My high-school-sophomore son was grumbling as he read his world-history textbook. He pointed me to this sentence about the encounter between European and Mesoamerican civilizations.
The American Indian societies had many religious ideas and practices that shocked Christian observers, and aspects of their social and familial arrangements clashed with European sensibilities . . .
Advertisement
The text, World Civilizations: The Global Experience by Peter N. Stearns et al, was a little oblique about the nature of those ideas and practices. It mentioned human sacrifice but then rushed to add that “many of those who most condemned human sacrifice, polygamy, or the despotism of Indian rulers were also those who tried to justify European conquest and control, mass violence, and theft on a continental scale.”
The authors clearly wish to avoid the unpleasant details of Indian practices in their rush to condemn European depredations. A curious student would have to discover on his own that the Aztecs themselves claimed to have ritually sacrificed 80,400 people over the course of four days at the rededication of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlán in 1487. While this was probably bragging, historian Victor Davis Hanson estimates that at least 20,000 victims were sacrificed yearly. Most were slaves, criminals, debtors, children, and prisoners of war — the Aztecs fought to capture, not kill, so as to provide a steady stream of sacrifices. These were bloody and brutal, with the victim’s chest being sliced open and the still-beating heart pulled from the body.
When the topic of human sacrifice was broached in the classroom, my son reported that none of his classmates was comfortable condemning the practice as immoral. “It was their culture,” his classmates said. And it’s wrong to impose your values on someone else’s culture.
This is not a fluke. In Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood, Christian Smith and his co-authors recount the results of their decade-long study of a representative sample of Americans aged 18–23. Through in-depth interviews, they examined their subjects’ lives and concluded that an alarming percentage of young people are highly materialistic, commitment averse, disengaged from political and civic life, sexually irresponsible, often heavily intoxicated, and morally confused. In fact, the authors contend, they lack even the vocabulary to think in moral terms.
The products of a culture that dares not condemn even human sacrifice for fear of transgressing multicultural taboos, these young people are morally adrift.
Six out of ten told the authors that morality is a “personal choice,” like preferring long or short hair. “Moral rights and wrongs are essentially matters of individual opinion.” One young woman, a student at an Ivy League college, explained that while she doesn’t cheat, she is loath to judge others who do. “I guess that’s a decision that everyone is entitled to make for themselves. I’m sort of a proponent of not telling other people what to do.” A young man offered that “a lot of the time it’s personal. It changes from person to person. What you may think is right may not necessarily be right for me, understand? So it’s all individual.” Forty-seven percent of the cohort agreed that “morals are relative, there are not definite rights and wrongs for everybody.”
It goes beyond cheating or failing to give to charity. One young man who stressed “everyone’s right to choose” was pressed about whether murder would be such a choice. He wasn’t sure. “I mean, in today’s society, sure, like to murder someone is just ridiculous. I don’t know. In some societies, back in time, maybe it’s a good thing.”
The irony is that this supposed reluctance to make moral judgments is itself a moral posture. The young people in the study, like the authors of my son’s textbook, and much of the American establishment, believe that it is morally wrong to judge people harshly. (Except perhaps if it’s Western civilization in the dock.)
My son was most exasperated by the textbook’s suggestion that Western civilization’s response to other cultures was “complex” and that this was probably just as true of Chinese, Persians, and others. No, he protested, the only civilization that is self-critical at all is our own. Other world civilizations continue to express pride and even arrogance about their own histories.
Those who resist the self-flagellation that travels under the name multiculturalism are accused of chauvinism. But the withdrawal from any kind of judgment is yielding a generation of moral cripples.
Are the laws of physics different from one person to another? Can one say that gravity does not apply to him? And if the laws of physics apply to us all equally, why not economic or spiritual laws? All are ingrained in the universe we live in. Believing that we can jump off a building and float to the ground is just as deadly a belief as is moral relativism.
Great point. Also consider that they are loathe to tell other people if cheating, murder or other immoral acts are right or wrong, but they have no compunctions telling other people what to do with their money, how to buy health insurance, or where to send their kids to school. God forbid we have choices in those arenas, but go ahead and choose your own morality!
Millennials have very different ideas about plenty of things, as the recent Pew study pointed out. External Link
Mona,
What’s with this racist Aztecophobia you’re spreading? You attribute the actions of Aztecist Extremists to all Aztecs?
The great and peaceful faith of the Aztecs was hijacked by a tiny minority of Extremist Aztecist human sacrificers… and you stigmatize the entire Aztec religion and culture? Surely you know it was just a tiny minority of Aztecist Extremists who twisted the Aztec faith to justify human sacrifice.
And no, I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being facetious and sardonic.
Mona,
What’s with this racist Aztecophobia you’re spreading? You attribute the actions of Aztecist Extremists to all Aztecs?
The great and peaceful faith of the Aztecs was hijacked by a tiny minority of Extremist Aztecist human sacrificers… and you stigmatize the entire Aztec religion and culture? Surely you know it was just a tiny minority of Aztecist Extremists who twisted the Aztec faith to justify human sacrifice.
And no, I’m not being sarcastic. I’m being facetious and sardonic.
I think you missed the point, which is that our education in America has a great loathing of self. When you look at our history in the light of others we really dont look so bad "relitivly speaking". The observation is that the Aztec population allowed thousands of people to be sacrificed. This cannot be done without the assitance of tens of thousands.
My comment is not about Aztecs at all. It uses the words "Aztecs" and "Aztecism" as oblique ridicule of a more contemporary refusal to judge. Think... what are we always hearing is really peaceful but has been hijacked by a tiny minority of extremists?
But my comment is not entirely about Islam either. The intent of my comment was to ridicule the fashionable refusal to value or judge anything but the refusal to value to judge. I'm mocking antiethnocentricentrism. Antiethnocentricentrism is a worldview centered around one's opposition to enthocentrism. It is a worldview in which the only value the holder will admit to valuing above any other values is the value of not holding any values higher than others. The only judgements the antiethnocentricentrist will admit to making is the judgment that it is wrong to judge and that ethnocentrism is inferior to antiethnocentricentrism (with generous exceptions made for ethnocentrisms centered on ethnos that are exotic, mystical, and "authentic" in ways that are obviously primitive and inferior in the eyes of Western ethnocentrists.)
Since some things are true and some things are good, antiethnocetricenrism is not only silly, but also evil. But you already knew that. Maybe my little joke about it was confusing.
It's a slippery slope, one day you are sitting around having no convictions, no standards and no values, and someone walks up and takes your lunch money. It's hard to condemn them for a personal choice. If you do voice concern over their actions and "judge" them, you might find yourself uncomfortable with your state of mind and seek counseling.
I think it was someone here on NRO that said something to the effect of "Yes, I judge other people. I judge them because I have values."
Moral relativism is an intellectual act of cowardice. There is a conscious attempt to disregard reality and create a false narrative. Since perceptions determine preferences, which dictate performance. The standard Liberal position of first providing a preferred answer and then rearranging facts to support that answer is inherent in the relativist position.
Few people are more ready to condemn Aztec culture than I am, and I would put in a word against all sorts of lesser vices practiced by Mesomarican, Peruvian, and indeed North American Indian traditional cultures. I can't say I would care to have grown up in the precolonial Five Nations, let alone been captured in war by them. Makes the Old World cultures of thousands of years earlier look genteel.
At least the contemporary Europe of Cortes' day gave you a show trial [sometimes a real trial, where you could be acquitted, even by the Inquisition] before burning and torturing you.
I don't mean that as flippancy, either. Even the cruel Europe of that day had more than a few moral advantages over some of its opponents.
If the Aztecs had had it in them to develop technology even comparable to that of early modern Europe, they'd have been a nightmare.
I concur entirely with Charen's broader points that it IS possible to make moral judgments about cultures, and that more broadly still we ought to be upholding some standards in our own.
But as a matter of teaching young people about human history and the human condition, and even about moral truth, it actually is worth teaching them a bit of relativism under better controlled conditions. With teachers able to give them proper context.
Because in understanding the human past, present and future, it is worth knowing that values have not been universal, and are not universal now. They might need to know that to understand an enemy one day. The idea that humans possess immortal souls, of eternal and fundamentally equal value, is Christian. Arguably, Judeo-Christian. Others have not and do not believe that. Many eastern religions have other virtues and see some commonalities across the various strata of humanity, but not the same way. The human norm most of the time has been to see those outside the faith, race or tribe as varying degrees of inferior, down to cattle. Or as inferior due to some instrumental reason, like having been defeated in war. Or as valuable only according to situational conditions.
We ought to teach our young the values of our civilization, why we believe them to be both true and universal, and why we ought to apply them universally. But we do not equip our young properly if we teach them to expect everyone else to agree with all that, or that everyone ever did.
And, worth noting also that the moral law is not the physical law.
In physics, professionals have been bracing themselves for a long time to accept that there could be regions of space where the laws vary from what we know to be true here. They then will aspire to tease out the deeper laws that unify them. They might succeed. That won't be true of moral law.
I want to be as down with natural law as anyone, and normally am when the term is defined properly as it has been used by philosophers. But one often now hears natural law conflated with mere law of nature, meaning that which can be construed by physical observation of nature.
If that is the meaning, then Christian values obviously cannot be construed from nature. Nature is nonsentient and unconscious, therefore cannot even rise to the level of being called indifferent. But based on its daily operations, if it were sentient it would be a chaotic blend of tender sentiment, contemplation and fantastic cruelty of both the systematic and arbitrary kinds.
On those grounds, one might actually call Aztec society natural law-based.
It would seem to me that you are trying to equate every native American tribe with the Aztecs as sacrificing human beings.
And trying to minimizing the destruction of all of the native American countries (for that is what they were) by Europeans intent on plundering treasure and making slaves by Europeans like Cortés.
So please save the moralizing for a more appropriate subject than European avarice.
It all comes back to the same thing. There is no equality of outcome when it comes to philosophy. Profoundly differing philosophies will produce a clash. Confidence in your creed or philosophy gives you strength when trying to defend yourself.
The article isn't decrying the morals of the natives so much as it's decrying the lack of support for traditional western values. It's true that the Aztecs were brutal. They were brutal to other native tribes before Europeans ever showed up. The Iroquois wiped out the Cree Indians. The Iroquois and the Apache's entertained themselves as a community by watching grotesque torture. The Mohawks and the Iroquois engaged in cannibalism. The Iroquois routinely attacked and slaughtered surrounding tribes. They particularly enjoyed killing the Huron Indians. The Seneca Indians wiped out the town of Deerfield, Massachusetts killing and mutilating women and children and the elderly as well as grown men. The Seneca Indians wiped out the newly settled town of Groton, Mass. killing 250 farming families in the mid 1600s. King Phillips war was started by a native chief against Puritan settlers who had a previously peaceful relationship with the native tribes in eastern Mass.
You really have to have a good handle on history before you make sweeping statements about anyone. My grandfather was the descendent of native Americans. I got this liberal trash in grade school, so I asked him if it was bad that Europeans came here. He told me that his ancestors lived in bark houses that were invaded by rodents and insects. Therefore, the whole village had to be burned and moved every few years. Toileting activities were done squatting in the woods. Winter being what it is in the Northeast, this was a miserable experience, especially for women. My grandfather said, "There's a lot to be said for indoor plumbing, and, you know, white people brought it here. History is what it is, and it's over. Besides, I have you."
Can you READ?
Seriously.
Is this what you got out of this little essay? Like it (I do) or not, your response has absolutely NOTHING at all to do with the author's language or intent.
AMAZING!! Truly amazing.
Lefties make clear moral judgements against all who disagree with them, labeling them 'evil'. Their level of hatred toward conservatives is as absurd as it is chilling. These are the totalitarians in our world, who force their own childish worldview and warped values onto everyone else via government fiat or through sheer harassment and pressure group warfare - all the while calling us the puritans. They are the hysterical witch hunters, moral busy bodies and dividers in society, and the only thing these little egomaniacs understand is their own inconvenience.
It's surprising that most of the comments miss Mona's big point (which isn't about Aztecs). A generation has been raised to believe that there are no absolutes, particularly with right/moral and wrong/immoral, and apparently most believe what they've been taught. And relativism is not unique to the U.S.; it's been becoming the norm in Western civilization for some time. This is bad, bad news for the future of not just this nation, but the Western world. There's little if anything that can be done with this lost generation, and if anyone thinks that there's something that can be done to correct this in subsequent generations, he's probably deluding himself. Reason #1 that, as Derb says, we are doomed.
“The products of a culture that dares not condemn even human sacrifice for fear of transgressing multicultural taboos, these young people are morally adrift.”
Well, Charen it is YOU and people like you who have made America a multicultural country. You’ve been a loud proponent of open borders, and invite the world. We’re flooded with other cultures, and with those cultures come the demand that we celebrate them all. It’s the natural outcome of anti-discrimination, the god of liberal America.
You reap what you sow.
Regarding the populating of North America, there is an over-riding consideration.That is, the strong will always move against the weak. If a people cannot or will not defend what they hold, they most certainly will be overrun. And whoever overruns that group will be stronger, whatever their other beliefs. They will only be lucky if they happen to be compassionate.
The Left had to abandon reason to move Marxism forward, the reasoned arguments were overwhelming. Postmodernism and moral relativism were the only ways they could move it forward. For forty years they have spread this in the academy and now you see its fruit. Until the academic institutions of Western Civilization are freed of these influences, they will continue this decline into madness. You are going to get a nice sample of this in these comments. Postmodernism is a toxin in the academic body.
"Through in-depth interviews, they examined their subjects’ lives and concluded that an alarming percentage of young people are highly materialistic, commitment averse, disengaged from political and civic life, sexually irresponsible, often heavily intoxicated, and morally confused."
Follow
