In this week’s class, we talked a lot about the Red Badge of Courage as well as the ideas of ethics. There were many things The Red Badge of Courage illustrated at war that made me think about the similarities of war today. To start, in the beginning of the novel, Henry joins the war because he feels as though being a solider would bring him honor. His motivation to join the war and his expectations were very different than the brutal reality that he soon experienced. Henry did not realize the pure extent of blood and death that war encompassed. This is in some ways similar to today and our perceptions of war. In today’s society, people who are not in the military do not fully understand what it is like to be fighting and living in a combat zone. War is almost some gory whimsical land that people can only imagine what it is like. Now with video games like Call of Duty, people are desensitized to the brutality of war because they feel like they know what it is like based off what they see in the game. To some people, war is just like the game of Call of Duty. However, people in the military or those who live in war zones realize the realities of war just like Henry did.
We also went in depth about the basics of ethics and the different forms or theories of it. In my ethics class, we also learn about different ethical theories, how to apply ethics, and ways to analyze scenarios that have moral dilemmas. However, one topic that truly intrigues me is the topic of cultural relativism. It made me realize that there is a large amount of different cultures around the world that all value different things. There are laws that are based off these cultures and religions that are unalike to the others. In this sense, there is no universal ethics or moral guidelines that everyone follows or must follow. In this regard, one cannot judge another cultures morals or guides to ethics. Maybe this is why there is still so much turmoil and violence between countries and cultures. Cultural Relativism makes it almost impossible to establish universal ethical and moral guidelines and therefore there is always an excuse to have violence.