Moral Relativism in America

So I haven’t posted in 21 days. I think I’ll post more frequently but shorter posts. Anyway, I said this would be about Emerson. For those of you who don’t know, Ralph Waldo Emerson was a 19th century American author who had some whacky beliefs. He is the author of “Self-Reliance” and a number of other humanistic works of literature. He was a great proponent of Transcendentalism, the philosophy that great truth was realized by one’s intuition and not through established religion. He was an influence on Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau (the land Thoreau lived on while writing Walden was owned by Emerson.) That’s just a little bit about the man. He believed in nature as an avenue to “great truth”. He hated established religion and the idea of a universal truth; Which brings me to my point. I am of the opinion that Mr. Emerson’s influential writings are a contributor to the moral relativism we now have. Observe this quote:

Speak what you think today in hard words and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance", 1841

This is the attitude of people today. Truth is what feels right, and whatever feels right is truth. Today’s truth isn’t tomorrow’s truth; at least that’s not how it feels. It doesn’t matter if you contradict everything you said today, because if it is right for you, then it doesn’t matter what was right yesterday. This philosophy is a self contradiction, of course, and no society can function normally with it. It is horrifically unstable and will trip you up when you least expect it. Well, that’s all for now.