This is the second part. First part is Panarchy & me (substack.com 2023).

Analysis that does not break apart

There is a method of comparison, a non-destructive method of ‘analysis’, where one compares a variety of examples in which some logical process is forestall by the framework one is in, such that deduction, some invert induction, is not available. One looks at what is left and is left wondering. If logic is a hindsight…

This method is called relativism where one still feels there should be something central or underlying but it cannot be found, or not yet, or what is found is suspect, so the best thing to do is keep an eye on all of them, both individually and collectively, like children. (It’s called eclecticism where one just tries to keep the piece by keeping each piece happy).

Baddies and ?

There is a bad version of these methods which is called sometimes what-aboutism, where counter-examples or the dusty work of error-hunters, are thrown around in order to distract from whatever foul purpose they seek to hide. It’s a type of negative propaganda in which the shit sheet is kept ready at hand whenever you lack a real argument but need to maintain an op-positional stance because… —politics.

People who do what-about for a living are known as political operators, and the collective noun for them is intelligence agency. People who live like that natively are narcissists (see gaslighting, forms of).

The good method is used to learn, build, better, nurture, world. One uses empathy, one does not.

One seeks dialogue, and negotiation. A meal and a meeting. One does not.

As such relativism is a pathway, not an outcome, even as it maps various outcomes. It is a meta process.

Meta process are difficult because they require more cognitive effort <Insert Maslo’s hierarchy of needs here>. This requires a safe place.

Sometimes meta processes are simplified into non-existence. Empires tend to do this with the variety in the empire, the dialect of the rulers in their preferred capital, new or old, erases local differences, and subsequently religions like Christianity or ein-fuhrer parties are made to suit.

Side note: There is a lot of talk about de-colonising stuff. That’s all very well, but if you de-colonise by building a new empire (Panarchy style) what have you done exactly? End side note.

The panopticon is another example of meta baddie-ness, where over the many POV of the imprisoned are watched by the one POV signifying order or health or something. All done in hope that the one view will in the darkness cure them, like some sort of eye on top of a pyramid or a pope’s tiara.

I am looking at you facebook.

Relativism should be a pathway

I argue that in good world-building, i.e. worlding conscious of itself as doing good, relativism is a pathway, and not an outcome, at least in the start it is a meta-analysis of outcomes and that this is a process by definition, and not a definition itself. (Even if I have just defined it according to some frameworks… LOL).

In many disciplines engaged in active learning or research this period could be called data collection scoping, or in more removed or well-developed departments, as reading the literature. A lot of current AI work has mechanized all this. Meta-analysis is a thing. My stats are bigger than yours, count my tokens!

Morality as we know it does not do relativism. Least not in traditional societies. At least, not in traditional societies as they think they are. They may forbid it, or reserve it to the sovereign or something which honours legitimate powers. Or pretend that it isn't done but the practices of pretence or opportunity vary in detail and frame, for the sake of the children, such that they can see the pretence in other groups but not their own.

All too human if you ask me.

Moral relativism that stays collecting examples of traditional moralities from around the world and through time may here stall, here, at just at the point it can make a difference.

In stalling it can fall back to the earth of our baser needs and in basic survival.

This worldbuilding, even as it holds off judgement, a good thing for a day or too, but life is not a holiday. This world-building can be thick with ruin when it stalls, like a museum of many artefacts and trophies destroyed through catastrophe, disaster or war.

Outcomes may succeed but the pathway is hidden by their rubble, and so covered in ashes, the pathway is then forsworn or made tapu, and completely forgotten in archaeological stratigraphical potentials, in layers the survivors cannot see.

Incoherence is an outcome, and just like success, may not a pathway, not that is, a useful pathway out of a basic grinding survival. It should never be called poverty.

Broadening the mind

Minds broaden in travel when we avoid being only consumers.

Or minds broaden through time and experience, by growing-up and aging where memory allows comparison and review, which, re-frames our younger selves, and so nurtures a relativism, moral or otherwise in empathy, called experience… even so… —we still have the urge to world (see Why we should : an introduction by memoir into the implications of the Egalitarian Revolution of the Palaeolithic, or, Anyone for cake?).

The urge to world is seen in moral relativism’s deep want to avoid conflict or war over differing outcomes. Moral relativism is a meta-method that is an applied philosophy. (Moral philosophy = applied philosophy) (But remember a whale is not a fish, see the first part Panarchy & me (2023 substack.com version).

Moral relativism must cling to that deep want in order to pass through the possibility of stalling and crashing to earth, a wreck of possibilities scattered over survival.

My agnosticism is not about truth/god/ nor what-about that error/aporia/gap/incompleteness/failure, but about a firm practical pragmatism that supports a empathic nurturing world. My ‘anarchism’ is about that deep want.

Side note: Apparently we are in a population crash in many parts of the world, we may disappear before we destroy ourselves. End side note.

We should urge ourselves to keep that deep want to world well, by doing it better, by not stalling in relativism, but pushing through those frustrations of our place and time.

Side note: Travel or time lived, need not always lead to a broadening of a mind. Particularly if all that is seen is opportunities at the cost of another’s survival, opportunities without empathy or without an innovative economic advantage. End side note

Ancients in relativism

In ancient days the method of comparison of different outcomes was used by Pyrrho, and later Sextus Empiricus, following exposure to conversations that took place in central Asia, where Buddhism was born.

The basic gist of this says that if you have a range of outcomes you do not have to choose, there is no forced choice. If a forced choice is required then something is wrong, and it may be a while before we work out what the wrongness is. Forcing a choice does not make two wrongs a right.

It creates a hallucination.

It is worrying to note that this wisdom has survived through the ages in more or less only individual soteriological frameworks. The collective forms of this wisdom have been forestalled by the politics of panarchy. By empires and their priests.

What might have developed from this individual outlook as an applied moral philosophy over some thousands of years is only known now as an opportunity lost.

Panarchy rules.

Panarchy rules until we know ourselves.

We will need a method to do that. Relativism, firmly inquiring, will be one of those tools.

Liberalism/ liberty/libertarianism/ anarchism is a precursor to what might be.

Has it stalled?

Unstalled

Place holder for a link to a later essay on a new anarchism/agency/parenting/grandparenting (yet to be written)(and 2025).

Post-amble apology

What-about those essays you were going to write about ‘more directly’ ?

Daniel Callcut’s “Bernard Williams, Moral Relativism and the Culture Wars” Aeon.co 21 Oct. 2023. https://aeon.co/essays/bernard-williams-moral-relativism-and-the-culture-wars

Polly Mitchell, Alan Cribb, & Vikki Entwistle ‘Truth and Consequences.’ ” New Work in Philosophy (blog), October 18, 2023. https://newworkinphilosophy.substack.com/p/polly-mitchell-kings-college-london

It may appear I have not as yet directly dealt with the two articles that prompted these two pieces on panarchy. So here it is, to repeat.

Moral relativism is an applied philosophy.

In order to world better we need to keep an eye on that.

Reposted in May 2025 from October 2023 on substack.com.