I think this is actually an incredibly huge philosophical idea to address, because I think a lot of people in society today seem content to live in a morass of relativity. The reasoning might go something like: because you and I see the world differently, the world must really not be a particular way, so there is no truth and everything is relative.
What a sad conclusion. I have not read much Nietzche firsthand, but I think that is part of his worldview. Einstein’s theory of relativity can be misapplied and therefore misunderstood here too, as it was mentioned earlier in this thread. Einstein never advocated relativity in the sense that there is no objective truth or reality! He never contended that E=mc*c only in Western patriarchial societies! His contention was that this THEORY would be universal, on all planets and througout all time/space. In fact, later in his life Einstein struggled to try and find the GUT (a grand unifying theory) which would bring together the four fundamental forces of nature (gravitation, electro-magnetism, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force.) He did not succeed, unfortunately, and we do not know if a scientist ever will, but my point here is that we should not oversimplify and misinterpret Einstein’s theory of relativity to support the general attitude within our early 21st century culture that rather vehemently supports the philosophy of relativism.
Last thought on this: there are many types of relativism, and moral relativism is the one I find the most repugnant. Taken to its extreme, moral relativism would allow an observer to conclude that ethnic genocide may be justified in some cases depending on the situational factors: it may be wrong for the Nazis to have exterminated the Jews in World War II, but fine for the Hutus to have exterminated the Tutsis in Rwanda in the early 1990s.
So I can’t pass up an opportunity to make a few comments about relativistic thinking and philosophy, especially when it is mentioned in relation to educational ethics. The fact that a philosophy of moral relativism violates the “law” of non-contradiction is also significant, I think– but I have probably said enough on this topic for now!
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On this day..
- Inspired by Innovative OKCPS Teachers and Students at Arthur Elementary School – 2018
- Using Google Reverse Image Search to Create a (late) Bibliography – 2016
- Podcasting Costs with Amazon S3 – 2016
- Show What You Know with Media (Feb 2015) – 2015
- Why Our Family Ditched AT&T and Joined T-Mobile: Huge Monthly Savings – 2014
- A Vision for Interactive Writing, Student Publishing, and Digital Portfolios in the Classroom – 2013
- Where to Start with Technology Integration in Oklahoma? – 2012
- We’ve Only Just Begun (to share our voices with media in Yukon Schools) – 2012
- Piano Scales? There’s an App For That! – 2011
- Creative Commons and Flickr – 2010