system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Moral relativism is a dangerous, unwise, and practically impossible moral philosophy

So whenever I try to discuss morality on reddit, I always wind up with someone trying to persuade me that moral relativism is the best way forward. When I ask them why, they give a vague and generally meaningless answer about how it is the “most reasonable” approach to it, without any defending arguments. That doesn’t seem very intellectually astute, so I figured I’d go here, where intellectualism is at least sort of expected.

So anyways, moral relativism, from what I’ve seen, either says that right and wrong is determined by each respective culture, or that it is determined by the individual. Both of these concepts are not very well thought out, and have the potential to be very dangerous. Now, I’m not saying that SOME relativity in morals is bad, since some things are situational, like photographing someone. I am arguing against the people who say there is ABSOLUTELY no moral right or wrong. 

First off, personal moral relativism. So if everyone’s moral compass is only determined by themselves, then there would be no way to justifiably accuse anyone of doing anything immoral, because, according to their moral viewpoint, it was a “good thing” for them. As Socrates said, no one will ever do something that they thought would be without benefit. So if someone were to, say, crash an airplane into the Twin Towers, we could not justifiably say that they were wrong, because according to their moral philosophy, they were in the right. Under this philosophy, anarchy or tyranny be the inevitable conclusion, and the world would devolve into a Hobbesian hellscape.

So if we back up from that, and say that moral relativism should apply on a cultural level, and that each culture gets to decide on what is moral or immoral and other cultures don’t get a say, then you still run into roadblocks. When two cultures that interact regularly are met with clashing moral standpoints that they cannot reconcile with (slavery in America, Hitler oppressing large portions of Europe), then both groups would be forced to live under this constant pressure of pretending they were ok with the other group. This is bad for a society, and will eventually lead to either a lashing out of anger against the other, or an attempt to separate from the other (American Civil War, WWII). It would also mean that the actions of a country would be entirely justified, no matter what they did, because there would be no objective rules to govern them. War crimes, terrorism, and destruction would quickly entail without objective morality on a cultural level, and we would fall into a Machiavellian world of constant bloodshed and a might means right society.

The last thing wrong with moral subjectivism is that it is completely paradoxical. If there was someone who was morally subjective, that would mean he would not want others to enforce their morals upon him. That means he is enforcing HIS morals upon everyone else, by saying that it is wrong for people to force morals upon him. So according to him, it is objectively wrong to say something is objectively wrong, which is entirely paradoxical. 

Objective morality is required of our culture to punish evil people and reward good people. When I hear people say that evil and good are just “subjective” and they have no meaning, i have a difficult time sympathizing with their argument because they are essentially affirming a paradoxical and completely incorrect philosophy, which doesn’t seem quite accurate to me. I honestly have an easier time discussing things with a flat earther than someone who is completely morally objective, because it has become so mainstream that people assume it must be right.

I feel like I’m being unnecessarily harsh against these people, but like I’ve said, I have never heard a good argument for it. If you have heard one, or can make a good one that handles all the issues I presented, please, try and change my view.
gpt
Moral relativism and cultural relativism are essential to disciplines like anthropology and sociology. 

If you want to understand how the morals of other societies and other cultures function, you can’t go in assuming that what they believe is wrong. You want to understand why they think it’s right, from their perspective. To do that, your own perspective will just get in the way.

And if it’s your own culture your studying, you don’t want to go in thinking that the way your culture does things is normal, because “we do it because it’s the right way to do things” isn’t a useful answer.

This isn’t to say that when the sociologist or anthropologist goes home, they have still keep up neutral, amoral viewpoint! Moral relativism is a really difficult way to view the world — people feel strongly about morals! Morals are values, and what’s more valuable to us that values? (We can even go post-structuralist here and ask what sort of values underlie moral relativism...)

So I’m not arguing that moral relativism is the right way to see the world *always*. But sometimes it’s the right way, depending on what you’re doing and what your goal is.