By D.S. Cook for Apostoic Venn.
In the previous article we saw that nature has zero tolerance for incompatible diversity. Oil Separates from water, ice cannot coexist with lava, wolves and sheep do not negotiate shared pens. To label this iron law a mere failure of tolerance is not just silly, it’s the tantrum of a child who believes shouting at gravity will let him fly. Nature doesn’t negotiate, and it certainly doesn’t care about our feelings. The human will, for all its swagger and lofty ambition, remains firmly beneath natural law, not above it. If you’ve not yet read Part I, stop doing this and start doing that. I’ll wait.
But modern man, drunk on the slogan “diversity is our strength” refuses to stop at defying physics and shouting down gravity. No, that’s rookie stuff. He has attempted even the next, more fatal step, as if the first were not impossible enough. He insists that we must diversify not only in direction and essence, but in morality itself. Enter Protagorean relativism, the new creed of the kids jumping off of refrigerator tops (my big brother’s attempt to defy gravity). Those who read my pieces regularly will have come in contact with the nefarious nincompoop philosopher Protagoras, who is the patron secular saint of the theory of moral relativism. “Man is the measure of all things” he posited, suggesting that there is no right, there is no wrong, there is only perspective and angle. Right and wrong are just flavors of ice cream… pick your favorite, no judgement here. No objective measure exists at all, per his own standard, and therefore there is nothing to measure whether Protagoras was right. It must be taken on belief, a Faith, not a Science. (See “Is Speech Violence?” on Apostoic.com). And in this faith, there is but one remaining sin: To judge another’s ice cream flavor.
Foray into any heated X thread or Facebook group, and you’ll harvest a thousand fervent believers in ten minutes flat. Yet, I defy you to find even one human being who actually behaves as if this is true. Beliefs and actions are one, and not a soul on earth truly buys moral relativism.
Watch the same voices who preach “no objective morality” suddenly discover absolute evil when a corporation pays a woman a dollar less than a man, or when someone misgenders a stranger, or the newest racial slur repurposed five minutes ago slips out (See Nominal Conquest Fallacy on Apostoic.com). You see, the relativist has not abolished moral law. He has merely relocated it. He has not torn down Mount Sinai, he has merely packed it up in the rented U-Haul of social repetition, trucked it several hundred miles leftward, and set it firmly in the ground once again. His new stone tablets are merely etched with the moral law of whichever imperious high priest of tolerance is trending this week. The illustrious Mr. Protagoras is only invoked as a battering ram against the old moral order, but he is quickly abandoned the moment the new tablets are broken. This, dear reader, is not principled relativism, but tactical nihilism in the service of a new absolute, not in the abolition of absolutes.
The Stoics smelled this scam from miles away. Epictetus warns: “Do not be deceived: every vicious action is a step away from nature.” (Discourses 3.24.90). For the Stoic, living according to Natural Law is living according to reason and virtue, which are the same everywhere and always. There is no Thracian virtue opposed to Greek virtue, no slave virtue opposed to master virtue. To admit a plurality of contradictory moral ends is to abandon the Logos that orders the cosmos and the country alike. Once that center is lost, the hive has no shared understanding of what is “good for the bee,” and every bee, with one action, is a traitor to the bee on his left and a hero to the one on his right.
Scripture is even less diplomatic. “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). The inversion of good and evil is not presented by Scripture as a legitimate alternative culture, or a personal preference of whether to defend the helpless or dismember them in the womb. “Whatever man! You do you.” (Die-saih 4:20). No, it is presented as moral insanity that not only invites divine judgment, but for which divine judgement is promised. When a society diversifies its gods, it inevitably diversifies its morals. And if Protagoras is wrong, as every woman and man on earth proves by evidence of action, then moral diversity means: first the acceptance of “annoying quirk,” then the tolerance of “kinda disgusting,” and finally the welcoming of “full-blown evil,” all while insisting that the slide is uphill. In order to permit these, calling good behavior evil becomes necessary. As the Overton window shifts, yesterday’s morality must be recast as today’s immorality.
There is no other way to go. The scales of Natural Law cannot tip both ways.
We’ve seen this script play out before our eyes a hundred times over. Yesterday’s unthinkable vice becomes today’s tolerated eccentricity, then today’s civil right, enforced by tomorrow’s curriculum, next week’s HR firing, and next month’s criminal charges. The UK has sprinted so far down this path that it is almost certainly doomed to the annals of failed nation-states; currently writing its own obituary. I hope and pray that it is not too late to change course in the United States. But, my fear of national suicide is far greater than my fear of losing my corporate job, friends, or invitations to polite social parties. So, I will continue to speak, and write, and beg you to share, until I am blue in the face or silenced, whichever comes first. If I go down, it will not be without swinging.
The relativist thinks he is adopting a harmless exotic pet, but he awakes to find a dragon sleeping in his bed. Child sacrifice in Carthage was not “another way of loving children.” Temple prostitution in Canaan was not “sex-positive culture.” And the things we are shamed into silence about today will be tomorrow’s mandatory celebrations, unless enough of us muster the spine to say, “Not every spirit is of God.” (1 John 4:1-5).
True diversity, as Part I argued, is the glorious multiplicity of gifts within one body, all serving the common good. But a body that decides the cancer cell is simply “differently alive” and welcomes it into full membership will not long celebrate its diversity. It will be too dead for parties.
The Stoics and the Scriptures agree: there is a nature that is common, a good that is objective, and an evil that is real. To pretend otherwise in the name of an ever-widening inclusion campaign is not tolerance, it is suicide by slogan. The hive thrives when every bee works for the life of the whole, according to the logos written in nature and confirmed by revelation. When we diversify beyond that logos; when we make room for what is vicious, predatory, or frankly demonic, we have ceased building a civilization and begun digging its grave.
Natural Law, the very finger of the Divine Logos Himself, will correct us. The only question is how much we are willing to lose before we spit out the poison being sold to us as medicine.
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