Are post-modernism and relativism both threats to liberty and equality?

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Bite the pillow and think of England?

That always bring me to an immediate orgasm.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Dracon II


There isn't much evidence that suggests that all men are created equal. Firstly, very little evidence that men were created, and secondly that they are all equal.

Men have differing capacities. Different IQs, different strength, different wealth, different environmental conditions, and so on and so on. We happen to live in countries that assume equality politically and legally, but even this still does not eliminate inequality. If equality is to be anything, it is to be a goal for humanity to achieve, not an a priori characteristic of humanity.

Yes, but the means with which to measure a person's potential of these traits (intelligence, strength, moral quality and income earning ability) are so crude that to take a young child, test it, and from the results judge its future amounts to little more than prejudice. I've known kids who seemed slow who after being put in the right situation blossomed intellectually. Surely we all know that most people can dramatically improve their strength by a well planned regimen of exercise. I'd guess we all have known someone who though pretending to be morally pure, turned out to have some damning traits hidden under the facade. Finally, we all realise that being born to wealth doesn't mean a person is a natural money maker. American history is replete with the names of families that rose to wealth in one generation, only to have it squandered away in the next. We also know of people who came from dire cirtcumstances and rose to financial greatness. Andrew Carnegie was sent to the US alone, lived like a virtual orphan, but became the world's first billionaire.

The idea of universal equality was invented by the philosophes of the eighteenth century enlightenment as a countr-foil to the divine right philosophy of the monarchs and aristocrats of that era. Looking back at that age, so jam backed with the stupidity and moral depravitiy of the privileged, it's easy to see how the middle class could have reached that conclusion

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly


It's legitimate only because we say it is. There are only two options here: either rights are man-made, or they are "natural" (which is really what the Founder's meant by God-given). Now, most things that are "natural" -- gravity for instance -- are observable and/or testable. That, in fact, is the very thing that leads us to label them "natural." Do rights fit into that category? No, they do not. You can believe that the right to life is something more than a manmade construct; you can also believe that the world is in the hands of 12 incestuous gods who dwell upon Olympus. Your belief seems very real to you, I'm sure. But it's your belief -- it eminates from a human being.

If you believe that some people are born to rule you eventually get a total idiot like Alexander Romanov II or Naploleon Bonaparte III at the helm of state, thus proving that all men are created equal.

I agree. In fact, I'm not a relativist on this point. I believe in a right to life, and I believe that others who believe differently are wrong. That doesn't make rights any less of a human construct.

OTOH the very nature of man (a creature of nature) is that without rights a society will fall into the rule of tyranny. Since one dictator or one small group of oligarchs, seeing the world from their limited perspectives, cannot possibly give optimal guidance to all the people with their diverse capabilities and manifold needs the society without rights is bound to diminish its constituents rather than giving them room to flourish. Thus it is natural that the society without rights will give way to the society with rights. Therefore rights are natural.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: everyone is a relativist. No one would apply a fixed "absolute" set of rules to all conceivable situations.

But you can have a set of guiding principles and goals that allow you to derive the rules required for any situation . And relativism , when it seeks to attack these guiding principles and goals , turns into a monstrosity which seeks to justify anything and everything .

To make myself clearer - All absoultes are contextual , but within that context , they are absolute .

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by MrFun


So, the idea that all humans are created equal is nothing but a falsity in your opinion?

Taken literally, yes; men aren't created.

What you mean is that all humans have equal rights by nature, however. Maybe they, maybe they don't; for all practical purposes the answer is irrelevant short of a way to test it. It's the same problem as with all kinds of "natural rights" - it just doesn't make any observable difference if they exist or not. What matters are societally recognized and enforced rights.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Thus it is natural that the society without rights will give way to the society with rights. Therefore rights are natural.

Makes sense to me. I would like to add that a government in which human rights are not respected or protected is not natural because it would prevent means with which people can seek happiness.

Even when a majority of people, out of despair, choose to establish a dictatorship is not natural because in the end, those people who have chosen a dictatorship are depriving themselves of a pursuit of happiness. They are cutting themselves short by having chosen a dictatorship -- tyranny with the consent of the majority denies people of their human rights.

[Last Conformist]

Denying people from seeking happiness is unnatural?

[MrFun]

Seeking happiness is natural.

[MrFun]

Unless a person has some kind of psychological disorder, or suffers from some kind of neurological/chemical imbalance, does any person deliberately seeks out to do something or to attain something that would make hiim/her miserable?

No -- we only live about our lives in ways that we believe will make us happy and improve the quality of our lives.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Last Conformist

What I really don't get is the atheist who refuse to accept God's existence in the abscence of evidence, but see no contradiction in accepting the existence of objective human rights without evidence. How could a double standard be any more obvious?

I think it is because we are socialised in a way that we simply have them - so many seem to take them for granted without even think about their foundation.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by MrFun
Seeking happiness is natural.

That doesn't mean preventing others from doing it unnatural.

[Bereta_Eder]

One could say that free markets, nazism, communism, islamic fundamentalism are all the children of modernity. The idea than one system will fit all, it is for everybody. (of the same disposition and the others are mistaken)
Post-modernity was born out of the gloom of the realization that science cannot solve everything. WW2 laid a lot of weight to that point of view. Both WW were after the "great promise of science" was given (it will solve all problems) and according to some, not kept.
There's something missing. The apollonean light is not enough. You have to have some dionysean mysticism too.
While I keep some faith in modernity I can also see some positive aspects in post-modernity too although one has to be very careful.

[Odin]

Science:

Mysticism:

[Bereta_Eder]

But the bigger questions can't be answered by science, wouldn't you agree? Can man live only with a VCR manual?
I always thought of science as a "lesser thing". It is useful for giving me hot water and curing diseases of the mortal flesh but apart from that, what? I always thought of scientists as car mechanics without that meaning that I don't respect them or their craft or don't think that what they do is very important. But for the really important questions science is as inept as a little child IMO. That's what you have the "theoretical sciences" for, philosophy, anthropology, political theory, communications theory, history etc
But are those enough to quench the really big questions? Of course they're much more capable than the "positive sciences" to try and explain some of the big questions but do they have what it is needed to go all the way? I don't know. The dionysean aspect of man though may hold answers that none of the theoretical sciences could give. I'm not talking metaphysics or anything of that sort but the closeness to the inner soul that mysticism may hide. Like the Eleusinian mysteries before that alarichos put a tomb on them.
Anyway just saying

[:) Smiley]

Mysticism is a stopgap, not a permanent fixture- its role used to be much large when fewer things had scientific explanations. With further advances in neuroscience more of the social sciences may change into the hard sciences.