'No, I disagree with you on this one.  Moral relativism is real, and implies that any course of action is ok, because in the end, nothing matters.  New Age people use this sometimes to somewhat smugly say things such as "it doesn't matter if one is a mass murderer or chooses a dark path, because we are all here to learn, and eventually, that soul will see the light."   They also argue that those killed or maimed will really be ok, because we are simply immortal spirits at play and nothing can really harm us.

Various religious and non-religious groups have taken up there on form of moral relativism - the most prominent being the British mystic Aleistair Crowley, who developed his own religious system called Thelema - whose philosophy was "do as thou will." 

My explorations and intuition and that of many others seems to support the idea that love is at the root of all consciousness and life (whether we see it or not).  This may of course be a belief system, but it is more a fundamental one, not a complicated belief.  If true, it does set up what is known in major religions from buddhism to christianity as "right thought" and "right action."  That which will lead you closer to love (and God) then necessarily becomes "good."  Don has written about this as well on this site.

If PUL is the foundation of our being, then there is both and order and a "good" action, even in general terms.  This blows apart the theory of the moral relativists who may see causing pain and misery as simply "exploring your dark side," as if it were a hobby that we drop when we feel like it.   

So this is why moral relativism rings so wrong to me.  If there is no "good," then nothing matters.  There is no love or PUL as we've talked of if moral relativism applies.'

Hi Mathew,

I think I need to clarify what I mean when I talk about moral relativism as I understand it can be an emotive issue. My conception of moral relativism is simply that it means morality varies between time and place, but I don’t see it as incompatible with the idea of PUL. For me the key thing to understand is morality is dependent on consciousness which I would argue becomes increasingly attuned to PUL as it evolves. A static morality, to me, would indicate a static consciousness and hence no growth. I think PUL is an important concept but the key word in the phrase is unconditional. If we look at how the idea of God’s love has changed over the centuries from a very conditional fear-based conception (if we don’t worship Him we get smitten) to a much more unconditional idea where real love has no strings attached – its just the way the Universe is constructed. So as consciousness evolves morality changes.

Now to the more thorny issue of whether this notion justifies either directly evil acts or apathy. Again I believe our thoughts and actions are indicative of our consciousness ( i.e PUL attunement) and again as our consciousness evolves our actions become more loving in nature - therefore by definition an unloving act comes from a lower consciousness level. I think this is a case of actions speak louder than words in that a person may consider themselves evolved/wise but their actions betray their real conscious state. People who deliberately hurt others and say that ‘they are exploring their dark side’ are attempting to justify their actions and deluding themselves.

I agree with you that ‘good’ and ‘bad’ exist in that the former is closer to PUL than the latter but unless we think we are the endpoint of consciousness (very unlikely and fortunate as further growth would be impossible!) we are the ‘bad’ when compared to a more PUL attuned consciousness and like a child developing motor skills we need to be ‘bad’ before we become ‘good’. We would’nt normally condemn the child with poor motor skills although we urge and help them to develop good ones; I suppose this is a bit like the Christian notion of ‘hating the sin and loving the sinner’. Certainly if you look back over human history we have all sinned but I think that the important thing is that enlightenment comes from within and cannot be imposed from outside which is why pointing out 'the speck in the eye of the other' is so ineffective.

D