Nobody would call gravity "relative."
That is to say, nobody would say "I think I am going to jump off this cliff. Gravity is just an opinion, so I don't think I will die." This is obviously absurd. Sadly, it is no more absurd than the statist claim (whether implicit or explicit) that morality is "just an opinion," or "relative."
Let's take a person who talks in that manner. Let's say you have this friend who thinks everything is "relative." Now imagine you are out to dinner at a nice restaurant. You both order your food and it promptly arrives at the table in the hands of the smiling server. Wow! It looks delicious!
Just as your friend is raising the fork to his mouth to take his first bite, you swipe it away, steal his his plate, and begin mowing down on both his and your food.
Your friend is flabbergasted. Still too shocked to be very annoyed he asks "What in the hell are you doing!?!" Mouth full of food, you manage to emit a garbled reply: "Chill out man. Everything is relative. It's just your opinion that it's your food and you can't really prove it with science, so come off it."
As anarchists we often get caught up trying to satisfy a thousand different little complaints and questions.
Who will build the roads?
What about police?
Wouldn't warlords take over?
What is ignored is the very objective and tangible nature of the reality unfolding before our eyes, and the best way to objectively meet the problems and challenges human beings face now in reality.
Moral relativists claim they want peace. They don't.
I know this because there is a method for "organizing" society which has been objectively and logically proven to be the best, which all people agree on at some level, yet ignore. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that while moral relativists may actually want peace, they are severely confused as to how to get there.
If you want to swim you have to jump into water. You won't fare well attempting to swim by eating artichokes. Eating artichokes is objectively not going to bring about the manifestation in reality of the event we call "swimming."
The only way to maximize peace is to use systems which can be shown objectively to bring about peace. Welcome to sociology. Welcome to economics. We are talking about science here, and not feelings.
Sure, all value can be said to be relative from our perspective as human beings. That is fine. Once we have a shared value however, we can then use logic, inductive reasoning, and experimentation to find the method which is objectively most effective in bringing about this value's existence in reality.
With gravity, it's easy. If your value is "not falling" then the method which best objectively achieves this value is one which doesn't involve jumping off a cliff. This is clear, concise, and easy to understand.
In the same way, if the goal or value is to maximize peace and minimize violent conflict in human relations, there are some methods which can be objectively shown to be ineffective at bringing about these values or goals.
We know that scarcity exists. Through the sciences of economics and sociology we know that scarcity potentiates conflict. Conflict potentiates violent conflict. Thus, any system which would minimize violent conflict (increase peace) would have to effectively address scarcity.
Communism and socialism fail here, as they ignore the science of economics and the necessity of market indicators for accurate representation of supply and demand, and individual wants, needs, and values. In ignoring the preferences of individuals and misallocating resources due to a blind, one-size-fits-all centralization, violent conflict is made extremely likely.
"Capitalism," under the statist model, also fails for the same reason, as the market is tampered with, and scarcity is ignored. This is not the Laissez-Faire brand of capitalism, which market anarchists advocate.
Communism and socialism have been tried many times over, and have shown themselves to be abysmal failures. If we drop a rock three times, and it falls to the ground three times, it starts to become somewhat safe to use scientific thinking to induce that if we drop it a fourth time, it will also fall a fourth time.
Is it possible it will shoot off, upward into space, singing the BeeGees song "Stayin' Alive?" There is no way to prove it's not. But it would be silly and illogical to predict such an outcome, even though it's fun to think about.
In the same fashion, to advocate for a societal model (statism) which depends on violence and threats of violence FOR ITS VERY EXISTENCE as a means to achieve peace and END VIOLENCE is the height of absurdity. This is OBJECTIVELY IMPOSSIBLE.
Taxation depends upon violent force and threats of such. People are forced under threat of violence to trade and do business in only government-issued "money." Every individual must subscribe to government police "protection" and pay for it. Anyone who doesn't is met not with peace, but with violence.
The essence of the state.
People tend to think that because economics and the social sciences are not about rocks and dinosaur bones, they are not dependable, and not actually "science."
These people misunderstand the word "science." They fail to grasp the very nature of the scientific method itself.
You don't use a market chart to study rocks. You use a microscope. You don't use a a Bunsen burner to collect data from a social experiment. You use a pen and paper and a clear methodology and description of the experiment's parameters. To suggest that we cannot find objective results in any of field other than the physical sciences is asinine. This should go without saying, but sadly it doesn't.
I could go so far as to say that even the physical sciences are bunk because their is no way to empirically prove the value of the scientific method itself. Go ahead, try it. I'll wait here.....
....So why do we still use it? Because it works. And to the best of our knowledge it is the most consistent and effective method we have of gathering information and data to make predictions and observations about the world around us.
In the same way, Voluntaryism is objectively the most effective way to exist in a state of minimal violent conflict with other human beings. It acknowledges scarcity, and deals with it through property. The most basic form of such being one's own body. Nature backs us up here. (Here is just one resource on the surprising effects of freedom in a war-torn, failed-state hell.) Individual preferences, rights, wants and needs, in contrast to collectivist systems, take primacy.
The individual is the apex, and must never be placed below any abstract collective. This allows for maximum peace as each individual is afforded his or her natural right to buy, sell, trade, and produce, without violent interference from a state. One is also not forced to associate or disassociate with other free individuals as one is under the statist model. Clearly, this defuses much potential conflict in and of itself.
It is obviously more effective for me to think my own thoughts, move my own arms and legs, and directly operate my own body and mind, than for some individual or outside entity such as the state to do it for me, or to tell me how I must do it. Obviously this is not feasible and is unsustainable in light of the end value being maximum peace/minimum violent conflict. Why? To own a slave requires violence against those who do not wish to be owned.
Well, I don't know. Maybe my body is not mine. Even though nature has given me executive command over its function and preservation. Maybe slavery is okay. After all, it's all relative, right?
Good call. Now give me your goddamn dinner plate and stop whining about it. ;)
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist residing in Niigata, Japan.
very good article! Actually was different than what I expected. I initially thought you were going to attempt to use the scientific method of the hard sciences to make an argument for objective morality.. Nice one!
Excellent article! I read another here on Steemit from the opposite perspective, which I would link here if I could find it, just to show the contrast. The author of that post argued he didn't own his own body, that it wasn't "property".
I've always thought that establishing ownership is of even greater importance than defining what property is, however the 2 concepts are not separate, rather they are essentially symbiotic. Ownership requires property, and that bumps up against authority. By what authority or principle can claims of ownership be made?
In the legal domain proof of ownership is a matter of control. You see that in the adage "Possession is 9/10 of the law". It is clear and obvious who is the ultimate authority that controls your body. Sure you can delegate that authority, assume the role of a proxy agent and blindly do the bidding of some external entity, but that is the very mechanism by which violence becomes greater. Acting that way functions as a multiplier of violence, it does not reduce its likelihood, it enables it.
Nice, interesting article.
If morality is understood as a system of principles that minimize suffering and increase prosperity across all living beings, then it is objective in nature and best informed by science, just like gravity. This is a fairly intuitive idea of morality; It's the reason why some behaviours seem obviously "wrong" or "bad" and others "good", as in your stolen dinner example.
Moral relativism is an ironic result of religion. When people take their moral guidance from scripture rather than objective evidence, their moral views depend on their religion. To a non-religious observer, when many different cultures and religions hold different moral views, this gives the impression that morality itself is relative.
Excellent.
great read
Much better than I had anticipated -- great job. :-) I was poised to retort with the following:
My contention is that "rights" are in reality little more than opinions. However, they possess two essential characteristics: 1.) They must be something that at least a significant portion of the population recognizes as such, and; 2.) they must be things that you have a reasonable chance of defending or restoring, in the event they are abrogated, by either peaceful and/or violent means.
Think about it: If you were alone in the world, would you have "rights?" The entire concept becomes superfluous. We only entertain the idea of "rights" once other humans come into the picture. This pretty much deep-sixes the idea of stand-alone concrete "rights" that don't depend upon outside human approval. Any contention to the contrary, again, is instantly reduceable to mere opinion.
thank you. this relativism is starting to freak me out. if it it true then why don't we just feed starving people rocks or burning tires. i mean, it's all relative man. i've been trying this new argument for people just at the cusp. tell me if you think it holds water. natural rights come from natural philosophy, which is what physics used to be called. i know that is a fact. so, none of these natural rights are ideology at all. they follow logically from the dynamics of the natural world. natural rights come from the dynamics of physics. i think it is what english common law is based on, and what the founders of America were trying to do, at least thomas jefferson and thomas paine. some of the others i have my suspicions about. it also has to do with the trivium method and quadrivium, and understanding human dynamics in relation to the other perceivable aspects of the reality that surrounds us. i think it works for people who are educated and thoughtful. statists just look at me like i'm crazy.