making Relativism palatable to Realists

Trapped by their fears, Realists retreat screaming whenever faced with a Relativist idea. Simply can’t swallow it. And they retreat into exactly the same lack of intellectual discipline they accuse litcrit of. Conditioned by our cruel education system, that treats children as cattle, they refrain from any philosophy not geared towards providing “correct answers to the test”. To win the argument, then, you should proceed not with sound argumentation — that would only lead them into rationalization — but instead with masking relativism’s sour taste of personal responsibility.

living abroad and the journey of the Pajé

In more than one Brazilian tribe of Indians — and I am guessing that very similar patterns can be found in other cultures throughout the world — the Pajé begins his life as the strange one, the person that does not fit, the outcast within his tribe. He then goes out in a spiritual journey through the world, during which he doesn’t belong anywhere, he is completely lost and ultimately alone. In the end, he returns and can, finally, take his position as the tribe’s priest, magician and healer, second in authority only to the Cacique. Maybe Pajé can be accurately translated as shaman.

Now many — but I am really talking a big bunk of people here — many of my friends went to live abroad. And talking to then, i always get that feeling — if they don’t tell me outright — that they did so because they really couldn’t feel to belong here, in Brazil, with their family and friends — and they didn’t feel like playing the roles expected of them.

Now it all feels a bit naïve to me, that most of them will come back and become not only a part of everything that they didn’t believe in, but an important part, an honoured part.

I think living abroad is the contemporary form of the Pajé’s Journey.

to live on your shoes

What kaos-people mockingly refer to as “consensual reality” will sometimes be taken up by realists as a misguided attempt at showing that cognitive dissonance is an exception rather than the norm, that their inability disprove the relativity of knowledge does not make knowledge relative.

Worse still, they will sometimes frame the whole point as “OK, maybe I do not know what reality is, but that does not matter, it is not important, what is important is the reality that everyone agrees on”. Can you spot the malice there? The pretence of humility stands here as proof that their position is the only one that is valid.

nobody wanna be dark side

From Palpatine’s point of view, the Dark Side is Good™ and everything else is The Other. From every single individual perspective what the self wants is not preference, it is righteousness. Everyone believes to be on the Light Side — and more importantly, there is a tendency to see whatever is different from self as enemy.