get caught and you won't get punished, well then, why not?

I was at some Little League baseball games a couple times over the last few days. I don't go to these games as a habit, so it was interesting to hear when the ball went out of bounds and flew down the hill the announcers say, "If you return the ball, young kids, we'll give you a free candy bar from the snack bar." And one of the older men that I was sitting with said, "Gee, some things never change." So apparently this is the same thing that was said when he was a kid, too: Return the ball and we'll give you a candy bar. It got me thinking.

Isn't the virtue of being honest reward enough for returning the ball? Is it worthwhile for us to teach children that virtue is it's own reward? That sounds so quaint it is almost embarrassing to say such a thing. But is it worthwhile to teach young people that doing things that are honest, even if it costs you immensely, is worthwhile in itself? It has intrinsic value in itself and one ought not be honest merely for the pragmatic reason that when they are they will get something in return that has value, like a candy bar. Rather the act of giving the ball back in itself ought to be fulfilling.

Now, I want to tell you something honestly for me. I want to say that, thanks to the Lord, that this has been a product of being a Christian for 20 years. That's really true to a great degree for me. There are things I enjoy doing because they are virtuous. That isn't to draw attention to me. It's simply to make the point that such a thing is possible.

For those of you who are out there saying, "Gee what do you mean enjoy doing virtuous things? Come on! I mean let's get real here."

Well, I am real. I'm entirely real. I think that virtue is rewarding, but that idea has to be taught because it doesn't usually just sprout on it's own. Why? Because there are other things that are sprouting in that garden of moral conscience that need to be weeded out.

Nowadays, unfortunately, not only are they not being weeded out, the weeds are being fertilized and what is being weeded out is genuine moral sensibility.

Greg Koukl is the president and founder of Stand To Reason, author, and radio show host.

© Stand To Reason 2008
STR trains Ambassadors for Christ in the areas of knowledge, wisdom, and character.

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