There Is No Ethical Relativism, But Anarchy And Fanaticism

I have heard so much about ethical relativism but somehow I still haven’t understood the meaning, contrary to what I previously thought. Therefore I am taking a step back to the Greeks when this way of defining ethics was proposed for the first time. The sophists were those philosophers who denied the existence of a supreme good to accommodate a new one: common (or relative) good. Other thinkers like Socrates and Plato never accepted this new philosophy and defined it as negative and dangerous: men were to find a point of contact that was satisfactory for everyone, no matter what the origins and the ideologies were. Now we would say that the Socrates were way too idealistic, while the sophists were more realistic because from our personal experience we have learnt that there is nothing that can be good for everyone. Using Saint Augustine’s idea, I’d say that it does good on a side, and less good on the other, if we consider the different grades of good. Today, even though we have adopted these ethical rules we have turned them upside down. I remember these philosophers saying that our personal good was to be sacrificed for the good of the entire community. I think that today it’s absolutely the contrary. There would be nothing wrong at all: after all men make the society, so happy men, happy society. However it isn’t like that. Had men have others in mind when they make their decisions, then there could be a correlation between the happiness of the individual and the happiness of the society. Instead there is a pure selfishness that leaves no space to anyone else if not to “Me, Myself & I”, so we can’t really talk about relativism. We are using the wrong word to classify a negative way of living and at the end we have stained a high ideology of life. This way of ours should be rather called fanaticism and anarchy: we are obsessed by happiness and we use any means to have it. There is no longer respect for legality and morality. While there is a price to pay whenever a law is broken, we are given almost complete freedom to make our moral choices. Maybe at this point religion could be the only way to refrain this impulse of man to make choices that are compromising to someone else, but I don’t think that’s necessary. I am not religious, but I still maintain the basic human principles. If I were to give a reason for this phenomenon, I’d say that whatever is happening today is the result of our inability to think. It seems to me that most people think more with their bodies than with their minds and they force their conscience to submit to their carnal needs. If we thought more, valued the advantages and disadvantages of every action of ours, there would be less inequality and more happiness. However, having this insatiable desire to have more than necessary and sufficient happiness to conduct a satisfying life, we deprive others of the minimum necessity to live happily. A good commander in a battle field before proclaiming a strategy against the enemies, make sure he has studied the ratio enemies killed and soldiers dead. He knows there is no joy in a victory whereby the battle has been won but thousands of families are morning, so as a leader he takes the responsibility of the lives of his men in his hands. If we, as well, were more responsible of others, there wouldn’t be such anarchy. A law is not necessary; common sense is more than enough, but we don’t think hence we’ll never understand. As much as I believe that, when a choice made by an individual strikes against him alone, there is no reason to worry, there are, however, choices of which consequences apparently are limited to the subject but when observed from a different perspective, they aren’t. Suicidal people aren’t the only to have lost something, but the family just like the entire Country has lost a member and a citizen. Maybe one in millions can be omitted, but in a family nuclear it’s devastating: even more when these people have their families as well. We don’t have any ethics today and that can be deduced from the meaning of the word itself: “Rules and norms that help a man to live peacefully in a community”. We are not living fine nor peacefully. We fight each other, we hurt each other, we don’t simply give a damn about others. How can we talk about Ethical relativism? The sophists lived relatively. All we have today is 100% pure ANARCHY.