My "Relativism"

Sometimes perceiving the ethnocentrism of expressed beliefs provides sufficient grounds for my strong disapproval of them, but sometimes this isn't enough to stop me from affirming such beliefs nevertheless as the best on offer and then offering them up as candidates for belief in the field of political contestation. Apparently, some people consider this outlook unfathomable and even dangerous.

I recognize a certain ethnocentrism at the historical and conceptual heart of the projects of participatory democracy, rights culture, and the culture of consent which I personally affirm as my own most cherished political aspirations and convictions. Now, this recognition may keep me a little bit ironic and openminded about these aspirations, and may leave me bereft of the stolid certainty the fundamentalists of the planet seem to have about their own normative convictions (although, to be frank, it is hard to believe they really are so certain as all that considering the defensive and infantile way they throw their weight around). But as far as I can see all this admission and its compensatory skepticism does is just to make me a grown-up in matters of moral, ethical, esthetic, political, that is to say normative life -- rather than a child interminably demanding priestly reassurances about one's convictions (see Kant: "What Is Enlightenment?").

I think it is incomparably more damaging to fantasize that one's morality is underwritten by God or Nature than simply to admit to its parochial contingency but then still fight for it. This doesn't make me a relativist, it seems to me, since I really do believe my beliefs are good beliefs to have and for good reasons I can support with arguments.

I have to say I don't quite understand the freakouts that people seem to have on issues like these. What, I have to pretend that my moral prejudices are undergirded by some "Universal Law" to have moral grounds for wanting to intervene to stop genocide? Says who?

I jettisoned God as an authoritarian crap racket before my voice had changed or my beard grew long enough to shave, and I certainly see no reason to set up Nature as a god analog at this point in the game.