The above is also known as ANTI-philosophy/ ANTI-intelectualism
...sellout thinking... and evil trash !

I too take issue with relativism, though from a different direction than Jason.

We seem to think somehow that that the belief that truth varies from people to people, that there are no solid and absolute truths, is necessary to have a society that tolerates diversity of opinions and beliefs.

But really, we don't need to be relativists to be tolerant, or even respectful.

For instance, I believe Christianity is full of shit. I don't believe it. Period. Down to my core I think it is a set of lies. I think a lot of things that new-agers believe is false. I believe that people who obsess on consumerism and individualism are wrong and make themselves great pawns to roll over to a right wing agenda. I believe the right wingers in their obsession for power spin a lot of lies and also make themselves believe in a lot of the lies they tell.

If I were a relativist I'd have to revise the above statement as follows.

I believe I've constructed a reality around myself where Christianity is not true, but regularly encounter Christians for whom belief in Jesus causes him and his power to be real in their "reality microclimate". I also encounter new agers who are in a reality separate from mine where positive affirmations causes changes to their universe, but since I don't believe in it it doesn't work in my universe. People who obsess on consumerism are doing what is right for them and the planet I inhabit may be harmed and their being enslaved to credit card debt for what appears to be their irresponsibility... making my observation correct... but in their universe the planet can bear the consumerism and the debt and as long as they believe it will all work out okay then it will. In fact, it is probably important that I encourage them to continue believing as they do, rather than challenge them with my perceptions on the matter (just as right as theirs) because if I cause them to doubt in their reality their reality may collapse catastrophically around them and it will be all my fault. Individualists seem selfish and socially irresponsible to me that they reject any social and collective responsibility for one another's welfare and I'm right about that.... but they are right too in that it's dignified to die protecting a farm one is too old to work or care for with a shotgun, live on cans of veinna sausages, and drive off the people wanting to take away the farm and caving in single wide you live in for taxes you can no longer afford with a shotgun because you wouldn't ask for help or take a handout and hated everyone else that did because they were forced to pay for it. Oh they are wise just as I am wise, and that's a good outcome for them. Right wing neocon types are evil in my universe, but then again I am evil in their universe and we are both right, I should not object to the idea of rich people getting extremely rich working together in concert to make the base of labor international and more able to compete and underbid one another. I mean, it's only wrong to me because I'm on the side they'd like to see reduced to neo-peasantry, but if I were on their side of the coin I'd be able to see how grand a plan it all is and what increased power would do for the grandeur of somebody like myself if I were in their social class. Obviously from where they sit it is the greatest good, we are both right.

And because everyone is right, everyone should just tolerate each other.

bullshit.

I think I could explain the damage relativism has done in Marxist terms best.

The proletariat of uneducated people works too hard, too many long hours, and has education too poor to even get the chance to think about activism in the larger society. But they can be moved by intelligentsia who are sometimes thrust into their ranks of working class people... the educated poor... who organized trade unions, strikes, even revolutions where governments wouldn't bend and thus had to break. The intelligentsia didn't just take on their political ideas as a fashion, or as a philosophical plaything to banter about in coffee houses and pubs, they took a FIRM stand. They took enough of a stand to get themselves arrested, beaten, watched, blacklisted, even executed in some western countries (consider what happened to them when the Nazis took over). They were moved by a sense of right and wrong, like it's wrong for a person to generate huge amounts of wealth for others and live in total poverty, with no safety nets, disposable, and in conditions which will destroy their health and shorten their life... where when their health fails they face deeper poverty and homelessness which may kill them faster than whatever it was they breathed in their lungs might kill them. They saw it as injustice that as people suffered like that in mills and workshops, sometimes being beaten by foremen like slaves, the owners of these plants built literal castles overlooking the Hudson river valley and along the gold coast of northern Long Island and on the Connecticut side of the sound. They built marble sculpted wedding cake luxury buildings for themselves on park row, while people who worked for them lived in barracks at best and shanties at worst.

Relativism de-conditioned our intelligentsia from any sense of outrage. Even when educated poor, with working class colleagues who aren't educated, they don't feel outrage at their own poverty or at the poverty of those they work with. If they are left, they are leftist lite, with no strong conviction behind it... it comes off as whining and snarky sarcasm... neither wins working class followers who they'd rather belittle and insult for not having the same education to be able to see what they can see. They go home, watch the daily show and the Simpsons and get to feel smug and mildly victimized rather than outraged, not giving themselves the right to take a real stand on anything and ready to tear down any peer of theirs who is quaint enough to take a firm stand on anything.

Relativism has numbed our intelligentsia to sleep, ineffectual, castrated, happy to do feel good things at burning-man, out to see cool music with other people who put the tragic in being tragically hip. Nope, they are asleep, and without them waking up the working class has no leaders and they are fucked. I'd go as far to say that relativism has been the best tool the right wing has ever had to use against the left and against intellectuals who have swallowed it the way roaches dine on the "food" found in the D-con roach motel. It sounds very left, it sounds very liberal, but a left incapable of outrage or taking a firm stand on anything though tolerant of other beliefs as such. While the right wing became more galvanized, it's base more shrill and more committed to moving things to the furthest right possible where now moderately right wing corporate friendly is now cast as "too liberal" or "socialistic" as the democrats are... the real left is just sitting back and calling people stupid for not following them and seeing what they see, and taking comedic pot shots at everyone and even each other but devoid of any real conviction. They are neither effectual nor "dangerous" enough to even be "watched" or blacklisted or anything, for when it comes to crunch time none of them will make waves.