To paraphrase the sage: “If you don’t believe in anything you can believe in everything.”
And in a society that has accepted moral, or ethical relativism, where there is no absolute, then you can base your life on a “Seinfeld” episode if you want to.
And that is what a drug pusher in California did, according to the Associated Press.
“A convicted drug dealer in California ... cited his adherence to the holiday celebrated on a famous episode of “Seinfeld” to get better meals at the Orange County jail.
“The Orange County Register reported that Malcolm Alarmo King disliked the salami meals served at the jail, so he used his devotion to Festivus as a reason to get kosher meals reserved for inmates with religious needs.
“Keeping kosher is not one of the tenets of Festivus, which was depicted on ‘Seinfeld’ as celebrated with the airing of grievances and the display of an aluminum pole.”
Hey, it worked for a while.
The pusher got what he wanted for two months “before the county got the order thrown out in court.”
“Festivus for the rest of us,” simply applies the Jell-o consistency of modern thought to a belief structure.
If one observer wants to be kosher, because that is convenient in his situation, that is what the belief calls for.
You can see where this would be headed.
Each person decides what he needs and then enforces it on the world around him, since it is the individual who is being worshipped.
When it was suggested on the sit-com it was intended to be another humorous observation about how self-centered our culture is becoming.
Hopefully the courts will continue to see that.
Sometimes absolute ethics don’t look so bad.
— Chuck Smith