Is Relativism Good?

As we know, Indonesia is a big country which has many kinds of society with many kinds of norms. Actually, each society has fellows within everyone has different ideas. It makes them be called as an individual creature. An individual with individual thoughts and actions will determine whether or not he is correct in his choices. No one may ever know what right or wrong is. Then, what is ethical relativism anyway? Ethical relativism is of a mind to say that whatever one's culture says is right is the right thing for him or her to do. In this case, we believe that relativism is unfair. The reason is that one of the famous proverb which tells about how unique human is. It is different pond, different fish. Then, based on this proverb, we can get two topics about the ethical relativism, they are about society and individual norms.

First of all, let us talk about the society norms. As human being, we think that there is not a variety of many different and diverse cultures without different cultural practices and hence different moralities. In this case, we can say that every society wherever they are obviously has different norms. It is caused by having different situations of their life environments, such as the society who lives around the coast and the society who lives in the country near the mountain. They will have different sight or point of view to solve problem, especially how to fulfill their daily needs. From that point, we get the differences of sight for the simple thing, but how about the limitation of the individual right which is controlled by the society norms. We think that there is no fair in that kind of case because human right has been guaranteed by the government.

Besides that, everyone has right to live based on their ideas and morals as an individual.  For the following, human live not only as the fellow of a society but also as an individual with the  individual thoughts and actions who determines whether or not he is correct in his choices. From that statement, the point of view that we get is every individual has different norms applied in their life based on what they have, what they know or even what they think about life. Then, by using that side, we realize that the individual norms are based on the moral of each individual because it is that different idea of life will raise the different moral in each life of the individual.

In short, we believe that our disagreement about the ethical relativism is true because of several reasons that will begin from the proverb different pond different fish. As what we talked about above, we have to respect the others’ norm because everyone has different ideas.  

Written by

Mega Astya

Umi Nadirotun N

Risky

Trisna