On Wed, Feb 18, 2009 at 4:07 PM, Simon Biggs <[email protected]> wrote: > Without relativism there would be no argument.
With relativism there is no argument, because there is nothing to argue about. We can continue in our solipsistic bubbles regardless of the screams and shouts from outside, safe in the knowledge that we don't believe in pins. In this land of cockayne the shark's truth-claim that it is eating me this morning has no bearing on my truth-claim that I will be sunbathing this afternoon. > The inquisition was over long ago (I hope). You've clearly not failed to support a boycott of Jewish-owned cultural institutions recently. ;-) > I also think it is possible to be anti-Zionist and not racist. I think it is possible to oppose specific negative actions (or sets of actions) by *all* states based on principle without needing a special word for just *one* state based on the history of a people. When discussing "anti-Zionism" and talking about Jewish domination of the media or of US foreign policy or of New York (or of all three at once) and the unique awfulness of Israel's foreign policy, and using individuals who fit these memes as the subject of cartoons and business boycotts, "anti-Zionism" is indistinguishable from something less savoury. > Zionism and > Judaism are not the same thing, although some would have us believe they > are. This project for example. > Mostly they are people lobbying the US government on their policy in > the middle-east. Not living in the US, my experience is that mostly they are non-Jewish political and religious extremists who need a word they can use to express certain opinions in polite company. > My ex-wife was Jewish (and proud to be). She considered Israel to be a > European landgrab of Palestinian territory off the back of a failed British > foreign policy. She was also a British, American, South African and > Australian citizen, so her capacity for a pluralism incorporating difficult > to reconcile views was a necessity for her own cultural survival. And yet she was never physically in America, Britain, Australia and South Africa at the same time. ;-) Sometimes truth-claims compete at the same point in space and time and have a material effect on real individuals in the real world. They cannot hold simultaneously or be pushed out into different frames of reference. There must be some larger context for resolving those claims justly. Relativism cannot provide that context, it serves only to excuse might-makes-right. If people actually believe in relativism (by which I mean believe in it for themselves rather than for everyone else), why say it is bad that children died in Operation Cast Lead? Why say we should protest? Where in our terribly sophisticated ideology is the Archimedean point or the hors-texte from which we pronounce that out of all the infinite infinities of incommensurable truth-claims, this one is actually *true*? It's just people's opinions, after all. - Rob. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
