Thursday, November 3, 2016

The Gyroscopic (Pt 2) Relativism

One of the most frustrating and trickiest things to deal with in philosophy is the idea of relativism.  In general relativism is something brought up in an intro-level class and it's dismissed and that's it, except after post-structuralism it started to look like relativism might be real and scary and show that we don't have any real values.

Okay, so philosophically relativism is a way of saying, "Hey, that's just like your opinion, man." Sometimes it's captured in the maxim: "everything is relative."  Most people have heard someone say this or something that meant the same thing. (There are no absolutes; it's all relative)  However, in philosophy sometimes you can't say things you want to say because the sentence actually undoes itself.  So for example, the sentence "It's all relative" is not relative to anything.  It is presented as a universal maxim that will be true anywhere no matter what, i.e., the statement about relativism is actually presented as an absolute truth.  Similarly, saying "There are no absolutes" is in fact a way to make another absolute and hence the sentence is meaningless.

Okay - so does that mean reality is not a matter of interpretation?  Well, no.  Not exactly.  Think about moods.  Because we tend to think reality comes out of our noggins we often assume the world is neutral and then our feelings at that moment are sad or happy- but we would never say something like "the world is unhappy today," except we do say things like that - all the time.  We say, "The meeting was boring," and we don't mean our interpretation of this event (the meeting) was boring. We are saying "The room was boring." And if someone were to look happy and engaged we would become confused.  If we really believed it was all a matter of interpretation - nobody would ever be confused at the person acting out of place.  Similarly we go to a party and the party feels lively or cold or like it's about to explode in some kind of Dionysian orgiastic experience.  This sensation is not inside us - or rather it is ALSO inside us, but it does not originate from us; rather, it comes from the interaction of bodies and stuff.

So if people have this gyroscopic tendency to become balanced and at-home in the world, what we tend to notice when we go to a party is that the "self" falls away and we become a collective of "party-goers."  And usually through no fault of anyone's, the party winds down of its own volition and we realize this and we go home.  Usually there's a couple people who do not understand when it's time to leave and everyone tends to become annoyed because they were supposed to pick up that the mood of the party - not their insides - has in fact changed.

We do not live in a world where everyone is living inside of a different reality - we share the world.  When we are with others we tend to find a balance - certain parts of us come out and meet certain parts of the other and we form a "connection" and for at least a while we try to discuss a reality that is common to both.  Or one final example - even if I'm not crying when Mickey dies in Rocky III, it would be silly of my not to understand why someone would in fact be crying at this scene.  Someone else might be wondering "Didn't Mr. T just assault him and cause this?  Why isn't Mr. T being arrested?" In every case it is apparent we are watching the same reality - even if we focus on different aspects.  (Coming up: Watching Road House with David Lynch)

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