François-René Rideau (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} fare) wrote,@ 2005-02-07 23:51:00 |
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| Current mood: | Objectivist |
| Current music: | Two hours listening to the jackhammer |
| Entry tags: | argument, black magic, dynamism, en, fallacies, fwance, memories, objectivism, psychology, relativism, statism, travel, usa |
The Usual Relativist Fallacies
While in the States, I had an argument with, of all persons, a French man. He argued for relativism, that true and false do not matter, and might not exist at all, that every situation is unique, etc. Yeah sure! His example went that everytime he heard that same Opera was unique. And my reply was that everytime he'd have to listen to the noise of a jackhammer for two uninterrupted hours would be just as unique. He was an extreme example of what Ayn Rand called the anti-conceptual mentality.
Now, if the arguer was coping out of the debate,
claiming that the whole discussion is irrelevant,
that he doesn't want to waste time with things that have no meaning or purpose,
then it would be a fair consistent stance.
Not a very bright one, but at least not a performative contradiction.
But the arguer was not using the argument to avoid the debate,
he was using it to avoid having to justify his points.
He was actually using this relativism in a very one-sided way:
things do not matter, so that I, and those I support,
can take resources from you, by force,
so as to put things the way we want.
Uh, yeah right.
Double standard and petition of principle.
The usual pair of fallacious ratiocinations
used to conceal from untrained eyes
a justification for brute force.
Brute force, unbacked by any rational argument,
but hidden under a veil of pseudo-rational argumentation.
Relativism is but the negation of Reason.
In the absence of reason,
the only tool to resolve human conflict is sheer brute force,
the only thing that matters in society is alliances and enmities,
force, treachery and fraud, in a general war of all against all.
Relativism, subjectivism, is the anti-social philosophy
that reduces social interaction to a dog-eat-dog struggle.
In that world, the only stable organization that relavists can conceive is
the totalitarian top-down hierarchy of command;
and at the head of this hierarchy, the pseudo-intellectuals each fancy themselves,
or at least people who would selflessly
share their preferences.
Relativism is not just delusion. It is criminal delusion. And since it comes with enough cunning to be applied in a one-sided way, in the interest of the relativist and against those of his victims, it is actually a criminal fraud. When enough people understand that, invoking relativism to convince victims of accepting a transaction will be punishable as the fraud it is.
