n a strikingly perceptive remark, Pope Benedict XVI made the following observation: "We are moving toward a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as definitive and has as its highest value one's own ego and one's own desires".  I shall defend his remarks from a rather unsuspecting perspective, namely the precept that goes by what we refer to as the Golden Rule.  The very idea behind that rule is that there basic precepts accessible to all if only the individual would give the matter some thought.

And the idea was that there is no better indication of how we should treat others than how we would like to be treated by others.  My sense is that the moral force of the Golden Rule is on the verge of entirely vanishing from modern society.  In just about every area of society, we can see people treating others in that surely they would not like to be treated.  Here is a very simple example.  Time was that when a group of people were walking down the sidewalk engaged in conversation, while taking up the entire sidewalk, and there was a single person walking towards the group from the other direction, then some members of the group would step aside so that the single member would not have to move off the sidewalk in order to continue walking.  This was something that a group of people naturally did without giving the matter a second thought.  Not any more, however.  Time and time again: I have watched a group a people engaged in conversation continue to take up the entire sidewalk leaving the person walking towards them no choice but to move off the sidewalk in order to continue keep advancing along. 

One form of relativism is none other than the view that what counts as decent in how people should treat me does not hold in terms of how I should treat others.  Another version goes like this: “I can do whatever I want, but you owe it me to treat me decently”. 

It was not too long ago that people subscribed to the view that they had a moral obligation to treat others with a certain level of respect.  And this meant that there were things that one did not do to a person or in front of a person even if one could easily get away with doing them.  And, of course, moral excellence has to be just that, namely that there are things that one should feel profoundly moved to do even when one could get away with not doing them.  Or, conversely, there are things that one is absolutely disposed not to do even if one easily get away with doing them. 

We have none other than relativism in any society where a modicum of moral excellence, such as I have just described it above, no longer prevails.  And I take the very substance of Pope Benedict's point to be precisely the fact that this modicum of moral excellence no longer prevails.  Perhaps the most poignant way to make the point is that never has so much wrong been done and yet so few people have done anything wrong.  By contrast, when far fewer wrongs were committed in society, there were far more people who acknowledged admitting wrong. 

Or, to the point a very different way, a sense of moral contrition still prevailed in society.  Not everyone expressed the contrition in exactly the same way.  Some were public; others made meaningful gestures in the right direction. However, our sensibilities were such that we understand that those gestures were typically born of a contrite heart. 

Given the modest assumption that everyone wants to be treated rightly, what is the explanation for the fact that so few seemed inclined to treat others as they would like to be treated?  That is, why has the Golden Rule lost so much of its efficacy? 

The explanation, I believe, is owing to what I refer to as the O & T factor: anonymity and transiency.  There is an inverse correlation between the pull of the Golden Rule and the cloak of anonymity and transiency: as one goes up; the other goes down.  And interestingly, there can be considerably anonymity and transiency even if one person is not anonymous and transient.  It suffices that everyone else is. 

This tells us something quite sublime, namely that for most people, the moral sentiments require a rich social network in order for them have secure place in our lives.  Otherwise, most of us naturally revert to egoism.  A society of egoists is none other than hell on lots and lots of two feet.  By contrast, a society of individuals in whom the moral sentiments have a secure footing, owing to a social network, is one in which the Golden Rule naturally expresses itself. 

It may be that what distinguishes homo sapiens from all other animals is the extraordinary capacity that human beings have for rational reflection.  What is also true, however, is that what we regard as the rational thing to do can be very much tied to what we feel.  And we regard people as merely bits of flesh and bones, we simply do not have the same sentiment towards them as we do when regard them as a member of our social network. 

Putting words in Pope Benedict’s mouth: The problem of modernity, then, is how to keep altruism alive as a sentiment in an anonymous and transient world, and thus a world which by its very nature favors an exceedingly egoistic sentiment.  One thing is for sure, namely that the solution does not consists in merely reminding ourselves that we are rational creatures.  For what it is rational for any one person to do can, as game-theoretic arguments make abundantly clear, be inextricably tied to what others will do.  In this respect, egoism feeds on itself just as a society with the sentiments of the Golden Rule well in place feeds on itself. 

Anonymity and transiency were not genuine problems until the last 50 years of human existence.  It is, then, no accident that we have been so unprepared for these, and so the damage that they have wrought, namely the undermining of the basic sentiments of the Golden Rule.  Where egoistic sentiments loom large, the dictatorship of relativism prevail.