Cultural Relativism one year after Columbine

At some point before the senseless shooting massacre a year ago at Columbine High, I imagine that the following conversation probably took place:

A: You can't REALLY plot to kill them!
B: Why not?

It could have been between two of the students, it could have been over the internet or the telephone, or maybe even inside one of the killlers' own head. But I would bet that at some point, the taboo nature of plotting to kill your classmates and teachers arose and was shushed away.

Why was that taboo overcome? There's probably a bit of mental instability tossed into the causality cauldron, but there's also the power of that open-ended question "Why not?"

Taboos against killing people are woven into the fabric of our culture, rubbing fiber to fiber with other big and little taboos alike, whether it's not wearing white after Labor Day, setting the fork on the correct side of the plate, or not cheating on your spouse. And of course, each culture has it's own fabric, collecting together its own combination of big, medium and little taboos and putting them all, wholesale, into the realm of the unthinkable.

And yet, when people wrapped in all these different fabrics live together to make a nation such as America, the taboos come to the surface more frequently. Why is she wearing THAT? I would never wear my clothes/hair that way, raise my kids that way, paint my house that color - whatever it is. And in order to appreciate the beauty of a multicultural nation, the answer to the question, "What are they doing THAT for!?" has to be a jolly "Why not?".

But perhaps a nation can acquire the habit of asking that question a little too thoroughly, and perhaps that was vividly demonstrated in Columbine, CO a year ago. If you start questioning the taboos that have previously been in the realm of the unthinkable, how do you know where to stop answering "Why not?" After all, taboos by their nature aren't usually discussed...they are passed on in deed or hurried corrective words from generation to the next. They haven't been thought about, or talked about, and carefully weighed for their importance to continued happiness. That's assumed. So when cultural relativisim starts opening the door for some of our taboos to be questioned, what's going to stop it from answering "Why not?" to rejecting the REALLY important taboos?

Now don't get me wrong, because I'm quite a fan of cultural relativism. I'm writing this piece as a way of sharing an insight, even if it does cast a shadow on one of my favorite philosophies. I guess I advocate figuring out some way for us as a nation to stop answering "Why not?" quite so glibly to all the questions that life tosses up. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it should be done, and just because someone else does it doesn't mean it's right. Don't we all learn this in Elementary school? We need to forge an effective alloy out of the cultural mettle our melting-pot nation has brought together. Somewhere, somehow, as a nation we ought to figure out what actions are taboo and what values are held across our variety of cultures and opinions, and for the big things, like killing each other, get lots of practice in saying to each other "Because it's not right."