In A. S. Neill's Summerhill, a book about the libertine boarding school he created (all rules voted upon by students), he mentions that he never asserted "the rules" or "the right thing" over the will of a child. Once, he'd planted a garden with potatoes, and come spring he found them all dug up. In the book, he says he threw a fit, and lectured the children. He goes on to say that this was not a case of his forcing "the right thing" on them, but more a case of personal courtesy, "because they were my spuds."

The curious thing about the human mind is, it is driven by values, which it holds in itself like photographs, objects of consideration. To dig deeper, let me define values as whatever a body moves towards:

If you see a person slaving away, carving a hollow in a log, you might say it's because s/he "wants" to have that hollow in that log. If a leaf falls toward the ground, you might say, "it wants to be lower." Electrons, of course, want to be far from other electrons. If a society deposes a leader, you might say it wants to have a different leader. If it bakes good bread, you might say it wants to have good bread. These are goals, or values.

The fall of the house of rationalism came with this consolation prize: that if there is no truth, at least we have values. We cannot act in the name of truth, but we can act in the direction of what we value. Thus, "Hard work and perserverence bring reward," might not be "true," but nonetheless hard work and perserverence are valuable things. Democracy might not be the one true way of life, but it may be something we value (remembering the history of feudal oppression), and thus feel justified in promulgating.

Yet moral relativism, if we take it seriously, destroys more than reason's house: it also destroys the house of values. I may want, say, to be able to sleep peacefully at night. But my neighbor may want to be able to crank his thundering bass at night. My neighbor's ethics may be perfectly consistent on their own terms, and the same with mine. What should privilege one set of values over the other, without an edifice of knowable truth to judge against?

This would be one matter if it were simply a difference among persons: my values versus my neighbors. But anyone can remember overturning some of his own values, stirred by an argument or an experience that threw things into a new light. And so, the curious thing about the human mind is, the values I hold today are paramount (for I pursue them, and nothing else)—and yet they are changable. A human is a machine for pursuing goals—values—and yet one of its fundamental capabilities is that of uprooting its own values. For some of us, it is a value in itself, this uprooting.

I am reminded of Douglas Hofstadter's brilliant imagination of a record player that can be given a record that produces a sound that shakes apart the very record player on which it is played. Our human mind seems to be such a creation: it begins life happily pursuing values, playing one record after another; at some point it is given the "special" record: it becomes introspective, and questions those values, trying to sort the "good" values from the "bad" ones. Eventually, it hits upon one simple idea: there is no bedrock on which to build this house, no way to sort values from one another. Its own mechanism (inquiry) has destroyed it, left it with no values, nothing to pursue.

And yet we continue to act. As if pursuing some values. Fresh bread?

Suppose a certain individual (call him "Calvin") sweeps aside these disturbing questions by saying, "Sure, nothing matters. Why worry?" But the happiness of Calvin's lifestyle comes only from meeting his values, whatever they may be, whether world domination or orange juice. Perhaps he's given up the kind of values that customarily come under the philosophical microscope. But he still holds some values, taken for granted. If Calvin counters that values are arbitrary, and that nonetheless, whatever values he happens to hold are legitimate goals, then there is no point hoping to reconcile one person's values against another: the only resolution to conflict is—well, whatever half-resolution you can find (!)

The value of fresh bread, why do I hold it? The value of talking through problems with my neighbor—why that? (this one is regularly called into question by working with 6-year-olds). How about the principle of relativism? Indeed, why does my mind have the capacity to strip itself of its own values, if all it wants in the world is to meet them—if in fact it's nothing more than a value engine?