The Poison of Subjectivism

This reading was the most confusing for me so far. I had some serious trouble following his thought processes, but I still found a few things that made a great deal of sense to me. Early on in the essay he says that "Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring." I thought it was great that he said that before his real argument, because while it is so obvious and fundamental, it is so easily forgotten. Once he gets into the essay he writes that "Except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible." That jumped out to me because it made me realize the general meaningless of the lives we lead. We need to wake up and realize that the path we are on really is not leading us anywhere, and not get caught up with the things in life that amount to absolutely nothing. We need to completely throw out the idea and importance in progress. Though, that is not to say that I condone advances in health and science and the things that improve our lives and help to take care of our world. We are just to obsessed with making so called progress.
Another thing that caught my eye was when he said that "If we once admit that what God means by "goodness" is sheerly different from what we judge to be good, there is no difference left between pure religion and devil worship." This made me wonder if what we know to be goodness is infact true goodness. I decided that it is not, which is kind of a saddening thought, because it is harder to say that we are doing the work of God when we don't know exactly what that may be in a given situation. Also, it somewhat scared me to think that we may be confusing God's work with the work of the devil. His conclusion to this essay was the thing I most want to remember. He said, "But give me a man who will do a day's work for a day's pay, who will refuse bribes, who will not make up his facts, and who has learned his job." I think that is the best advice anyone can have, when applied to themselves. Just imagine what the world would be like if everyone held themselves to some moral standard and did not waver.