Fuzziness and Ripples

Posted on August 30, 2002 in Thinking

Jim Rovira of Locust Eater wrote a thoughtful response to my Defense of Cultural Relativism. He asks, in part:

How exactly is that a critique of “dogmatism” (a poor word for any and all non-relativist systems of thought) unless you mean to assert that ONLY relativists are capable of doing so?

What I call “dogmatism” is that view which proceeds from a certainty that the culture we live in is always the right way and knows THE way to do things. There is, admittedly, a paradox inherent in this: as relativist, I contend that proceeding from the view that there is no certain one way to solve essentially human problems is the best way to go. I can confess uncertainty even about this: strict rules and conventions do appeal, especially when the topic is either human rights or war. What I speak out against largely is the idea that we mere humans can begin to comprehend the designs and ambitions of a greater universe. I place us at distance farther from what some call “God” than that which separates the consciousness of an amoeba from our own. Ask yourself: what does an amoeba appreciate of intelligence? Can an amoeba be truly aware of the full scope of something that dips it out of a pond, boils it to death, and then drinks its corpse along with the water? The something beyond our mere intelligence and faculties is what dogmatists say they KNOW exist, for one thing, and of which I am uncertain.

My particular brand of relativism is, therefore, founded on a comfort with uncertainty. My senses cannot definitively establish that there is a God nor that there is no God. I’m left with my physical evidences,the things that I can establish with my mind and with my senses, those certainties that are like the the water glass laying on the table next to me as I write this.

Let’s take that water glass and subject it to the mind and the senses to see where it will take us. It’s just a water glass, right? But I see it as something more: for one thing, I bought it in a store which, in turn, obtained it from a distributor. The distributor bought it from a manufacturer, probably in China. Poetically speaking, to see that water glass is to see a chain of circumstances. The anthropologist is most interested in the human circumstances. And I would ask my questions accordingly: where did this water glass come from? How did it get here? What set of social relationships made its production and distribution possible? What happened when it was negotiated that this glass should be passed from China to the United States? What language was used? What intermediaries got involved? What were people thinking or planning for? There are more questions. The glass of water is a cultural artifact, whose purposes and imports, though finite, can be legion.

To fully understand the water glass on my desk, I have to ask a lot of questions and drop many of my assumptions. In the culture of those around me, it’s just a water glass. But it is the product of something greater, though smaller than the universe. Investigating its origins can point me to new understandings.

Jim then asks what I mean by “moral”?

You say you’re being pragmatic — but utilitarianism is far from moral relativism. There’s a set criteria of judgment that is to be applied in all circumstances — the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

I think this comment reveals the telling distinction between the two of us. Jim divides the world up into neat little boxes as his particular culture directs. As the example of the water glass shows, I tend to take a fuzzier view at the world. I have no problem using the method of cultural relativity to get at the actual facts and then ask the question “So, what is the greatest good for the greatest possible number here?”

He quotes C. S. Lewis as his model for his ideal of “Moral Absolutes”. Lewis is certainly one of the better of the lot and one I have read. Yet in his fictional works (which I confess to know better than his theological ones) he himself does much of the demonizing of which Jim attempts to accuse me. Let’s take the last book of the famous Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength: in this book he attacks the idea of a husband and wife using birth control! He balances this, thankfully, with Ransom’s act of holding Merlin back and speaking of forgiveness. Lewis’s version of a happy ending is that the intelligent woman sees the errors of her ways and goes to find her husband for a good fuck. She breeds instead of wasting time getting more degrees and thinking.

No thank you, Mr. Lewis. It seems to me that you do incarnate some of the dangers that I speak against.

I’m no advocate of childlessness. For various reasons — some social, some medical, and some genetic — we have had it chosen for us that we will not have children of our own. But I accept that childness is a human condition. My wife and I have given thought to having children. Many things got in the way. I cannot help but thinking that Lewis would have simply written us off as “benighted people” because it disagreed with his moral code. I can also see himself behaving somewhat paternalistically, at best, towards those friends of mine who happen to be gay or lesbian. It makes me shudder to think that he would hold my Quaker wife to be an evil person simply because she has never had children. This is the message of That Hideous Strength, I dare say. And Lewis makes further gratuitous swipes at science and even, at one point, lesbians.

Jim is concerned about “demonization”. I share his concern. (He should reread Lewis for some fine examples of the practice!) For pragmatic purposes, I make a separation between the idea and the person. It’s another one of my fuzzies. I use a language, however, that often suggests that I do not do so, that the person and the idea are the same — that the idea exists inside the person and is part of the person. (For more, read this.) But anthropology has taught me that minds can change, make new adjustments. Tribesmen living in stone age cultures in the New Guinea Highlands can walk down to Port Moresby and get a job assembling electronic parts. They can learn the math and work the technology almost as well as if they were born it and had lived in it all their lives. St. Francis can live the life of a spoiled rich child, hating and fearing the poor, then one day get down from his horse, kiss a leper full on the face, and give him his cloak.

I use these two examples to demonstrate, first, the range of human possibility and the flexibility of the organism. This establishes the base of my cultural relativist method. On issues of sex, Lewis stops at procreation, it seems to me. I go past and look at the non-procreators, at people who chose to be childless, at people chosen to be childless, at gays and lesbians. I do not assume that the only “right” sexual pattern is to produce children who produce grandchildren.

Nature is not so cruel on the topic of sexuality. As long as we have no defects or accidents that lead us to die young, “she” allows us to keep on living. The thing that I think might frighten someone like Jim is the idea of a universe which doesn’t care about us or our survival. I have blundered into metaphor in my description here by speaking of Nature as if it had a personality. I do it because it is something that has been rolling around my culture for awhile. I don’t think, however, we need to apply political correctness here and weed out all such tropes. I can live with such fuzziness when talking with others because I also know my own mind.

To go on: Nature may have no opinions about us because it isn’t human, but we are. We have opinions. We have to live with each other. I have to admit that I even entertain reservations about the “greatest good for the greatest number” — such a philosophy justified the volatile expansion of the American nation and the extermination of Amerinidian peoples who, in the eyes of Europeans, didn’t put the land to its full use. As a pacifist, I’ve been asked the question “What would you do if you discovered someone raping your wife?” The truth is: I don’t know. But for my own peace and for the peace of my neighbors, I don’t spend time imagining what I am going to do, practising for that kind of event, or setting up a cache of weapons to use in such an event. My conscience tells me that those things are wrong. The application of relativism, which in itself holds that there are many ways to be human and, when we judge, we must allow for nonharmful variations — a kind of moral absolute, I suppose — is what led me to this. I ask myself: “Who am I to say what human being deserves to live or not? Under what circumstances can I definitively declare that harm is being done? In certain cases, such as with C.S. Lewis, I fail to see the harm that he does. Lewis stretches things. I move more cautiously.

I’m in this world, with other people. My personal morality demands this of me: Get to the real harm. Wars kill people. Real harm. The maldistribution of resources causes many to starve and/or to work under slavish conditions where they have lost, for eight or more hours per day, the right to choose for themselves. Harm. And yet, I must at times hold back on prescribing reform, I must accept that there are no easy answers and that my life will continue to be plagued with vexing questions that I cannot answer. Every change, I know, ripples. I continue to ask questions about the need for coercision to keep the peace and I may prescribe limits, but my appreciation of complexity leads me to also consider that a world without coercion suddenly invoked at this time would mean that charles Manson and many others like him would walk free. So I sit, muddle-headed, without absolute certainty and without absolute answers that I know work in every last case. I can live with this.