Cultural Transitions

Broad cultural transitions, for better or for worse, are frequent at a variety of scales and are impossible for one individual to ensure or prevent alone.  It has become quite common in American society fo elements of cultural relativism to be embraced, even if only selectively, insincerely, or thoughtlessly (after all, only an irrational person would be a relativist).  A grand irony of this, besides the logical impossibility of individuals and cultures making something true about reason, science, or morality just by having a feeling or sharing agreement, is that cultural relativism was not always as openly popular as it is now according to the historical record.  Logical truths are fixed by necessity and are epistemologically accessible to all people even as most people ignore them or pretend like their preferences dictate the nature of reason and not the other way around, not that a relativist could realize this or understand it fully unless they know the truth and idiotically try to reject it anyway.  With scientific matters, though sensory experiences are subjective, people in general are quick to assume that scientific laws are unaffected by personal desires even if they have never deeply thought about scientific epistemology and metaphysic.  With morality, more people are eager and willing to pretend like their personal wishes or cultural norms actually determine what is obligatory or evil.

Besides relativism being false by default, how is it a grand irony that moral relativism tied to culture is only now, as far as historical documentation suggests, enjoying a more widespread, positive reception?  Cultural changes and transitions would actually be the supreme moral error if societal relativism was true, however, for it would be the case that anything that the predominant culture (though large societies can have a multitude of conflicting, nuanced subcultures within it, making them more complicated than ideologically or behaviorally uniform cultures) opposes is evil and whatever the mainstream or majority approves of that is good.  People stupid enough to believe this is even logically possible often just think about what the ramifications are for their immediate circumstances, how if they are against something that is not culturally popular and cultural relativism was true, then they are "in the right" for believing or doing whatever is popular at the time.  However, it is not that the current cultural norms would be valid, but that it would have been invalid for culture to ever change to where it is now.  Even the slightest cultural transition would be in opposition to that which is good.

If challenging or rejecting culture was immoral, an impossibility since social constructs, subjective preferences, and consensus do not dictate truth, then it is not as if there would be different obligations 100 year ago than there are today.  In reality, it would have been evil on cultural relativism to fight the more entrenched racial prejudice in America or end gladiatoral contests in earlier civilizations, so any change away from the racist status quo, among other things, would have been itself immoral, but without the slow cultural transition away from overt white supremacy, my current society would not be as it is now.  All cultural changes, in fact, would be unjust if cultural norms or majority whims in any way make something morally valid.  Cultural relativists seem to almost never realize this, not that cultural trends or individual desires have anything to do with grounding or revealing the nature of morality or if it even exists anyway.

It is in one sense only to be expected for a cultural relativist to not realize that it would have been evil to ever shift a culture to where is now if this kind of relativism was true, of course.  Emotionalistic gratification in the present moment is all that relativists actually live for if they are as consistent as they can be in devoting themselves to the utter contradictions of relativism.  Relativism is logically impossible, but both nihilism and moral realism are logically possible, even to the point that whichever is true, the other could have been true depending on whether the uncaused cause did or did not have a moral nature respectively.  Subjectivist relativism is inherently false because subjective desires only mean that someone desires something; they do not ground or prove anything about reality beyond them.  Cultural relativism is inherently false because the whims of a majority or even the total agreement of every individual in a massive society, something that is almost never present, only means that a group of people has agreed, not that something is true or knowable.

If cultural relativism was true, though, it would mean that it would be erroneous to promote racial or gender equality, to not harm homosexuals for existing, to encourage people to speak out against workplace exploitation, and so on, all because the norm of the same cultures that might now gravitate towards the opposite more than before once did the opposite.  There would be no such thing as a legitimate cultural evolution or diversification.  To even challenge or criticize one's culture in the privacy of one's mind would be immoral.  Cultural relativists, as it turns out, only believe or assert the fallacies of relativism when it is beneficial to them.  It will almost never be the case that a cultural relativist will endorse their moral philosophy when they do not already subjectively approve of whatever dominant cultural practice or belief they are talking about.  If they sincerely cared about truth, they would not even be a relativist: they would realize that relativism/subjectivism are impossible and that whether moral nihilism or realism is true depends on metaphysical matters more foundational than morality (it would hinge on the nature of the uncaused cause), not on perception or preference.