Reflection of Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right from Wrong, by Christina Hoff Sommers.

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1. Do you think Sommers’ observations; “Conceptually and culturally, however, today’s young people live in a moral haze,” and that they, “are incapable of making even one confident moral judgment,” is generally/somewhat accurate- why or why not?

This article brought up new and interesting ideas that I have been contemplating a lot on recently. The idea that Sommers mentions closely relates to my interpretation of relativists today. In society today there is a strong pull towards relativism. The belief that anyone and everyone can believe whatever they want without using any means of moral guidance from outside forces. The individual can structuralize and create his or her own moral compass. As long as the actions that any given person commits do not inflict harm on others, then it is not right of anyone to impose judgment upon that person. This way of thinking is horrendous in my mind. They fact that my generation is inclined to this way of thinking disturbs me. With the absence of moral guidelines that are not objectified, comes a corrupt society. Society will soon lose all sense of absolute truth and ethics if this way of thinking continues. Sommers illustrates this “relativism craze” perfectly in his observation.
In my experiences, people nowadays tend to believe that no concept of belief applies to everyone. Individuals create their own concepts to believe in. When confronted with criticism on their action of “beliefs” (I put beliefs in quotation because I believe that if this people reject the ideas of morals and right and wrong being applicable to all people, then anything they “believe” in is not actually a belief) they reply that no one person has the right to impose judgments on other peoples beliefs. I find ...

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...re were two aspects of the essay that I found particularly interesting. First, the prospect that there are people in today’s society that are questioning the horrific facts of the Holocaust was interesting to me. I was unaware of this until now. I think more people should become aware of this crisis. This is problematic. If people don’t see the Holocaust as factual events that took place, we loss the lessons we learned from the mistakes that were made. I believe that this problem should be approached and solved. The other interesting aspect was that of the “Hippie” relativist’s problem with hygiene. By ignoring society’s norms, these relativists suffered health problems. I was also unaware of this and believe it should be made aware to more people. If people knew of this effect relativism can have, they may be more inclined to have morals fitting to societal norms.

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