this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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Is he saying the first point is wrong or just that it conflicts with the second?
That it conflicts. He's saying that if you believe that morality is relative and every person/culture has the difficult task of defining their own, it's ironic to be so aghast when people have reached different conclusions than you.
Setting aside the unshakeable part, morality should be somewhat rigid. While relative, that doesn't mean morality can or should change on a whim.
It seems like that tension between those things (which I'd expect are natural intuitions that many people experience) would be a foundational principle in ethics. Is it? Is that the joke?
That it conflicts with the second viewpoint.
What’s even funnier- is the amount of people in the comments here that perfectly illustrate the humor in the post without even understanding why.
I don't see the problem. One can have unshakeable moral values they believe everyone should have while acknowledging those values may be a product of their upbringing and others' lack of them the same.
What about the last part: "viewing disagreement as moral monstrosity?"
I believe abortion is moral. I believe people who disagree are morally monstrous. I can also understand that their beliefs on whether abortion is moral or not can be a product of their culture and upbringing. What am I missing? Why is this odd?
It's the kind of thing professors say when they want to go viral on some fascist platform.
Kids thinking anything goes while also being incredibly close-minded is not new.
*humans
There are no adults in the room.
Im 50. The only difference between me and a 12 year old is cancer scares and a bit more wisdom due to experience. Im convinced this is true for most people.
I see no paradox here. Yes, the rubrics change over time, making morality relative, but the motivation (empathy) remains constant, meaning you can evaluate morality in absolute terms.
A simple analog can be found in chess, an old game that’s fairly well-defined and well-understood compared to ethics. Beginners in chess are sometimes confused when they hear masters evaluate moves using absolute terms — e.g. “this move is more accurate than that move.
Doesn’t that suggest a known optimum — i.e., the most accurate move? Of course it does, but we can’t actually know for sure what move is best until the game is near its end, because finding it is hard. Otherwise the “most accurate” move is never anything more than an educated guess made by the winningest minds/software of the day.
As a result, modern analysis is especially good at picking apart historic games, because it’s only after seeing the better move that we can understand the weaknesses of the one we once thought was best.
Ethical absolutism is similarly retrospective. Every paradigm ever proposed has flaws, but we absolutely can evaluate all of them comparatively by how well their outcomes express empathy. Let the kids cook.
To add to this, morality can be entirely subjective, but yeah, of course if I see someone kicking puppies in the street I'll think: "That's intrinsically morally wrong." Before I try to play in the space of "there's no true morality and their perspective is as valid as mine."
If my subjective morality says that slavery is wrong, I don't care what yours says. If you try to keep slaves in the society I live in as well I want you kicked out and ostracized.
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