Relativism

-Relativism has brought mixed blessings to ethics and morality.

-In one sense it represents a serious threat to the very idea of morality.   In another sense it alerts us to some common faults in our own thinking about moral issues.

-There is a belief that a failure to recongize the diversity of moral values that exists with and between cultures can lead us to potentially more dangerous ways of thinking and potentially harmful laws, policies, and practices emerging from those ways of thinking.
- Some would argue that relativism is only a short step away from an anything goes attitude in which morality can no longer serve as a foundationor point of reference for happiness, social health, and relations in general.
-Relativism allows us to see that different laws, rules, customs, practices, and beliefs may be entirely at odds with one another, but yet work equally well for different groups of people.  
- It allows us to see that not everyone lives like we do, they don’t have the economic standards, educational advancements, and the same social settings that we take for granted.   So in light relativism allows us to look at them with an open mind and the intentions of not judging them because of there differeneces in culture and society as a whole.
- A huge component of relativism is ethnocentrism.  

-Ethnocentrism refers to a way of perceiving the world and all aspects of the world from the perspective of ones own culture or social group. It is the view that one particular ethnic group is somehow superior to all others. The word ethnocentrism derives from the Greek word ethnos, meaning “nation” or “people,” and the English word center. A common idiom for ethnocentrism is “tunnel vision.” In this context, ethnocentrism is the view that a particular ethnic group’s system of beliefs and values is morally superior to all others.

- Some examples of Ethnocentrism in our everday lives are as follows-   military groups. They use ethnocentrism to train new...