Quote:
On the micro-scale, moral relativism between beings within the same culture is simply an excuse to wallaow in immorality and thumb one's nose at convention. We exist in society at the mercy of the Social Contract - I agree to give up certain freedoms so that I may reap the rewards of membership within my chosen society. If I choose to live in America, then I must follow overall American morality.
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People violate the Social Contract all of the time... and a lot of people that don't violate the Social Contract don't do it because they feel morally obliged to, it is just easier to do that. Where do Thoreau or MLK fit into this theory. They broke the laws willingly for a greater moral issue in their eyes. People do this all of the time. You can claim that as a whole American culture has certain moral values, but those kinds of generalities can significantly ignore large parts of the population or attribute logic behind actions that have no basic moral inclinations behind them (i.e. mentally ill, when children make choices, when something unintentionally does something that violates their own morals, etc). Generalities ignore individual choices, and all people make choices about what they value and what they would do to support those values. Whether they simply adopt what everyone else does or not, doesn't matter. It is still a choice, and, as such, everyone essentially decides on their own what their morals are. To call differences between moralities of a defined macro-culture and people within a culture as "wallowing in immoralities" suggests that the macro-culture is always right. I find it hard to believe that anything created by people for peopel to live by are always right, or else we'd have a single world government by now, living in a bland distopia free from individuation.