Chateaubriand mentions eunuchs in his travels (1884)

François-René de Chateaubriand. Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem et de Jérusalem à Paris (originally 1884). Translated as Record of a Journey from Paris to Jerusalem and Back by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2011.

Three passages mention eunuchs:

During dinner, we received compliments from what in the Levant is termed the ‘nation’: this nation is composed of French merchants or the dependents of France living in the various Ports of Call. In Athens there are only one or two houses of this kind: they trade in oil. Monsieur Roque did me the honour of a visit: he had a family, and he invited me to visit, accompanied by Monsieur Fauvel, then he began to speak of Athenian society: ‘A foreigner settled for some time in Athens seemed to have felt or inspired a passion that was the talk of the town ... There was gossip about the House of Socrates, and chatter concerning the gardens of Phocion ... The Archbishop of Athens had not yet returned from Constantinople. No one knew if they would receive justice from the Pasha of Negropont (Chalcis), who threatened to exact a levy on Athens. To maintain a defence against sudden attack, the perimeter wall had been repaired; however everything was to be hoped for from the leader of the black eunuchs, the governor of Athens, who certainly had more credit with His Highness than the Pasha. (O Solon! O Themistocles! The leader of the black eunuchs as governor of Athens, and all the other cities of Greece envying the Athenians that emblem of happiness!) ‘...For the rest, Monsieur Fauvel had done well to drive out the Italian priest who inhabited the Lantern of Demosthenes (one of the most beautiful monuments in Athens), and give his place to a French Capuchin. The latter possessed good manners, was affable, intelligent, and received hospitably those foreigners who, according to custom, intended to visit the French monastery...’ Such was the gossip, and the subject of conversation in Athens: one can see that the world was continuing as usual, and a traveller who let it go to his head too much might be somewhat confused by meeting his village concerns on arriving in Tripods Street.

* * *

This changeability in human affairs is all the more striking because it contrasts with the immobility of the rest of nature. As if to mock the instability of human society, wild animals experience no alteration in their empires or change of habits. I saw, when we were on the Hill of the Museum, storks forming their battalion and taking flight for Africa. (See, for a description of Athens in general, most of the XV book of Les Martyrs, and the notes.) For two thousand years they had made the same journey, and were as free and happy in the city of Solon as they are in the city of the commander of the black eunuchs. From the heights of their nests, that revolution cannot reach, they have witnessed the race of mortals altering beneath them: while impious generations were raised over the graves of religious generations, the young stork has always supported his aged father (see Aristophanes: Birds: 1355). Let me halt these reflections by saying that the stork is beloved by travellers; she, like them ‘in the heavens knoweth her appointed times’ (Jeremiah 8:7). These birds were often the companions of my travels in the wilds of America; I often saw them perched on the Indian wigwams; finding them in a different kind of wilderness, the ruins of the Parthenon, I could not help but talk a little of my old friends.

* * *

Attica, with a little less wretchedness, offers no less servitude; Athens is under the immediate protection of the head of the black eunuchs of the Seraglio. A disdar, or commander, represents that monstrous protector amidst the people of Solon. This disdar inhabits the citadel, filled with masterpieces by Phidias and Ictinus, without asking what people have left these fragments behind, without deigning to leave the hut he has had built beneath the ruins of the monuments of Pericles: very occasionally the tyrant crawls mechanically to the door of his den; sitting cross-legged on a dirty carpet, while the smoke of his pipe ascends between the columns of the Temple of Athene, he casts his gaze stupidly over the shores of Salamis and the Sea of Epidaurus.

Neoliberalism in Colombia

In the introduction to Non-literary Fiction: Art of the Americas Under Neoliberalism, Esther Gabara (University of Chicago Press, 2022) says there were "initial experiments with these [neoliberal] social and economic 'reforms' in the Americas" beginning in the 1960s.

She refers to this article:

Norman A. Bailey. "The Colombian 'Black Hand': A Case Study of Neoliberalism in Latin America." The Review of Politics Vol. 27, No. 4 (Oct., 1965), pp. 445-464 (20 pages).

Gabara said that Bailey's article "celebrated the Brazilian military coup d'état of 1964 as the model for an aggressive campaign in Colombia. His pro-business, free-market hemispheric strategy was 'uniformly opposed to all forms of collectivism.'" (As Bailey said in the article, and Gabara noted.) A decade later, Milton Friedman would help General Pinochet in Santiago, Chile. Bailey, too, "was content to ally with repressive regimes, but state repression was just one tool in the broader violence employed to introduce, maintain, and expand these social transformations." Bailey continued to advise Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush regarding Latin America.

Gabara is interested in these neoliberal experiments related to how they "coincid[ed] with the radical experiments that ground histories of contemporary art."

The artists in the non-objectual art movement "abandoned historical distinctions between sculpture, painting, and theater" and tended away from museums. "They celebrated earth art, performance and body art, posters, media interventions and new media, work with found objects and trash, mail art, conceptualism, ephemeral installations, and popular cultural forms including religious rituals and samba."

"Fiction played a crucial role in these theories and practices of non-objectual art. Note the terms of Gullar's meditation on the relationship between 'obra e objeto' (work and object), artwork and world: 'The frame was the middle ground between fiction and reality; at once a bridge and a wall that protected the painting, the fictitious space, and made it communicate in fits with the real, exterior space.' This. narrative of non-objectual art breaking the frame is foundational in Brazilian art history, and Amor summarizes its widely accepted interpretation as a 'rejection of the fictional space of representation.' Yet Gullar writes that the non-object resides directly in 'real' space and 'transcends the space, not by eluding it (like the object), but by enfolding itself radically in that space.' That extension into space involves a broken frame and an active spectator: the primary operation of the non-object is to inspire the viewer's 'move from contemplation to action,' and so by extension to bridge fiction and reality. In an interview published not long after he had invited Gullar to his symposium, Acha also presented non-objectualism as an activity and a kind of fiction. In no-objetualismo, he states, 'I'm not interested anymore in the work of an artist, I am concerned with the process, with the invention.'"

"The disappeared victims of the military dictatorships, as well as of declared democracies such as Mexico, were the defining feature of the early neoliberal era and have governed debates over memory and justice since."

---

Bailey's article said:

In Latin America, three Neoliberal groups were founded in the 1950s, and about 40 in the early 1960s. (Bailey was writing in 1965.) He said these groups were "now covering all of Latin America except for Haiti and Cuba." They had formal organizational structures with a president, chairman, executive director, council members, and so forth.

The Neoliberals oppose "communism, socialism, and feudalism" as well as "totalitarian methods or...state invention in the economy" and support "the system of private initiative." (p. 448) One Neoliberal leader, Raimundo Emiliani Román, said in his pamphlet "El Camino a la Miseria" that "all socialism tends" to the idea "that no one owns anything, and the general distribution of poverty." (p. 464)

"The Neoliberal groups in Latin America converge on two common factors: their membership is overwhelmingly made up of businessmen (in the broadest meaning of the word) and professionals, and they are uniformly opposed to all forms of collectivism, whether of the right or the left, and in favor of the free market economy, although not necessarily in its pristine form. Within this general orientation, specific idea-systems espoused range from the philosophy of Ayn Rand through the strict market economics of a Ludwig von Mises or a Friedrich Hayck to the 'social market economy' of Wilhelm Röpke and Jacques Rueff. These differences lead to fissures and controversies within Neoliberalism, but heavy concentration of power and membership in the 'social' wing permits a fair degree of united action." (pp. 445–446)

Some groups focused on the "social and economic development in Latin America" (in the "long-range," considering its "entire direction") while others developed "aggressive attack policies" to buy time for the others to do their long-range work. Bailey categorized the groups' activities as either defensive, offensive, or a mix of both.

Of the defensive methods (p. 447):

• Civic action: "housing, health and community development...under the general theory of the 'socail function' of capital" with "two purposes: to improve the public image of private enterprise and to delay a violent upheaval until the economic process has carried society beyond the crisis peak."
• General education: "literacy campaigns, trade union leadership schools, and business schools"
• Capitalization: ""the effort to...give them [the workers] a clearly visible stake in the economic system. This is not merely a profit-sharing plan. It is, rather, an effort to create a larger class of proprietors in the belief that greater social stability will follow."

"Agents of the Neoliberals have been planted in many communist parties and movements of the Jacobin left." (p. 448)

"The most controversial of all direct action activities is the formation of antiguerrilla militias." (p. 449)

"Although feudalism as a formal social and economic structure is not as prevalent in Colombia as elsewhere in the continent, the feudal mentality very definitely exists as a political force. The movements of the Jacobin left and the Democratic left are strong, the former growing, the latter decaying. And finally, in 1960 Neoliberalism began to find its identity and flex its muscles. Its activities were initially highly successful, and this success set off a chain of reactions the end of which is not yet in sight." (p. 449)

"Colombia is legally tied to its two-party system, which means that both the Liberal and the Conservative parties are fragmented, and other groups must operate in a sort of political penumbra. The Neoliberals, basically democratic in philosophy, attempt to negotiate within the major parties and pressure them from the outside through the formation of private groups." (p. 449)

"As a further problem, the Neoliberals preach economic liberalism in a country where Article 32 of the Constitution itself states:

The State can intervene by law in the exploitation of industries or businesses, whether public or private, with the end of rationalizing the production, distribution and consumption of wealth or to give the worker the just protection to which he has a right." (p. 452)

Colombia doesn't have a powerful "feudal oligarchy," but

"feudalism is powerful as a mentality. The latest manifestation of the feudal-mercantilist mentality is the so-called 'dos brazos' theory of politics and economics. Under this theory, which has powerful and influential adherents in both legal parties and among the Christian Democrats, the State should intervene actively to set salaries and wages, fix quotas for various industries, and generally plan the entire economy, with direct planning in the public sector and indirect planning for the private sector (but with powerful sanctions for recalcitrant entrepreneurs). Following good corporative economic and political doctrine the 'dos brazos' theorists would organize the entire nation into 'gremios' which would then bargain with each other and the state. The magazine Arco is published by a group of men dedicated to these principles, and among others, this theory was expounded to the author by the General Manager of the Asociación Nacional de Industriales (ANDI), the industrial 'gremio.' This individual, interestingly, is in high favor with the small group of neo-Peronists clustered around the brilliant journalist, Alberto Zalamea, and his magazine and newspaper (both named La Nueva Prensa). There is an increasingly powerful Christian Democratic movement, the Partido Social Demócrata-Cristiano (PSDC), which holds ideas very similar to the 'dos brazos' theorists and the neo-Peronists. The PSDC intends to try to circumvent the legal prohibition of third parties by presenting candidates in 'Listas Populares Independientes,' and only nominally Liberal or Conservative. The Party was formed in August, 1959, and by July, 1963, had over 1200 militants throughout the country. It is particularly strong in Antioquia and the Valle. All of these groups are actively angling for military support, and some conspicuous army figures, although wary after the disastrous experience of Rojas Pinilla, are openly toying with a return to 'populist caesarism.' Within the Church 'social Christian' thinking is strong and gaining in strength, along with a still considerable segment feudally-minded (in the traditional mold, rather than the modern corporative mold) and a small Neoliberal wing centered around the lay organization, Opus Dei." (pp. 453–454)

"In the autumn of 1960 a group of twenty-five Colombian industrialists, businessmen, professionals and agriculturalists met and formed the Centro de Estudio y Acción Sociales (CEAS)." Its four objectives were to present the Jacobin left as dangerous; to campaign against Castro in Cuba and communism and in favor of the free market; to take "anticommunist and anti-Modern Left" actions, for example, by infiltrating labor unions; and "to attempt to alter the mentality of the capitalists towards a greater realization of their social responsibilities." (p. 455)

Over the following year, CEAS "spread, forming groups in other major Colombian cities through personal visits by members of the Bogotá group. These other Neoliberal centers are not branches of CEAS — once founded, they maintain their own policies, programs, and finances. The Fundación pro Bienestar Social was founded in Medellín in January of 1961. ... In February of 1961 the Instituto de Estudios Sociales y Económicos (IESE) was founded in Cali." (p. 458–9) "Efforts to establish a formal Neoliberal group on the Caribbean Coast (Barranquilla) have not succeeded, but informal cooperation exists in the distribution of literature and other duties." (p. 462)

"The Neoliberals are operating in Colombia in a general atmosphere traditionally unfriendly to capitalism. The Conservatives in the government of Valencia are paternalists and statists, and many are angling for alliances with the Jacobin left (the outstanding example of this is the Conservative political leader and former Minister of Labor, Belisario Betancur). This same government pressed successfully for the passage of the Ley Primera of 1963, with its governmental control of both wages and prices, and its list of fifteen financial statements which all companies are (theoretically) required to supply to the government weekly." (pp. 462–3)

Also:

"...Neoliberalism is causing a wrenching restructuring of Colombian politics and Colombian political and economic thinking. For the first time the philosophy of economic freedom is a topic of passionate interest and debate. For the first time the Jacobin left and the communists are faced with a group that has ideas equally strong and convictions equally fervent, and that does not balk at using effective methods to propagate them. In the citadel of political feudalism, the Laureanista Conservatives, an apostate group has joined the Neoliberals. The Democratic left (pushed particularly by its younger leaders) is moving towards alliance with the Neoliberals, and Colombia's presumptive next President under the alternation (his health and the military willing), Carlos Lleras Restrepo, appears to be sympathetic to this movement." (p. 463)

Having broad methods and reach, they are successful and aren't politically vulnerable at any "one centralized focal point." (p. 464)

What if a robot turns the whole world into paperclips?

In my novel, Most Famous Short Film of All Time, I mentioned Nick Bostrom and I definitely mentioned paperclips, but I did not know that Nick Bostrom has his own paperclip discussions. I completely missed that!

I learned it here today:

"Or a misaligned AI might (as in the famously absurd thought experiment of philosopher Nick Bostrom) turn the entire universe into paper clips because somebody told it to make paper clips and forgot to tell it that moderation in all things is best."
— "The Earthling: Out-of-control AIs are here," Nonzero, December 16, 2022

Although I admit that this was not my intended association, I declare it to be a valid interpretation of my novel. Paperclips do (as is explicit in the novel) cause the character to see ghosts. They may also indicate that the world is slowly turning into Paperclip Mountain.

Also

"The old man looked me over. Then he picked up a paperclip and unbent it to scrape at a fingernail cuticle. His left index finger cuticle. When he'd finished with the cuticle, he discarded the straightened paperclip into the ashtray. If I ever get reincarnated, it occurred to me, let me make certain I don't come back as a paperclip."
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Where upon I left the library and headed for the Baskin-Robbins.
She was still not back with the books by the time I returned, so I stood there at her desk with ice cream cone in hand. Two old men reading newspapers took turns stealing looks at this curious sight. Luckily the ice cream was frozen solid. Having it drip all over the place was the only thing that could have made me feel more foolish."
The paperback she'd been reading was facedown on the desk. Time Traveller, a biography of H. G. Wells, volume two. It was not a library book. Next to it were three well-sharpened pencils and some paperclips. Paperclips! Everywhere I went, paperclips! What was this?
Perhaps some fluctuation in the gravitational field had suddenly inundated the world with paperclips. Perhaps it was mere coincidence. I couldn't shake the feeling that things weren't normal. Was I being staked out by paperclips? They were everywhere I went, always just a glance away.
* * *
...what relationship could there be between skulls and paperclips?
* * *
Back at the apartment, I put away the groceries. I hung my clothes in the wardrobe. Then, on top of the TV, right next to the skull, I spread a handful of paperclips."
— Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Cryptomnesia, plagiarism, metafiction

Today, in my reading, I came across the word "cryptomnesia."

"In a much discussed 2004 article in the Times Literary Supplement, Michael Maar announced his discovery that there was an earlier fictional nymphet named Lolita, who had appeared in a 1916 German short story by Heinz von Lichberg, and argued that Nabokov had probably read but subsequently forgotten the story during his years in Berlin. Thus, his later coupling of name and theme was a case of 'cryptomnesia.' With regard to Pale Fire and a particular short poem by Frost — which is not 'Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening' — I claim neither 'cryptomnesia' nor, certainly, plagiarism, but rather a delicate but demonstrable network of inspiration and allusion. This discovery is both less surprising (every reader of Pale Fire knows that John Shade resembles Robert Frost) and more revealing, for it shows Nabokov in the act of conscious composition and similarly conscious camouflage."
— "Shades of Frost: A Hidden Source for Nabokov's Pale Fire." Abraham Socher, in Liberal and Illiberal Arts: Essays (Mostly Jewish), Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2022. p. 123.

I knew I'd seen this word before, but where? I searched my computer for it. Ah, there it is, in a novel I published two months ago and which I'd edited and reread several dozen times.

In Most Famous Short Film of All Time, in a section called "Fog — Nothing," I quoted Heriberto Yépez:

"Memory is 'paratactic reordering' of images, says Heriberto Yépez, 'folkloric cryptomnesia,' 'an ars combinatoria of arbitrary signs.'"

In other sections in this novel, I'd discussed plagiarism. For example:

That word was my own insertion in my reexplication of what she said. Such paraphrasing avoids plagiarism but also leads to misrepresentation.

and

A Torah scroll is a copy. It is a painstaking hand-copy of another scroll which is itself a copy of another scroll. Across this lineage, not a single serif may change. The perfection of its plagiarism is what makes it valid.
But here is how it differs from other plagiarism: Copying isn’t enough. You are supposed to study and understand it. The two words at the exact center of the Torah are “darosh darash,” thoroughly investigated. Do your research. When you research, it’s not plagiarism.

and

Truth itself depends on plagiar-cism, yes? A common philosophical definition of truth is “correspondence theory,” meaning that a statement is true if it matches the world. And what is it to match, if not to be cis? Let’s give a better name to “correspondence theory”: plagiar-cism theory.

and

I do not plagiar-cise myself, except insofar as we are all plagiar-cisms of our parents, and perhaps we are plagiar-cisms of other concealed givens and revealed expectations. Do I plagiar-cise myself? Very well, then, I plagiar-cise myself.

and

I think to myself: “Todo lo que no es autobiografía es plagio,” said Pío Baroja. Apart from autobiography, everything is a plagiarism.

My novel also discusses metafiction: fiction that deliberately draws attention to how it is constructed as fiction, i.e., its frame and its content.

A word like "cryptomnesia" is exactly the sort of word one knows but forgets that one knows until one is reminded that one used it in one's own metafictional novel. In underperforming itself in memory, then breaking out of the memory cage, the word performs its meaning.

Quotes: Love

"But I don’t think it's love if the person disappears."
"I wouldn't say it's not love," he said. “But it's hard. That is a very painful experience."
Melissa Broder. The Pisces. London: Hogarth, 2018. p. 142.

"...love can never be between equals because love makes people unequal."
Adam Phillips. Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012. p. 162.

"...it is hypocritical, superficial and immoral, it is altogether wrong and unreasonable to attempt to idealize a love relationship with rules and formulae from those ideals that no longer are ideal and no longer have any real life. They are salt that has lost its power, and no matter how much of that kind of salt orthodoxy uses, it will not stop the rot."
Isak Dinesen [Karen Blixen]. On Modern Marriage and Other Observations (1924). Translated by Anne Born. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986. p. 86-87.

"The world is too small for anything but love, but it is also too dangerous for anything but truth."
Willis Elliott. Flow of Flesh, Reach of Spirit: Thinksheets of a Contrarian Christian. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1995. p. 224.

Love is simply the feeling that I am grateful to be here and I am grateful you are here too, even if you’re on my fucking nerves, which to be honest some of you are. One impact of a society that gives some people unquestioned right to all the resources and power is that it creates out of those people a population who cannot understand the sheer love of being alive, the love of gratitude, the love of satisfaction and serenity. Everything is too little for them. There is not enough action. The mere act of being is not good enough for them. It never can be.
"When I Get Home," Carvell Wallace, Medium, October 19, 2021.

"...sometimes love means being a vessel for somebody else’s pain. Not because love should mean taking on someone else’s pain, but rather that love makes certain kinds of pain more bearable and teaches us more than the love, the violence, and the story that birthed us. Love can makes us people with wings.
Prince Shakur. When They Tell You To Be Good: A Memoir. Tin House, 2022.

"Once we start to believe that love is corny or sentimental, though, we shut ourselves off from this spiritual way of experiencing other human beings. When seeing the other as an embodiment of the sacred is regarded as a quaint or overly romantic idea, hopelessly out of touch with the real world, or, worse yet, when caring about someone else automatically seems to threaten our emotional integrity and need for independence, we experience a spiritual deprivation that is just as intense, painful, and destabilizing as the loss of material security."
Michael Lerner. The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right. HarperSanFrancisco, 2006. p. 65.

"Who actually knew what love felt like? Who said it couldn’t happen suddenly like that, like a fuckin’ realization?"
James Han Mattson. The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves. Little A, 2017. p. 193.

"Love is a thousand things, but at the center is a choice. It is a choice to love people. Left to myself, i get quiet and bitter and critical. i get angry. i feel sorry for myself. It is a choice to love people. It is a choice to be kind. It is a choice to be patient, to be honest, to live with grace. i would like to start making better choices."
Jamie Tworkowski. If You Feel Too Much: Thoughts on Things Found and Lost and Hoped For. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2015. p. 32.

"Love is perhaps the desire to hand on something which one cannot keep."
The main character, Ludwig, in Erich Maria Remarque's The Black Obelisk (1957). USA: Crest, 1958. p. 202.

'The Eunuch', a poem by Ralph Chaplin

Here's a poem, "The Eunuch," from the collection Bars and shadows: the prison poems of Ralph Chaplin. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1922.

The Eunuch

(To those who fight on the side of the Powers of Darkness)

ONCE a Eunuch by the palace
In the sunset s fading glow
Felt the soft warm breezes blow ;

Watched the fair girls of the Harem
Idly saunter to and fro.

Saw he beauty young and lavish
Fierce to lure man s every sense
(Grim the Eunuch stood and tense)

Laughingly the sparkling fountain
Mocked his bleak incompetence.

Came the Sultan from his hunting
Flaming with the zest of life ;
(Laid aside were spear and knife)

Came for wine and song and feasting.
Came to seek his fairest wife.

Opened then the marble portals.
Fragrant incense filled the air
(Sandalwood and roses rare),

While the girls with red-lipped languor
Scattered flowers everywhere.
Far away the fabled mountains
(Like some paradise of old)
Glowed with lavender and gold.

Tense the Eunuch stood and silent
Tense and sullen, tense and cold.

Now a quick impotent fury

Lashed him like a bronze-tipped cord.

Sprang he at the youthful lord.
Sprang again with blade all bloody . . .

(Famished lust and dripping sword.)

Night crept on all chill and ghastly.
Jackals trotted forth to bark,
(Murder shuddered, still and stark . .

By the palace ceased the fountain

And the whole grey world grew dark.

Elaine Castillo: 'White supremacy makes for terrible readers'

Elaine Castillo writes:

When I say that white supremacy makes for terrible readers, I mean that white supremacy is, among its myriad ills, a formative collection of fundamentally shitty reading techniques that impoverishes you as a reader, a thinker, and a feeling person; it’s an education that promises that whole swaths of the world and their liveliness will be diminished in meaning to you. Illegible, intangible, forever unreal as cardboard figures in a diorama.

* * *

The unfortunate influence of this style of reading has dictated that we go to writers of color for the gooey heart-porn of the ethnographic: to learn about forgotten history, harrowing tragedy, community-destroying political upheaval, genocide, trauma; that we expect those writers to provide those intellectual commodities the way their ancestors once provided spices, minerals, precious stones, and unprecious bodies.

Elaine Castillo, How to Read Now: Essays, Viking, 2022, excerpted in LitHub

Neither theism nor atheism

Sometimes we don't believe in God, but we believe in certain other people, and because those people believe in God, we believe in God too in a kind of proxy way.

'He can see things — strange things.' Shelly leaned close to me and whispered, 'Rosa tells me that Benni can see a little bit of God's hidden life.'

'Does God have a hidden life?' I asked.

Shelly snorted. 'George, where is your head? Everything that lives has a hidden life!'

'But you told me once you don't believe in God.'

'That's true. But I believe in Rosa!'

'So what does Rosa think that God does in his hidden life?' I asked.

'I have no idea,' he said with a shrug.

— Richard Zimler. The Incandescent Threads. Parthian, 2022.

---

"Jewish tradition calls this reality God, but that word is so heavy with question and misconception that I have mostly avoided using it. I am far more concerned about the nature of the encounter than I am about the term we use for its referent."

— Eugene B. Borowitz. Renewing the Covenant: A Theology for the Postmodern Jew. (1991) Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996. p. 114.

---

"An agnostic?" Barbara asked. "Isn't that someone who doesn't believe God can be understood?"

"Almost," said Bloomer. "What I think Ira's saying is that he's not even sure enough to be sure he can't know something. Ergo, he's not an agnostic."

— John R. Maxim. Platforms. New York: Avon Books, 2002.

---

Even with limited options, nevertheless, we can change

Charlie Jane Anders’ writing craft book Never Say You Can’t Survive isn’t a philosophy book, except that, well, take a look at this. Here, she talks about how characters can change. As writers and readers, we view their fictional world from the outside, and we also see that they have free will. Maybe we see things about the characters that they aren’t aware of about themselves. When the character has fewer options, they — and we — might perceive their situation as worsening. Still, despite their limited options, the character can change. Almost always, a breakthough is possible.

Here are three brief passages from the book:

Fiction can work all kinds of magic during horrendous times: inspire us to resist evil, expose the reality of the world, create empathy, and help us to understand complex systems from a vantage point that could be hard to reach in nonfiction. But the most powerful thing that fiction can do is show that people can change, and that we all have the potential to be different. That’s where I get a lot of my hope when everything around me feels hopeless.

* * *

Almost every story is some mix of character stuff and plot stuff, and the mix can vary from page to page and chapter to chapter. Character is action: people aren’t just a collection of feeling and opinions and habits, but rather the sum total of all the choices they take. Meanwhile, even the plottiest plotfest needs to have characters who we root for, or else none of the secret codes and countdowns will matter worth a damn.

* * *

I increasingly find it helpful to think in terms of ‘options become constrained,’ rather than ‘things get worse.’ It’s not so much that the situation deteriorates — it’s more like doors are slamming shut, and the protagonists have fewer and fewer courses of action open to them.

— Charlie Jane Anders, Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times by Making Up Stories, Tordotcom (2021), Chapters 8, 9, 10

I appreciate philosophy wherever and in whatever format it appears.

Previously published July 8, 2022 to the Episyllogism blog. That blog is offline, so now this article is here.

I'd like to add this sentence from Benjamin Harnett's novel The Happy Valley (Serpent Key Press, 2022): "He then had what I'd call an accidental recovery — some people do everything right and still tumble into the abyss, others tumble into the abyss and then one day you find they have stepped up out of it, on the far side, wholly sound."

See also Philip Kinsher's 12 Character Archetypes to Know Before You Start Writing, BookBaby, July 11, 2023. These roles are:

• The hero
• The villain
• The mentor
• The trickster
• The guardian
• The herald
• The shape-shifter
• The sidekick
• The love interest
• The underdog
• The femme fatale
• The jester

If we don’t know what we’re promising, is the contract valid?

Do you read the internet’s endless pop-ups by which you’re asked to “consent” to “cookies” every time you visit a new website? You may know that “cookies” essentially mean you’re being tracked, and you may be aware that you’re passively receiving a report of this tracking rather than actively consenting to it. The tracking probably already started when you landed on the webpage and were first presented with the question, right?

You probably don’t read the pop-ups. I don’t. You probably don’t go to each website’s ten-page Terms of Service to learn more about the supposed rules of each individual webpage. I don’t. Reading those legal documents would require more effort than reading the brief article you showed up for.

We know we’re being tracked all the time, whether we actively consent or not. Why waste time reading documents that are designed to be impenetrable? Why try to memorize the stated legal differences between websites? Especially when those documents may be obsolete or false?

Shoshana Zuboff points this out in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (Public Affairs, 2020):

"In many cases, simply browsing a website obligates you to its terms-of-service agreement even if you don’t know it. Scholars point out that these digital documents are excessively long and complex in part to discourage users from actually reading the terms, safe in the knowledge that most courts have upheld the legitimacy of click-wrap agreements despite the obvious lack of meaningful consent."
—Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

She explains how this may be a devolution or degradation of the original idea of a contract.

“Legal scholar Margaret Radin observes the Alice-in-Wonderland quality of such ‘contracts.’ Indeed, the sacred notions of ‘agreement’ and ‘promise’ so critical to the evolution of the institution of contract since Roman times have devolved to a ‘talismanic’ signal ‘merely indicating that the firm deploying the boilerplate wants the recipient to be bound.’ Radin calls this ‘private eminent domain,’ a unilateral seizure of rights without consent. She regards such ‘contracts’ as a moral and democratic ‘degradation’ of the rule of law and the institution of contract, a perversion that restructures the rights of users granted through democratic processes, ‘substituting for them the system that the firm wishes to impose. ... Recipients must enter a legal universe of the firm’s devising in order to engage in transactions with the firm.’”
—Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (citing Margaret Jane Radin's Boilerplate)

When we don’t act consciously, we aren’t using our free will, and then it’s hard to describe ourselves as “agreeing” or “promising.” In this situation, what is a contract? Is it only an assertion of power? Someone telling us: By reading this, you agree...?

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Previously published July 5, 2022 to the Episyllogism blog. This article is no longer on that blog, so now it is here.

Objective discovery, subjective interpretation?

Recently, I read Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman’s Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (University of California Press, 2000). They counter the falsehoods of Holocaust deniers.

(I’ve written at least one, two, three other posts about conspiracy theories.)

I picked up Denying History because I’d read some comments by Michael Shermer on an entirely different topic and I disagreed with him strongly on that other topic, and I wanted to learn more about what else has interested him over his career. So, although you should not understand me as endorsing anything in particular that Shermer has recently said on any of a number of topics, nevertheless I do want to point out a helpful framework within this 22-year-old book Denying History.

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Historical objectivity

The 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke explained this approach.

History is outside our minds; we discover the past and discern its causal structure; we can know the past; we can become objective; we should describe what really happened.

The hardest part of this approach is denying how we are influenced by our own standpoints. How can we pretend to be objective, when it’s obvious that we have biases?

Historical relativism

In the early 20th century, thinkers like Friedrich Meinecke, Benedetto Croce, Carl Becker, and Charles A. Beard took a more relativist approach.

History is inside our minds; we construct the past and assign it causal structure; we can know the past only through what’s documented; we’re always biased; we should present our own interpretation.

The hardest part of this approach is maintaining that nothing can be known. If that’s the case, then why attempt to present history at all?

Historical science

The authors believe that this approach, having evolved from and beyond the former two approaches, is the correct one:

History is both outside and inside our minds; the past has a causal structure, which we discover objectively and describe subjectively; our knowledge is bounded by the data available to us; we should examine our biases; our interpretations are provisional.

They note that James Kloppenberg (American Historical Review, 1989) has called it “pragmatic hermeneutics.”

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I like the simplicity of the breakdown between objectivity and relativism and the presentation of a third approach that bridges them. I also like that they’re talking specifically about writing history.

I don’t necessarily agree, though, that the third approach is correct. The discussion is too short to persuade me (Chapter 2, pp. 19–35). From my own lifetime of thought, for my own reasons, I tend to come down more strongly on the relativist side. But I think it may be a fine place for someone to start exploring the question, and there’s room for discussion here.

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Previously published July 7, 2022 to the Episyllogism blog. This article is no longer on that blog, so now it is here.

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Adding this:

"As I tried to write my book [How to Be an Antiracist], I struggled over what it means to be an intellectual. Or to be more precise: I struggled because what I wanted to write and the way in which I wanted to write it diverged from traditional notions of what it means to be an intellectual.

The intellectual has been traditionally framed as measured, objective, ideologically neutral, and apolitical, superior to ordinary people who allow emotion, subjectivity, ideology, and their own lived experiences to cloud their reason. Group inequality has traditionally been reasoned to stem from group hierarchy. Those who advance anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, and anti-homophobic ideas have historically been framed as anti-intellectual.

The traditional construct of the intellectual has produced and reinforced bigoted ideas of group hierarchy—the most anti-intellectual constructs existing. But this framing is crumbling, leading to the crisis of the intellectual."

— Ibram X. Kendi, "The Crisis of the Intellectuals," The Atlantic, March 23, 2023

After the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020, U.S. intellectuals saw their work as "more in line with that of medical researchers seeking a cure to a disease ravaging their community than with philosophers theorizing on a social disease for theory’s sake from a safe remove. We need the model these new intellectuals pursued to save humanity from the existential threats that humans have created, including climate change, global pandemics, bigotry, and war."

Kendi continues:

"Forty-six years later, when intellectuals of all races produce work on matters primarily affecting white people, the assumed subject of intellectual pursuits, these thinkers are seldom accused of engaging in identity politics. Their work isn’t considered dangerous. These thinkers are not framed as divisive and political. Instead, they are praised for example, for exposing the opioid crisis in white America, praised for pushing back against blaming the addicted for their addictions, praised for enriching their work with lived experiences, praised for uncovering the corporations behind the crisis, praised for advocating research-based policy solutions, praised for seeking truth based on evidence, praised for being intellectuals. As they all should be. But when anti-racist intellectuals expose the crisis of racism, push back against efforts to problematize people of color in the face of racial inequities, enrich our essays with lived experiences, point to racist power and policies as the problem, and advocate for research-based anti-racist policy solutions, the reactions couldn’t be more different. We are told that 'truth seeking' and 'activism' don’t mix."

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Adding this:

"...the possibility that we do, after all, have some say over the patterns we choose to perceive. That we needn't simply receive signs and wonders, or 'Q drops' and Trump tweets, that we needn't only acquiesce to verdicts as truth or to reports of carbon dioxide parts per million as foreshadowing. That we might instead collaborate with the data; that is, interpret. This is what I want to believe that the preachers, even addled by their own filtered revelation, mean when they say to us, discern."
— Jeff Sharlet. The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War. W. W. Norton & Co., 2023. p. 243.

And this:

"The terms masculine and feminine are used symmetrically only as a matter of form, as on legal papers. In actuality, the relation of the two sexes is not quite like that of two electrical poles, for man represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity. In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man say: "You think thus and so because you are a woman"; but I know that my only defense is to reply: "I think thus and so because it is true," thereby removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out of the question to reply: "And you think the contrary because you are a man," for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity....There is an absolute human type, the masculine. Woman has ovaries, a uterus; these peculiarities imprison her in her subjectivity, circumscribe her within the limits of her own nature. It is often said that she thinks with her glands. Man superbly ignores the fact that his anatomy also includes glands, such as the testicles, and that they secrete hormones. He thinks of his body as a direct and normal connection with the world, which he believes he apprehends objectively, whereas he regards the body of woman as a hindrance, a prison, weighed down by everything peculiar to it."
Simone De Beauvoir. The Second Sex. (1949) Quoted in Susan Bordo. Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1997. p. 192.

And this:

"Thomas Kuhn, who wrote The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962, argued that scientists, like all of us, have prejudices and biases. Individual scientists have an established set of beliefs, they believe in certain theories, and they devote their professional lives to proving those views right."
— Brian Klaas. Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters. Scribner, 2024.

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Jude Ellison S. Doyle on objectivity:

"...a point that comes up often in left-leaning media criticism: Many large traditional news outlets have no immune system that allows them to screen out bad-faith actors. Marginalized identities tend to be framed as one side of a “debate,” and both sides of the “debate” are given equal time in the name of “objectivity.” This isn’t evidence of deep-down conservatism so much as it is evidence of a certain view of journalism, in which the world consists entirely of knowable facts, and the job of a journalist is to find and print those facts, without regard to personal feeling. Opinions cannot be evaluated in any objective way (right or wrong, useful or harmful) because they are not facts — it can only be a fact that someone has an opinion, and if an opinion is widespread enough or controversial enough to be newsworthy, you give it a hearing and let readers decide whether they agree.

This is an outdated worldview. I don’t think most journalists my age or younger actually believe it."

— Jude Ellison S. Doyle, "Richard Hanania and the Reasonable White Guy Voice," Medium, August 16, 2023.

Doyle links to info about standpoint theory, and says: "A truth is a fact within its proper context. That’s the standard to which most good journalists aspire."

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In 1964, Lewis Coser wrote: “What Georg Simmel said about the stranger applies with peculiar force to the eunuch: ‘He is not radically committed to the unique ingredients and peculiar tendencies of the group, and, therefore, approaches them with the specific attitude of ‘objectivity’…whereas the relation to more organically connected persons is based on the commonness of specific differences…’" In other words, there's something special about outsider status that may make you a little more objective, at least in your attitude if not in your access to relevant facts, because you have fewer prejudices and loyalties related to the people you're observing. However, Coser continued, speaking specifically about court eunuchs: "The very detachment of the eunuch-stranger from all group involvements makes for his ‘objectivity’ vis-à-vis all subjects, and conversely for his nearness to the ruler,” which makes for “an ideal instrument of the ruler’s subjectivity.” (Coser, p. 882) In this model, you have the subjectivity of whomever you're close to (in this case, the sultan), and objectivity toward whomever you're separated from (in this case, the population at large).
("The Political Functions of Eunuchism." Lewis A. Coser. American Sociological Review, Vol. 29, No. 6 (Dec., 1964), pp. 880-885 (6 pages) https://doi.org/10.2307/2090872 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2090872 Quotation from p. 882. He cites The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. Kurt H. Wolff, The Free Press, 1950, pp. 404–405.)

But it should be obvious — and Coser may be pointing this out sideways, since he puts scare quotes around objectivity but not subjectivity — that sharing the sultan's opinion and agenda, especially when by necessity due to your precarious position as a court functionary whose job is to carry out the sultan's wishes, hardly makes you objective. In other words: Working for the sultan may or may not encourage you to sympathize with him and thus to approximate his "subjectivity." Regardless, sympathizing with one person hardly makes you an "objective" arbiter toward a third person. That's a logical fallacy. The conclusion just doesn't follow from the premise. If I'm drawn into the perspective of the wealthiest family, I'm not thereby more objective about the condition of poor people.

People whose bodies are understood to qualify them as being close to other bodies are ultimately perceived as more personal and therefore less objective:

“Being in bodily attendance on the feminine household within the palace, the eunuchs exploited this position near the person of the ruler and his family. Their basis of operation was attendance on persons, while the bureaucratic official based his power upon his position in an impersonal system. They thrived on nearness, where bureaucrats cultivated distance.” (Coser 1964, also p. 882)

This may be generalized, I suppose, to anyone whose body is focused on by others. Others are constantly reminding themselves that the person has a body. They claim that the embodied person is less objective. This is part of modern transphobia.

On encyclopedic urges

Four quotes:

"I see. You desire a catalog of all imaginary creatures from the dawn of time until the present day. From the ancient Greeks with their Minotaur to the Norsemen's All-Father." Dr. Flowers smiled, cherishing the absurdity of the request. "From the Fair Folk to the leprechauns. From the mermaids of the deep to the vampires of Serbia — "
— T. Baggins. Soulless. 2013.

“In the realm of language, the opposite of a monster is a catalogue.”
— Del Samatar and Sofia Samatar. Monster Portraits. Brookline, Mass.: Rose Metal Press, 2018.

“Encyclopedias provide factual information, but they, like all texts, are authored, constructed so that subjects become captured. Things can be held under a magnifying glass one entry at a time, forever. Does that permanence give them a sort of truth that they are still existing? How, I wonder, does a writer account for the ways time is written into entries? Surely, definitions shift. Things change, and therefore so do meanings—but on the page, the words are impervious to adaptation, to learning. Maybe I can gain something from that sort of cataloguing now. After all, it was those books I went to so often back then, when I wanted to understand something.”
— Kristin Keane. An Encyclopedia of Bending Time. Baltimore: Barrelhouse, 2022. p. 33.

"We as a culture have been content to analyze melancholy and intellectualize depression since we had the words for either, and likely even before this walls were strewn with highbrow marks about some hunter’s lost prey. Not being above that, there is doubtless some desire to utilize academic means or the analytical part of me to understand why my brain seems to want to set itself on fire. However, knowing mere analysis will only lead to further analysis, some dimension had to present itself to disrupt that tendency. Thus, much of the work here has been rewritten, and unwritten in an atypical approach to nonfiction. I don’t think that I believe in nonfiction. Language is as subjective and impossible as depression itself, so I have not attempted to reach anything like objective truth. I've sought a means of transmission, and what remains of it in reception seems beyond my grasp. I have warped old journals and papers and rewritten them because that is depression to me, that is anxiety and addiction and the only true means I’ve found of escape is through, as the old poem goes. So through the documents, the feelings, the intellectualizing and not, the anger, the sorrow, the misery, the piss, the blood, the wasted days and weeks and months and lives in seas of ugly rotting sentiment, or sediment, the only means that seemed to make any sense was total inclusion, and abjection in turn."
— Grant Maierhofer. Peripatet. Inside the Castle, 2019. pp. 295 – 296 of PDF

If these ideas interest you, you may want to know that I wrote a biography of a man with encyclopedia-writing tendencies. The book is Ten Past Noon: Focus and Fate at Forty.

How modern readers react to nature in literature

Came across an essay by Mary Gaitskill, "The Deracination of Literature," Unherd (June 17, 2022).

In 2019, she discussed the novelist John Updike with students. One of his novels "was hard for students to read partly because he was sexist and backward in his racial attitudes, but even more because he described his worlds very, very densely. He would spend pages describing what a character sees driving down a country road at night. Students had a hard time even tracking it — they could, but they had to try."

This session of Gaitskill's class was attended by the writer Joyce Carol Oates, who had been Updike's peer. Oates told the students, as Gaitskill recalled and paraphrased: "yes, John could describe anything and everything but no one wants to read that any more, because (directly quoting) “people have moved on." Gaitskill is still processing the remark. "We’ve moved on from the world we live in? How is that possible?"

"Perhaps — let’s face it, probably — literature has moved on. We don’t look at the physical world as we once did, and so we don’t write about it as we once did. And that is just one way it is being taken for granted and abused to the point of destruction.

That may sound rhetorical, but it isn’t. It is remarkable to me, based on the sample of humans that I’ve had in writing classes, both “kids” and adults, how many people: 1) express great concern about climate change and its effects on the planet, 2) are completely uninterested in other humans’ visions of what the planet they want to save looks, feels and sounds like, and 3) are even less interested in writing or just noticing what it looks like to them. Even as a writing exercise it’s hard for them to say, for example, what someone’s face looks like in a fundamental way. Which is not to say that they can’t do it. Some of them do it very well once they try. But it doesn’t occur to them in the way I think it naturally occurred to people of my generation."

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Then again, some people are thinking all the time about nature. August 1 is the release date for Real Sugar is Hard to Find, Sim Kern's speculative fiction about the future in climate crisis. Stories like these are something you may want to check out to see different ways of conceptualizing human-life-in-nature.

Cli-fi?

"I don’t think your novel needs to be set on a melting polar ice cap to be a climate novel. In the future, every novel written today might be read as a climate novel—because we’re writing in the midst of a catastrophe, whether we overtly talk about it or not. Inevitably, the way we construct characters will be affected by it, I don’t think we need a new 'genre' of climate fiction; on the contrary, the point is that all contemporary fiction reflecting on the human condition now necessarily occupies this territory."
— Elvia Wilk, in The Climate of Feeling: A Conversation with Elvia Wilk. By Sruti Islam. The Rumpus. December 27, 2019.

Tadpoles by Marjan from Pixabay

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A musing:

"It is not nature itself which is evil but abandonment and desuetude, which make for places where human beings still are, but are no longer able to live."
— Dominic Fox. "Killing Spree!" In Serial Killing: A Philosophical Anthology. Edia Connole and Gary J. Shipley, eds. Schism, 2015. p. 220.

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Moral relativism is often defined as inconsistency

Not taking responsibility for your own actions and instead blaming others

"Blaming the parents is indicative of our culture's tendency to find someone else to blame for our own actions. It's a symptom of moral relativism — the belief that we can decide what is right and wrong. In essence, moral relativism makes us like god. This high-and-mighty perspective gives us the permission to point fingers. But since moral relativism gives everybody this right, it merely circles opinions and never truthfully verifies or answers the question: 'Why?'"

"Questions Surrounding Mass Murder Reveals Gaps In Moral Relativism." Tia Johnson. Delight Media. 7/30/2012.

Unwillingness or inability to judge others

“Something you’ve probably noticed about me and that I get accused of a lot is moral relativism. And I realize that it is absolutely an issue for me.
I have a lot of trouble declaring anything as definitively right or wrong.
* * *
Everyone is the hero in his own mind, so people who do things that I think are adharmic often think they are being righteous and correct. How do I know that my conception of what is dharmic is the correct one? What makes me think I know best?
And so I say nothing and I do nothing. I want to change that. I want to get better about speaking out for justice.
I may not always have a perfect understanding of what is dharmic, but showing indifference in the face of suffering is much worse.”
“Moral Relativism” by Ambaa on the blog “The White Hindu.” July 3, 2014.

The culture or social convention defines right and wrong

"Applied to morality, subjectivism becomes moral relativism.  As far as moral judgments are concerned, an act's moral goodness or badness depends upon the perspective of the people involved. One argument in favor of moral relativism is that one culture may consider an act to be good and another culture may consider it to be bad.  Here is the argument:
1. If an act is good for one culture
2. And the same act is bad for another culture
3. Therefore the act's moral value is relative to the culture"
"The Logic of Moral Relativism - Part One" - Faith & Reason: Where Two or More are Gathered. 12/30/2012.

"Moral relativism is essentially the idea that morality does not exist and cannot be defined, but rather is only a matter of agreed upon social convention." 
* * *
"If a person believes that morality is a subjective, cultural issue, they are then able to justify their own unethical actions, as well as turn their back on the unethical actions of others, if that’s what is politically correct at the time.
It is somewhat understandable that people would adopt this mindset considering they have been subject to a lifetime of watching various religious sects battle over subjective moral standards.  Likewise, they have seen corrupt political organizations use moral arguments to oppress nonviolent people and justify their own violence at the same time."
* * *
"A consistent moral standard is necessary to create a truly free and civilized society, and those standards must apply to everyone equally, transcending cultural norms and individual status.  Interestingly enough, such a standard has already been proposed and is practiced by peace and freedom seekers worldwide.  That standard is known as the Non-Aggression Principle or NAP for short.
The common law institute describes the non-aggression principle as “do not initiate force or fraud”, or “if it harms none, do what you will”, or “treat others as you’d like to be treated”, or “live and let live”. In more detail, “Do not initiate force or fraud against anyone else’s person or property.”"
"Richard Dawkins Defends Pedophiles by Evoking Moral Relativism." JG Vibes Intellihub.com September 11, 2013.

"Ethical relativists often link moral claims to cultural norms. The claim here is that what is right or wrong depends on what a particular culture, religion, political or government body dictates. Relativists do not deny that there are indeed moral rules, sometimes even strict ones, governing what people should or shouldn't do, but they hold that those rules differ from place to place and are prone to change over time. As such, ethical relativism posits that the particular ethical views of one culture are no better than another culture's." "How are cultural norms related to moral relativism." Jeremy C. Bradley. Demand Media.

"However, Monge, who was always very concerned with social justice, found herself struggling in high school to find an atheist moral system in which she was satisfied. “I believed in human rights, but couldn’t really give an explanation as to why,” Monge says, recalling her frustration. She spent her time exploring what morality without religion would look like, pondering how to ground ethics and justify human rights if God didn’t exist. Monge didn’t come up with much, though. There should, she believed, exist a universal morality. But, as she examined the ethical allowances of various cultures, Monge found that what was permissible in one community was often morally suspect in another. It was the relativism that troubled her.
* * *
During this time, Porter helped Monge realize that, for there to be meaning in her life, God would have to exist. Once, Porter played her a song on the piano—“Hallelujah.” (The Crimson)

"Those considerations do not apply today, so ancient censures make no sense. As contemporary morality reflected historical circumstances to justify polygamy and reproduction by proxy, so modern morality reflects, or should reflect, present circumstances to justify alternatives to heterosexual marriage. In this sense, moral relativism is a fact of history recognizing and respecting an evolving cultural reality in a slow response to changing circumstances. Moral relativism does not mean no morals; it means that different people in different cultures or circumstances have different morals. In a free country, have your morals, let other have theirs, and debate, not dictate, them." (First Impressions, Second Thoughts)

"By ‘moral relativism’ we mean the descriptive belief that moral standards are culturally defined–that the truth or falsity of moral claims and judgments is not universal or objective but instead relative to the particular historical and cultural beliefs, views, traditions, and practices of particular groups of people, which leads to the normative belief that everyone ought to tolerate all of the moral beliefs and belief-justified behaviors of others, even when they are very different from our own cultural or moral standards, since no universal or objective moral standard exists by which to judge their beliefs and behaviors..."
Christian Smith, Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood. Quoted by Nick Nowalk in "Moral Relativism Leads to Emotivism," Dec 23, 2012.

"How Do People Define Moral Relativism?
Moral Relativism is defined as the position that all points of view are equally valid and that all truth is relative to the individual and his or her environment. All ethical, religious, political, and aesthetic beliefs are truths that are relative to the cultural identity of the individual.
Relativism can include moral relativism (ethics are relative to the social construct), situational relativism (right and wrong depend on the particular situation), and cognitive relativism (truth is relative and has no objective standard).
Define Moral Relativism – It is Culturally Based
Moral Relativism is the theory that morality is culturally based, and therefore, becomes a matter of individual choice. When it comes to standards of right and wrong, you decide what's right for you, and I'll decide what's right for me.
Moral Relativism has gradually become the prevailing moral philosophy of western society, a culture once governed largely by the Judeo-Christian concept of morality. While those early standards continue to form the basis for civil law, people by and large are embracing the notion that right and wrong are not absolute values, but are to be decided by the individual and can change from one situation or circumstance to the next. 

Generally, moral relativism claims to be morally neutral."
All About How. Accessed Feb. 25, 2013

Something is permitted or forbidden depending on who you are (e.g., man or woman)

"Women should have equal opportunity in education. Their rights should never be diluted by Western notions of cultural relativism."
"What will the Arab Spring mean for women?" Commentary. Michael Rubin, 10/31/2011.

"One of the most irritating arguments I hear from Christians all the time is that if you don’t believe that morality is defined solely by God in His allegedly infinite wisdom, you’re a “moral relativist,” presumably a bad thing. But a New Jersey Catholic School is demonstrating that quality themselves rather plainly:
Female students at the Queen of Peace High School in North Arlington, N.J., stood up during homeroom Friday, raised their right hands, and recited a pledge in unison.
“I do solemnly promise not to use profanities of any kind within the walls and properties of Queen of Peace High School. In other words, I swear not to swear. So help me God,” they said.
Meanwhile, boys at the school were free to use whatever language they wanted.
So it’s wrong for girls to curse, because they are such delicate flowers, but okay for the boys. Of course, I don’t much care if anyone curses. But how is this not the very “moral relativism” that the Pope screams about all the time? We see the same behavior from many Christians when you bring up the atrocities in the Old Testament. All of a sudden genocide will be excusable, even the dashing of children against the rocks. It’s totally different when God does it. Moral relativism, indeed."
"Catholic School Teaches Moral Relativism." Ed Brayton. Freethought Blogs. Feb 6 2013.

...or other group identities

"This is what the London anti-sharia campaigner Maryam Namazie, speaking in Sydney last week, calls gender apartheid. She also calls it cultural relativism; one standard for us, another for them. I'd call it moral relativism, but call it what you will, it is profoundly dangerous to a free and fair society."
"Keeping quiet allows intolerance to thrive." Elizabeth Farrelly. Sept. 1, 2011.

"Yes, I agree, there has indeed been a slow motion moral collapse. But in my view it has come from the top of society, not the bottom....the real moral relativism is that, with so few exceptions, these people have got away with it, however vast the consequences of their behaviour, while those without power and wealth and connections, at the bottom of society, have been fast-tracked into prison." "The real moral relativism." Steve Wyler. Locality: Communities ambitious for change. Aug. 30, 2011.

"Numerous surveys reveal that most Americans deny moral absolutes in favor of moral relativism. Moral relativism affirms that ethics vary from person to person, situation to situation, and culture to culture. People often express this shallow view of ethics by means of mottos. Look out for number one. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. You have your truth; I have my truth."
"Point of View: Is morality in the eye of the beholder?" by Mark A. Rathel. Florida Baptist Witness. Sept. 23, 2011.

My favorite letter-writer recently proclaimed that, “What the Navy SEALs did to (Osama bin Laden) was unconscionable!” But if the SEALs had brutally subjugated East Asia in the name of Emperor Hirohito and the supposed racial superiority of the Japanese, this guy wouldn’t have a thing to say about it. I guess that moral relativism does for one’s sense of perspective what bin Laden did for international relations.
"LETTER: Self-righteousness also can be deadly." Dec. 12, 2011.

"Contrary to what the left's relativist ideology says, for us, all civilizations are not of equal value," Guéant, a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement, told a conference on February 4. "Those which defend humanity seem to us to be more advanced than those that do not," he averred. "Those which defend liberty, equality, and fraternity seem to us superior to those which accept tyranny, the subservience of women, social and ethnic hatred" -- a truth that would be hammered home a month and a half later by a jihadist murdering Jewish children in Toulouse. Thus, Guéant underscored the need to "protect our civilization."
* * *
Of course, the political figure best known for bluntly comparing the Western and Islamic worlds while suffering the establishment's wrath is Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders. "We will have to end cultural relativism," he stressed in Rome last year. "To the multiculturalists, we must proudly proclaim: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Only when we are convinced of that, we will be willing to fight for our own identity."
"Western Survival Depends on Western Pride." David J. Rusin, Frontpage Magazine, posted on Assyrian International News Agency (AINA). 3/28/2012. Original link: http://www.frontpagemag.com/

"Multiculturalism is, in effect, a dressed up and politicized version of cultural relativism -- the doctrine that every group has its own distinct but equally sound patterns of perception, thought, and choice. According to cultural relativism, no one can validly object to beliefs and actions of any group which reflect that group's own indigenous worldview. While cultural relativists have always claimed to be friends of tolerance -- indeed the only true friends of tolerance -- this doctrine actually implies that no one can object to any group's intolerance, if intolerance is that group's thing. Neither the cultural relativist nor the multiculturalist can object to Mayan infant sacrifice, or Spanish Inquisitional torture, or Nazi genocide because each of these practices is validated by the perspective within which it arises."
Eric Mack, Prof. of Philosophy at Tulane University, quoted here.“These double standards help the Israeli Right and Netanyahu’s expansionism — as well as moral relativism, because if any other country does it it’s wrong, sanctioned and sometimes even pushed back. When the Israeli Right does it, it gets a pass and even assistance.”
“Getting a Pass,” LTE in Jerusalem Post, Sept. 7, 2014, by James Adler, Cambridge, Mass.

Excusing bad behavior (your own or someone else's)

"After all, moral relativism is simply the self-righteousness of the wicked masquerading as profound intellectual insight. History is chock full of evidence to suggest that people truly unfettered by moral scruples will stomp all over those who let conscience get in their way."
"Does the GOP also practice moral relativism?" Alan Keyes. WorldNetDaily. Aug. 18, 2011.

"This paper discusses the ethical void in Capitalism which does not look prominent in welfare societies and states. But, its effects become more eminent in tough economic conditions. Unbridled pursuit of self interest, moral relativism, incentive-led economic choices and apathy to communal responsibilities would lead to a society where economic interests become the sole basis of maintaining and sustaining relationships."
Salman Ahmed Shaikh (2011): Thesis of religion: normative basis of Islamic economics. Published in: Journal of Islamic Banking & Finance , Vol. 28, No. 4 (01. October 2011)

"Here you are simply saying that it is useful for God to exist if one wants to avoid moral relativism (and personal responsability [sic] for one’s own moral decisions). I’ll grant that, but it certainly doesn’t prove [that God exists]."
Comment from James McGrath, April 3, 2008

Excusing other people's bad behavior, or holding them to lower standards, on the grounds that they don't know any better

"...my young son (who hopes to enter the military one day) struggles with the notion of fighting people who embrace a bad idea because they don’t know any better.  He fully understands that your average Taliban fighter (not the Western-educated elites, but the guys on the ground) has never been exposed to ideas other than the virtue of sharia and worldwide Islamic domination.  His [the Taliban fighter's] world view is a one way street.  My son therefore struggles with moral relativism as it plays out on the field of battle."
"Bad seeds and total war." Posted by "Bookworm." Bookworm Room. Aug. 26, 2011.

"[Melanie] Phillips was working at the left-wing Guardian newspaper at the time, where her editors asked her to regard the criticism of Israel for minor offenses as a compliment (because Israel was a highlevel Western country) while the murder of 20,000 Syrians by their own government was no worse then what was expected of them (because Syria was a low-level Arab country). This is what she called moral relativism, in which some parties are immune from criticism on the basis that they are behaving in line with their own culture."
"Melanie Phillips Explained." Stephen Kramer. Jewish Times Israel correspondent. Sept. 30, 2011.

     "The prized place the protection of human rights has come to occupy in international parlance makes the problem even trickier. Countries like Singapore and Malaysia have, time and again, championed so-called “Asian Values” in their attempt to carve out a place in a “Western” international system governed by liberal norms. Yet, I wonder if this takes cultural relativism too far, turning it into a “battle of moral one-upsmanship” that overlooks the individual lives at stake.
     Former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad encapsulated the paradox when he expressed his support for his government’s decision in terms of winning the “moral high ground” over other developed countries. He compared those detained under the act to those currently held in Guantanamo Bay, saying:
     "Previously, they [the US] criticised Malaysia for purportedly being cruel by detaining people without trial. But they are the ones doing it now."
     The desire to prove one’s moral legitimacy seems inconsistent with the appeal to human rights underlying such a decision. Associate Professor Bilveer Singh of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies has also suggested that Prime Minister Najib Razak’s decision was ‘driven primarily by domestic political considerations.’"
"Singapore: Human rights and the Internal Security Act." Sharon Chen. AsianCorrespondent.com. Sept. 30, 2011.

"But while we behave in a culturally sensitive way, we must always have in mind our morality. A company must know what behavior violates its moral codes, and would be unacceptable wherever it was practiced. In other words, we can accept and work across a wide cultural relativism, but we have no space for moral relativism."
"About Leadership: Cultural and Moral Relativism." Bernie Bulkin. Nov. 17, 2011.

"Immigrants and refugees come here for a better life - and it is a bloody great life here. Compared to the developing world we are wealthy, healthy and safe.
To keep it that way we need to make sure that some misdirected idea of moral relativism - it's their way so it's OK - does not allow abuses and inequalities to flourish."
"Shepherd: Odd, wrong...or illegal?" Tory Shepherd. The Advertiser. Nov. 8, 2011.

"Initially, anyway, it looked like multiculturalism was a good idea in that it seemed little more than an opportunity to take in the diet, dance and dress of diverse cultures. But soon the moral relativism started to occur, wherein newcomers wanted Canada to accommodate their less enlightened cultural practices rather than the other way around."
"Corbella: The export that smears freedom--multiculturalism." Licia Corbella. Nov. 15, 2011.

"I think moral relativists just lack the ability to feel empathy for others and that's why when they see things like the genocide or animal abuse, they're like "meh, theres two sides to this story" because it provokes zero emotional response from them, therefore they cannot get mad at the person ordering/taking part in the genocide, or abusing the animal. But when it happens to them? Oh, than [sic] it's evil."
"Soldrether" in Nov. 2011 in this forum.

"In what I hope is part of the last gasps of the disorienting moral relativism that marked so many intellectuals during the 2000s, Bruce Crumley was given the pages of Time Magazine to spin out the classic critique that internalises a fear of “Islamophobia” as defined by Muslims who want to avoid public criticism: * * * Crumley has made the classic moral inversion characteristic of the Human Rights Complex: he treats Muslims as a force of nature, not as autonomous moral agents. * * * Crumley here is protecting the thin skin of Muslims who, in contact with the rough and tumble verbal sport of modernity, find themselves humiliated and frustrated. * * * Here’s where Crumley and I part ways: he treats Muslims as animals or little children, and believes that he can win them over with carrots. Sticks will just spook them. So he finds Charlie Hebdo’s behavior “childish, futile, Islamophobic [sic!]… inflammatory… obnoxious, infantile… outrageous, unacceptable, condemnable.” "
"Protecting Muslim honour at the price of freedom of speech: Bruce Crumley, Time and Charlie Hebdo." Richard Landes. The Telegraph. Nov. 11, 2011.

"We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value." (ABC)

Seeking to "understand" one's enemies

New York Times national security correspondent Scott Shane has an opinion piece in today’s Sunday Times predicting an “arms race” in military drones. * * * (The other unstated premise underlying the whole opinion piece is a studiously neutral moral relativism signaled by that otherwise unexamined phrase “perceived enemies.”)
"What kind of drones arms race is coming?" Kenneth Anderson. Oct. 9, 2011.

Punishing evil too mildly

"WKU Athletic Director Ross Bjork, a former Missouri administrator, would not disclose his punishment for Guidry but told reporters it would be “stern.” So stern, in fact, that he suggested the school may limit Guidry’s out-of-state recruiting, the latest daily dose of moral relativism in college football."
"Take Two: Coach's pregame routine needs work." David Briggs. Columbia Tribune. Nov. 14, 2011.

[On Omar Khadr being released from prison in Canada:]
"He grew up in a bad family of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers...He was raised in a family that was a terrible influence..." [But, raised in Canada, he could have chosen a different path, and didn't.] "He is an enemy, and he's proud to be so." "Is a bad upbringing an excuse for murder? We don't seem to think so in other circumstances."
"Do we cry tears for Terry Lynn McClintock [a drug-addicted child, the daughter of a stripper, who, when she reached age 18, killed an innocent little girl]? OK, well we could. She had a tough line. But she crossed a line that she can't come back from. Life in prison is the penalty. Even if we accept as true that Khadr was indoctrinated as a child into jihad..."
"They should be punished to the full extent of the law to protect society."
"Has it become politically popular to identify with another culture to the dysfunctional extent that no action of a member of that minority culture and/or race can do no wrong?"
"Political considerations in no way to decide which murderers we like. How about we don't like any of them? Moral relativism and Omar Khadr." Jerry Agar. Sun News. 10/18/2012.

Not punishing evil at all

"They always worry about the cuddly quotient in TV. That's what (the book) Dexter's about; a protest against moral relativism. On a gut level, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is the only thing that makes sense to people."
Author Jeff Lindsay, creator of the Dexter Morgan character. Quoted in "'Dexter,' 'Hell on Wheels' and 'Breaking Bad' give us the bad guy as 'antihero'." Eric Deggans. Nov. 7, 2011.

"For decades now, counselors and psychiatrists have avoided words such as "guilt," "sin" and "stealing." Miscreants are encouraged to say they "made a mistake" or a "bad decision." Moral relativism helps no one except those who want to evade responsibility for their actions." "Has suggestions for getting serious about shoplifting." Suzanne Molineaux. Nov. 16, 2011. http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/Has-suggestions-for-getting-serious-about-2272620.php

Placating enemies

"In October 2003, Representative Eliot Engel, who sponsored the legislation, proudly reported the bill’s imminent passage to the inaugural Jerusalem Summit, organized by Ariel Sharon’s government and its diehard American supporters (including the ubiquitous Perle) “to work out a joint strategy of resistance to the Totalitarianism of the Radical Islam, and to the moral relativism which in vain tries to placate this Totalitarianism by sacrificing Israel.”"
"The long road to Damascus." Maidhc Ó Cathail. Nov. 16, 2011.

"Appeasement, flattery and moral relativism don’t work: in his 2009 Cairo speech the president said Islam and the West should “learn from each other,” but what can America really learn from those who associate worship with violent rage?"
"The Toxic Mix of Rage and Worship," Michael Medved, Sept. 18, 2012.

Willingness to debate people who have done bad things

"The BBC knows the limits of what the organisation absurdly terms ‘balance’ but is more often the promotion of moral relativism. A poppy week broadcast package may include as well as a British Legion spokesman an Islamic jihadist advocating sawing-off the heads of soldiers, an evangelical Christian may be ‘balanced’ by a Satanist, a reputable scientist by a flat-earther AGW advocate and so on. For every politician urging the benefits on-air of family life with both mother and father will be another defending the rights of promiscuous bastardy at the taxpayers’ expense."
"BBC: 'balance', nonces and moral relativism." by Hatfield Girl. 10/23/2012

Associating with people who have done bad things

"So, Nike have dropped Lance Armstrong. Lance Armstrong has also resigned as head of his Livestrong Foundation.
I don’t think Nike had much choice here. Not only is Armstrong a proven cheat but it seems he was also involved in encouraging (or “bullying” according to the testimony) his team mates into doing the same. It seems he may well have been encouraging his team mates to “Just Do It” in a rather different context from that which Nike intends. Armstrong and US Postal were far from alone in their cheating though.
* * *
All of this raises an issue of moral relativism for brands – when is an indiscretion sufficient to cut your ties with a celebrity? Is an indiscretion against your sport really a worse thing than one against your wife? Morally, of course not. Do I care about that one way or the other, or am I simply worried about the continuing credibility of a celebrity to endorse my brand? I suspect the latter is true, though few would admit it. There is no moral judgement, simply a brand value judgement. For many brands, their values would determine that the call may be seen from outside as having been made on moral grounds but the cynic in me suspects that, in reality, that’s not the case."
"Nike, Lance Armstrong and Moral Relativism." Andrew Jerina. Research Geek. 10/18/2012

Tolerance or politeness:
"Our dedication to objective truth girds the Hillsdale College community. It is by this commitment that we strive against a modern world conceived in relativism, where the only idea not tolerated is intolerance itself." "Reject Relay relativism." By Jordan Adams. Hillsdale Collegian. Sept. 29, 2011.

"Some academics seem wholly committed to relativism. They are often enthusiastic about views they do not agree with. Expressing your opinions is what counts....There is no authority to relativists other than the authority of the personal view point....few of today’s ubiquitous relativists are scoundrels. In fact they are rather nice; too nice to be scoundrels. They are the people who do not want to give offence."
"Relativism is dead: long live relativism." Dennis Hayes. Aug. 26, 2011.

"In a famous scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the lord of a castle seeks to bring peace to warring opponents by saying, 'Now, now, let’s not fight and squabble about who killed who.' ... Moral relativism is a bit like that."
"Why Can't We All Just Get Along?" T. M. Moore. The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Aug. 29, 2011.

"We live in a society which is morally sick. We have a relative rather than an absolute moral code. ... The only long-term solution is a return to a moral code in which right and wrong, good and evil are reinforced by sanctions and rewards."
"A musing about life and moral decay." Peter Bingle. The Dispatch Box. Sept. 29, 2011.

“Nick Spencer seems to think that a decline in religious affiliation will mean a descent into moral relativism. ... When I teach ethics ... I want them to see that they agree on a lot, to become aware of the nature of their actual meta-ethical views before they get to the theorizing, and to try to prevent them from taking refuge in relativism out of intellectual exhaustion with the many incompatible meta-ethical theories. ... Again and again, they affirm that an action that is wrong here and now would be wrong everywhere and always.  In other words, they are not relativists but natural objectivists – even if they also think we should all be relativists to ensure that we are tolerant, as some of them inconsistently do.”
"The wrong diagnosis and the wrong remedy." Brian Zamulinski. December 23, 2011.

”There's an old saying. What's mine is mine. What's yours is up for grabs. The person who coined it was obviously a cynic, but the saying does capture the hypocrisy of the modern moral relativism. Put basically, champions so-called "tolerance" demand that their views be accepted that even if a person disapproves of a view, he or she should respect the right of the individual to live in accordance with that view without being judged for it.
BUT, this champion of "tolerance" will not practice what he or she preaches. This person will not accept the right of the individual who believes in Christian morality to live in accordance with that view. On the contrary, he or she will quite harshly judge and condemn these views, trying to suppress them.
* * *
We see demonization of opponents.
Thus we see the proponents of modern moral relativism do not practice the tolerance they demand their opponents follow.”
"The Hypocrisy of Modern Moral Relativism." by "Arnobius of Sicca." 12/31/2012

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"Rule-breaking is usually about curiosity and a sense of immortality, two things people lose as they grow older; we suppose fearing for her life has been good motivation."
A. E. Osworth, We Are Watching Eliza Bright (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)