Saturday, October 3, 2009

Relativism is for the Birds

If I may philosophize for a moment and posit that we are basically a herding people. The herd could be a natural evolved mechanism for protection and survival. We’ve all heard the phrase “there’s safety in numbers.” I was once observing pigeons at Euston station in London when I had an insight into flocking behaviour: should one pigeon circle your table, others will arrive, whether you are giving out bread or not. The other pigeons arrive because seeing one pigeon around you, there’s simply a chance you are giving out bread. Thus it’s worth a shot for the other pigeons to join in, just in case you might be giving out bread. Because in the animal kingdom, you must take all chances of getting food that present themselves, as second chances are rare and wrong decisions can mean death. However, the instinct to flock can also be observed in humans – probably instilled in us from nature for similar survival reasons. In people, this herding nature is manifested in many ways: in business and economic cycles of booms and busts, in mob mentality and the formation of cliques. It is a motivating force in our efforts to keep up with the Joneses and offers an explanation for the profound effect that advertising and the mass media can have on us. It is why we only have to see things on TV and we can feel compelled to purchase, attain, desire or imitate them. To satiate the ego by following the crowds swept up in the latest cultural trends. Our flocking nature can be a catalyst for good or bad, for our benefit or our loss, depending on which packs we decide to run with. It can help us understand the insidious force modern relativism has on our society.
However, for us to be free adults there is the requirement for us to have beliefs which do not follow the waves of today's fashions or the latest novelties. In order to be mature and free, we should try to resist the dictatorship of relativism and ensure that absolute and true values are not be eroded by the torrents of cultural and moral relativism.

The Culture Renaissance begins.

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