In the way I perceive it, it says that any culture is as good as any other. Every pattern of society should be considered a social construction. I've been arguing a lot with people terming themselves "deconstructionists" because they want to free people from social constraints. But to me, the opposite of construct is destruct. To me the social relativists are the precursors of these destructionists. In Sweden we have this debate concerning Muslims and Jews. Those on the Muslim side call the others "islamophobs" and those on the Jewish side, call the others "antisemitists". Those on the Muslim side, says the it's just "social chauvinism" to say that a state based on democratic principles which propose human rights and so on, is better than a Islamic state proposing rule by Sharia. That's social relativism to them Human rights, democracy and the such, to them, is just a social construct. These "deconstructionists" on the other hand, seem just to hate everything in society. In Sweden they are left wing, and they love to use violence and vandalism against almost anything. They try to induce some kind of social uprising and the destruction of the state.
>From my former stance, however, I couldn't really debate them. Of course I could say to the deconstructionists, that without a state, most people living today would die, because they are materially dependent on the system. But what could I say to the social relativist? To me it doesn't matter if you celebrate Christmas, Pesach or Eid al-Fitr - in that case I could be "relativist". But what concerns the freedom of speech and such things, I can't even try to grasp it. I can try to "understand" how people living in other systems think, but I wouldn't like to call them "as right" as anyone else. Take, for instance, the speech made by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Lebanon recently. You could take any mentions of "God" and replace it with "the/our" social system, and it would still make perfect sense - it would make even more sense. Seen through the MoQ, these Islamists are fighting for the social systems supremacy over intellect - but according to MoQ it should be the other way around. Suddenly I have an argument against these relativist, who claims that it doesn't really matter. That freedom of speech and the such are just social patterns, as good as any other. /A -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of MarshaV Sent: den 28 oktober 2010 11:44 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] The Dynamics of Value /A, What is your definition of social relativism? Marsha Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
