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."

---

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

---

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.

---

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

---

"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)

Moral relativism and the belief that 'everything is permitted'

Some people define "moral relativism" as the attitude or belief that 'everything is permitted'. This is not necessarily the best definition of it. I have collected some examples of people using it this way.

"[Veit] Bader is concerned to avoid both the temptation to “universalise particular moralities” and on the other end of the spectrum the problem of moral relativism which implicitly condones anything. In order to avoid these poles, Bader proposes that the state should seek to secure a moral minimalist position. * * * He regards the minimal morality required in liberal-democracies to be more demanding as it includes such things as equal civic and political rights, equal legal rights and political autonomy."
"Book Review: Secularism or Democracy? by Veit Bader. Stumbling through the Past. April 11, 2011.

"Upholding the world's diversity as the norm, [Sergey] Lavrov is at the same time immune to the fashion for relativism in handling value system issues. His strongly held view is that contemporary societies should be built on solid moral foundations which alone can cement relationships between nations, peoples and ethnic groups. Lavrov is open about his aversion to Pontius Pilatus-style indifference expressed in his famous reply “What is truth?”. Rather, he sees the crisis of the European society whose value system were eroded by what Z. Brzezinski described as “a civil war within the West” as the root cause of most of the XIX and XX century tragedies."
"Notes of a Diplomacy Professional." Armen Oganesyan. The Voice of Russia. Nov. 2, 2011.

"Astonished, I asked them how could they not think that this ["open relationships"] was wrong. I got answers like: “well, since it is all out in the open and everybody knows that everybody is doing it, there is nothing fundamentally wrong. No one is cheating on a spouse because the spouse was also swinging.”
I said to them: “what about the seventh commandment – do not commit adultery.” One student answered that these people are really not religious. What the students didn’t seem to understand was that whether they were religious or not, there is a moral code that is rooted in the Bible which defines for us what is right and what is wrong. The problem is that when pressed, many of the students simply said that if it feels good and if it feels right then who am I to judge? I told them I wasn’t suggesting that they go over to somebody who is engaged in swinging and chastise them, but that they had to have an opinion on this practice. They looked at me with some disbelief."
"Living in a post-moral world." Rabbi Haskel Lookstein. Sermon for Parshat Noach. Oct. 29, 2011.

"For the advocates of redistributive policies and antidiscrimination policies the answer is clear: the freedom to "do your own thing" entitles a person to the resources to support them, and immunity from criticism for their chosen lifestyle – it is just their own thing after all! This is precisely the vision of the modern moral-relativist welfare state. This is what the advocates of redistributive and antidiscrimination policies have in mind when they hide behind this innocuous phrase. How dare you refuse to contribute your earnings to others who are just trying to do their own thing? How dare you deign to criticize the actions of other people, or discriminate against them – don't you realize that they are just doing their own thing?
In this corrupted sense, the notion of a society where people are free to "do their own thing" becomes a cruel joke, a nightmare tyranny in which this peaceful slogan belies a rigorous system of coercion and control. In such a society, people are not free to do their own thing at all. Not if "their own thing" happens to consist of thinking and telling the truth about the people and institutions around them, objectively assessing and judging the ideas and actions of others, and trying to live their own lives free from egalitarian molestation. In such a society, people are free to do their own thing only to the extent that they avoid objective reasoning and kowtow to the tenets of moral relativism, adopting the mushy "nonjudgmental" thinking." (Lew Rockwell)

"Moral relativism is the ideology that we can do, essentially, whatever we want. “It can be right for you but not right for me, and that’s okay”. As you said, “Also, morals are just opinions of what’s right and what’s wrong. As a result, you cannot say that your morals are superior to anyone else’s.” That’s MR at its finest." Tumblr

Paul Tournier:

“…the worst thing is not being wrong, but being sure one is not wrong. Nothing is more dangerous for us than to believe ourselves to be the authentic interpreters of the divine will. This is the source of all illuminism, of all brutal intolerance, of all proselytism and fanaticism. See how delicate a problem it is: objective criteria tend towards overbearing moralism…”

Paul Tournier. The Violence Within. Translated by Edwin Hudson, 1978. New York: Harper & Row, 1982, (originally Violence et Puissance, 1977) pp. 64–65.

Should the study of 'the classics' be dismantled and rebuilt?

A question raised in the current issue of Brown Alumni Monthly.

"For 21st-century American proponents of the supremacy of 'white culture,' ancient Greece and Rome are revered as where it all started. That’s among the many reasons Princeton classics professor Dan-el Padilla Peralta, in an incendiary 2019 panel discussion, denounced his own field as engaging in the 'production of whiteness' and said he hopes classics, as currently constructed, 'dies as swiftly as possible.'

Since then, more and more scholars have been asking, should classics even proceed as a field? Does it need merely to be disrupted or should it be dismantled altogether, dispersed into the departments of history, archaeology, art history, and foreign languages? How can classics — a historically white, male, and elite field of study — be made more accessible?"

"Classics: Dead or Alive? A new course examines ancient Greece and Rome with a 21st-century lens." Peder Schaefer ’22. Brown Alumni Monthly. June–August 2022.

Change: How it feels in the moment, what it means in retrospect

Gems from Charlie Jane Anders in the writing craft book Never Say You Can't Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories (Tordotcom, 2021).

About personal change over time, how we piece together reality in the moment and, later, in retrospect.

— "A story can show change happening in real time." (Chapter 8)

— "People often talk about characters having an 'arc,' which brings to mind the image of an arrow shot in the air, curving upward only to come down again. But another useful image is a piece of coal coming under immense pressure and becoming a diamond. People don't change when life is easy and straightforward — they change when life is a bloody confusing nightmare." (Chapter 8)

— "The texture of reality is made out of random details, and it's especially weird what you'll notice when your emotions are working overtime. You might be in the middle of a relationship-ending fight with your partner, but your eye might land on a tiny candy wrapper on the sidewalk..." (Chapter 15)

— Writing is "like doing a jigsaw puzzle where we have to carve the pieces as we assemble them, and some of the pieces will turn out to belong to a different puzzle entirely." (Chapter 16)

— "I usually feel like every story has a point where it stops pushing uphill, and starts rolling downhill. ... So a good structure will not only let the reader know what the big turning points in the story are, but show how the consequences of those turning points are piling up. This is a big part of why I say the ending is the beginning: once you have an ending that you love, that feels like it pays off the themes and the character arcs of your whole story, then you can go back and shape all that raw material into something where every moment serves to build up power that you can discharge at the end." (Chapter 24)

Image of an incandescent bulb taken by Stefan Krause, Germany.
© Free Art License Wikimedia Commons.

One way to organize a book about transgender epistemology

Recently I became aware that Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic Magazine, is anti-transgender. (See his tweets.) I looked up more about him, and discovered that he'd co-authored a book with Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (University of California Press, 2000).

The subtitle was more or less what I wanted to ask him: why do people say anti-transgender things?

So I bought a copy of the book. One of my takeaways is how he structured it.

Part I discusses "free speech and the nature of history." This includes chapters on "the freedom of speech that must be considered when dealing with Holocaust denial, and why we need to respond" and "the nature of history, the difference between history and pseudohistory, and ways of knowing that anything in the past happened," as well as whether it's possible to say that any statement about real-world events is more true than another.

Part II examines "the denial movement" itself, including "personalities and organizations" and "ideological and political motives and the larger social context" as well as "the flaws, fallacies, and failings in their arguments".

Part III looks specifically at "the three major foundations upon which Holocaust denial rests" while refuting those claims with "historical facts" and "show[ing] how we know that the Holocaust happened." One chapter is allocated to each of these false claims. They are "the claim that gas chambers and crematoria were used not for mass extermination but rather for delousing clothing and disposing of people who died of disease and overwork"; "the claim that the six million figure is an exaggeration by an order of magnitude"; and "the claim that there was no intention on the part of the Nazis to exterminate European Jewry and that the Holocaust was nothing more than an unfortunate by-product of the vicissitudes of war."

Part IV is a reframe. There, "we pull back to look at the bigger picture of Holocaust studies." Historians and the public do engage in "'history wars' in various fields," and these dialogues aren't the same as "what the Holocaust deniers are doing."

Hypothetically, if someone wanted to write a book about why people say anti-transgender things, this would be one way to organize it, yes? Maybe I'll do so. Or maybe you, dear reader, will do it first.

"The trans and nonbinary is the rejection of gender as an organizing apparatus for one's subjectivity. It is the refusal to be required to show up in the world on gendered grounds in order to show up in the world at all." (Dr. Marquis Bey, 19:37–19:50)

On definitions:
Lyn Hejinian's "The Rejection of Closure" was a talk she gave in San Francisco in 1983 and later revised to publish as an essay. "A 'closed text,'" she suggests, "is one in which all the elements of the work are directed toward a single reading of it. Each element confirms that reading and delivers the text from any lurking ambiguity. In the 'open text,' meanwhile, all the elements of the work are maximally excited; here it is because ideas and things exceed (without deserting) argument that they have taken into the dimension of the work." Whether a text has formal structure isn't the same as whether its meaning is open or closed. In fact, certain kinds of structures may help to open up the text.

Hejinian says:

"Language discovers what one might know, which in turn is always less than what language might say. We encounter some limitations of this relationship early, as children. Anything with limits can be imagined (correctly or incorrectly) as an object, by analogy with other objects—balls and rivers. Children objectify language when they render it their plaything, in jokes, puns, and riddles, or in glossolaliac chants and rhymes. They discover that words are not equal to the world, that a blur of displacement, a type of parallax, exists in the relation between things (events, ideas, objects) and the words for them—a displacement producing a gap.

* * *

Because we have language we find ourselves in a special and peculiar relationship to the objects, events, and situations which constitute what we imagine of the world. Language generates its own characteristics in the human psychological and spiritual conditions. Indeed, it nearly is our psychological condition."

Hil Malatino's Trans Care (2020): "I will never argue against the importance of articulating gender identity... But frustration persists, because whenever I articulate the spectrum, I brush up against the ineffable. ... The identities we claim, no matter how complex our list of modifiers, always seem to say both much more and much less than I'd like."

Something else I'd add to a book on transgender epistemology is why cis people feel entitled to know facts about transgender people, including whether a specific person is trans at all.

"Complete and total strangers, acquaintances, and even friends don’t have a 'right' to know if someone is trans any more than they have a 'right' to know if someone has an 'innie' bellybutton or an 'outie' bellybutton, whether they have webbed feet, or whether they’re circumcised. These are personal matters that can be shared on a need-to-know basis. Are there situations where someone probably should tell another person that they’re trans? Absolutely. I can think of several. But 'you happen to work in the same office' is not one of them."

— CNN's Anti-Trans Bias Shines Through, Refuses to Update Transphobic Headline: Two CNN reporters cozy with the Florida GOP obscure the truth behind one of the more horrific anti-trans policies to be implemented in the country. Parker Molloy, The Present Age, February 2, 2024

From a cisgenderist epistemological perspective, one might jump to asking: What are those hypothetical situations in which a trans person is obligated to disclose their identity to a cis person, or in which the cis person might be harmed if they don't?

But from a trans perspective, I'd dwell a bit more on the vastly greater number of situations in which no one has a right to know if you're trans, your transness doesn't hurt them, and you don't have to tell them.

Moving toward transgender epistemology is about making that shift in perspective, framing, and emphasis.

Moreover, why cis people should consider themselves experts:

There is, Julia Serano writes, a "false impression that cissexual 'experts' (whether academic or clinical) are capable of understanding transsexuality better than transsexuals themselves — an idea that is as problematic as suggesting that male 'experts' can understand womanhood better than women, or that heterosexual 'experts' can understand homosexuality better than gays and lesbians."

(Julia Serano, Whipping Girl, "Chapter 7: Pathological Science," first published 2007, 3rd edition published 2024.)

In the following chapter (Chapter 8: Dismantling Cissexual Privilege), Serano also notes that many cis people "assume that they are infallible in their ability to assign genders to other people," and so they "develop an overactive sense of cissexual gender entitlement. This goes beyond a sense of self-ownership regarding their own gender, and broaches territory in which they consider themselves to be the ultimate arbiters of which people are allowed to call themselves women or men."

Add systems thinking too: seeing systems rather than the individuals within the systems.

Anything that's not corpus linguistics.

Also, speaking of how we study the historical archive:

"How do we care for these traces of past lives that haunt us in ways that are loving, insofar as they offer a balm through providing evidence of past trans flourishing and joy, and terrifying, because they testify to the conditions of intensive violence that these subjects lived within and through? How do we care for these ghosts that take such care of us?"
— Hil Malatino (Trans Care, University of Minnesota Press, 2020)

Also: "We need to address what constrains care, what marks certain bodies and subjectivities as (un)deserving of it, and call attention to the epistemologies, systems, and technologies that contribute to such unjust apportioning, even as we must navigate them in order to get (some of) our needs met." (Malatino)

Also:

"Four principles to create a life-serving economy
* * *
#1: Be clear on the changes we seek
* * *
#2: Be accountable to someone else
* * *
#3: Find your people (human and otherwise)
* * *
#4: Move towards the light"
— from a March 22, 2024 email sent by B. Lorraine Smith

TL;DR! — Why We Need a Specifically Trans Epistemology, Riki Wilchins, Medium, March 7, 2024