Relativism

‘There’s no objective truth; everything’s just a perspective, a point of view.’

Relativism stands for the idea that there are no objective truths.

So you can never be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, because there is no such thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

In fact, it’s hard to see how you can even be closer to the truth, because when there is no such thing as ‘right’, nothing should be ‘more’ right.

This is a very tempting idea, one that particularly appealed to me once.

I’ve often heard from people that they became ‘more accepting’ and ‘open-minded’ as they grew older, and realized that ‘everything’s “just” a point of view’.

Funnily enough, so far, I seem to have gone the opposite way.

The idea of relativism is something that I strongly disagree with now, where once I thought it was really wise and morally uplifting.

But it’s something I keep hearing and therefore this essay.

Against Relativism

Why is relativism usually fallacious?

In the first place, it’s self contradictory.

Someone who tells you there are no truths, or that all truth is merely relative, is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.

Roger Scruton

The statement ‘there are no objective truths’ contradicts itself, because it itself claims the status of objective truth.

Unless you believe there’s only one single objective truth in the entire universe, and coincidentally enough, that happens to be it. Never again will anyone find such a truth.

There’s no point searching either, because somehow, we know that this is the only truth, and everything else is mere ‘perspective’.

And the same way, ‘all truth is relative’ – except this one truth, this objective pearl in a relative world.

Relativism not only contradicts itself; it contradicts all notions of common sense.

Take it to its logical conclusion, and you can’t make any definite statement about anything.

Everything’s relative; nothing’s better or worse, only different.

Someone who truly believed that would claim a saint is no better than a sinner, Gandhi no better than Hitler.

Someone who truly believed that would say the Khmer Rouge or Nazi’s weren’t evil, their ideas were just one ‘perspective’.

And since there are no truths, only perspectives, and all perspectives are different and equally valuable, you couldn’t even condemn them.

Unless you accept that some perspectives are less valuable than others, which leads you down a path that takes you away from relativism.

Which perspectives are valuable? And how do we judge their worth, unless we have some objective standards to hold them up against?

Anyways, there’s no way to argue against a relativist, assuming you wanted to, because he could just wriggle out of it, since your argument is ‘just’ a perspective to him.

How Relativism Seduces

Why is relativism so tempting?

For one, because it’s an easy tool against any form of imposition or authority.

Anyone tells you that ‘this is how it should be done’?

You can always shoot back that that’s “just” their perspective.

“Just” a perspective, because perspectives are just that – opinions and nothing more. Nothing to do with objective facts, because there are none.

But the reason it’s even more seductive today is that relativism is an easy way to virtue signal, to position yourself on a moral high ground, to appear tolerant and open-minded, without actually doing anything.

No one’s wrong, no one’s worse, everyone’s correct, in their own way.

And anyone who doesn’t agree, who thinks that some ideas are better than others – better in the sense they correspond more closely to reality, to what is – is a narrow-minded bigot and intolerant.

It’s not surprising that one of the most patronizing things you’ll often hear is that ‘you’ll understand that no one’s wrong, everyone’s perspective is equally correct and valuable, everything’s just a point of view’ – usually ‘when you’re older, when you’ll “become more open-minded and accepting” ‘.

In the first place, ‘relativism’ doesn’t have a monopoly on open-mindedness. You can be open-minded without believing that ‘everything’s just a perspective’.

And secondly, it doesn’t require being tolerant and open-minded to believe in relativism.

Tolerance and open-mindedness are hard virtues to truly imbibe; it’s far from easy to accept things you don’t agree with.

While it’s the easiest thing in the world (and usually highly rewarding) to preach relativism.

Relativism is the refuge of laziness and cowardice.

Intellectual laziness, because you don’t ever analyze an idea on its merits, you don’t compare it to alternatives, you don’t critique it.

You don’t even engage with an idea if you are a relativist, because you’d simply parrot your ready-made formula that ‘this is one perspective, neither more valuable nor less than the million others’.

In a world of millions of competing perspectives, you’re never going to be able to engage with all. If you truly believe none are better than any other, you’ll end up treating them all equally – which means treating them cursorily.

To engage, you have to treat an idea with respect, to look at it as a unique item and not one of a crowd, to address it specifically, with a tailor-made approach designed for it and it alone, not a one-size-fits-all ready-made magic formula.

It’s a work of art, a one-piece item that needs to be customized for the client’s specific needs, and not a mass-produced commodity churned out in an assembly line that manufactures perspectives one after another, all equally valuable with nothing to differentiate them.

And because you won’t even engage with the idea, which is the first step, you’ll obviously never reject it, because after all, ‘nothing’s wrong, it’s just your perspective that it’s wrong, someone else could have a different perspective’.

In fact, you don’t even accept an idea for the same reason.

And that is cowardice – you never make a claim, you never open yourself up to criticism, and you never take a stand on anything.

Instead, you hide behind weasel words like ‘just a point of view’ and dress yourself up in an illusion of superiority, thinking that you’re on a higher ground than those dimwits who argue for something, who are so blind and narrow-minded to be unable to see beyond themselves, to be able to understand that their view is just one point of view.

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood…”

Theodore Roosevelt

It’s like thinking of yourself as the referee in a wrestling match, thinking that it makes you better because you’re not the one getting dirty in the ring, though the truth is you’re too afraid to step into the ring.

And you can even crown the delusion by telling yourself that you are the real winner, because after all, the referee (usually) doesn’t take even one blow.

But the referee never wins anything either…

A Case for Relativism

Perhaps the biggest lure of relativism is that it isn’t always wrong.

In fact, it’s probably the best way of thinking a lot of the time, because it’s valid in these situations.

• Personal preferences : I like football
• Open ended, meaningless comparisons: Football is better than cricket
• Prescriptions: You should play football

I think that the second and third scenarios are, in some ways, contained in the first.

Because, unfortunately, for a lot of people, it’s usually a very short step from I like football to Football is better than XYZ to You should play football

And you can see this if you go about it the other way too.

If you think chocolate is better than other flavors, or you go about prescribing chocolate to people, it’s probably because you like chocolate.

The caveat is ‘open-ended, meaningless’ comparisons – which means using adjectives without defining them.

Because a statement like football is better than cricket means nothing on its own.

But if you specify your conditions, you don’t need to hide behind relativism.

If you knew that (hypothetically) you burn more calories in a game of football than in cricket on average, and if you want to burn more calories, then football is better than cricket for you (if this was your sole criterion)

So you can probably condense these into one type of situation where relativism holds: Personal Preferences

This won’t apply to other situations as well though.

You might have a preference for the flat-earth theory over other models, but that doesn’t make it a ‘perspective’ that’s equally valid.

That’s because the theory is (or purports to be) a description of objective reality, of the world, and not a subjective ‘personal preference’ of individuals like a game or a flavor of ice-cream is.

There’s an objective benchmark for the theory – how well it describes reality. The closer, the better.

But there’s no objective benchmark for ‘better’ in games like cricket that humans make up, or even in flavors.

Saying that cricket is better than football is like saying that spicy is better than sweet or blue is better than grey. Because the idea of ‘better’ here is going to be totally arbitrary and made-up.

It’s also rather obvious, because imagine if football really was ‘better’ than cricket objectively.

Why would anyone even play cricket?

It’s like buying a worse product for the same price. In an efficient market, no one would.

And arguing that the world is a market that isn’t efficient is arguing that you’re a visionary who’s discovered a profound truth about the universe, that football is better than cricket, which others don’t know about yet.

I think most people would agree that’s very unlikely.

It’s more likely that, just like in the market, customer preferences here vary, and different games cater to different niches.

This is where relativism makes the most sense, and trumps absolutism.

Relativism’s Limitations

But extending relativism beyond these boundaries is where you run into all the faults I outlined earlier.

For example, you can even argue convincingly that “art” is not subjective, that there is a thing as objectivity in aesthetics – something you’d imagine is highly relative.

Even superficially, it seems to be the case that art can’t be entirely relative, otherwise my drawings should be worth as much as Van Gogh’s.

And it can’t be a coincidence that the overwhelming majority of people seem to agree that the works of Leonardo da Vinci or Michelangelo are ‘beautiful’.

There must be some principles which all these people are using that indicate my art is mediocre and Beethoven’s isn’t. Maybe a lot of it is social conformity, but trying to explain away all of it as that seems to be stretching it too far.

And the reason for this is that it’s no longer about ‘individual’ preferences but about ‘art’ – specifically, what makes art good.

That’s the difference between saying I like Van Gogh’s art and saying Van Gogh is a good artist.

Just as it is in saying I prefer football to cricket and Football is better than cricket.

One is a personal preference, impossible to refute.

Imagine if someone comes up to you to tell you No, you don’t like football more than cricket, you just think you do.

It takes some level of delusion to presume to know someone better than they do.

You might actually be lying, but it’s unlikely they can know that.

The other is a claim you make about reality, that the game of football is better than cricket – nothing to do with your preferences but a supposed ‘fact’.

Therefore, as you move away from individual preferences to larger observations, relativism loses its hold.

Truths

You’ll end up resorting to relativism then if you preach your preferences to people.

Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but knowing that you’re in the domain of relativism can save you a lot of anguish if you take it to heart when people don’t agree with you.

And the other case is when you talk in open-ended, vague terms.

Is Newton greater than Darwin?

Is XYZ policy better than ABC?

Unless you’re simply making conversation, perhaps the best thing is to avoid this entirely (does it really matter to you who was ‘greater’?) or be more specific (better for whom? on what parameters?).

For everything else, remember that when someone tells you there are no truths, he’s asking you not to believe him. So don’t.