BOOTLICKER

2021-10-28

Objectivity comes in many forms. Here, I would like to convince you of the need for the universality of just one kind: the anarchist conception of freedom.

I have spoken with some people online about this. It is very popular to say that values or attitudes are relative to individuals or cultures themselves.

I think this is wrongheaded. We have to assert that the freedom to be anarchist, and live in an anarchist society, must be universal, or, objective.

I think the best way to argue this is by appeal to zoology, or, biology. Animal behaviour was proven to be developed through an unemphasised but absolutely critical part of Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This is that not just Mutual Struggle (i.e. the Spencerian distortion, which only includes this part of Darwin's Theory) is a factor of Natural Selection, but also Mutual Aid.

It is in our very biology as animals, not just as human beings to exhibit this important factor of evolution. So — being thus formed as sentient creatures, wouldn't this also have important effects for our powers of cognition, and also the way our social systems operate?

I think this also has a philosophical significance, beyond a mere scientific one. What does it mean if humans are fundamentally united in biology? It obviously excludes any form of bigotry, because all humans are united in their biology. For example, we only have anthropological evidence for humans confecting the social concept of 'Race' in the last 10 000 years, since the Neolithic Period.

This line of argument might not satisfy some, though. What if we considered the question of universal morality from an Idealist point of view? That is, if it was true that humans are best suited to anarchist values, what does that mean for the 'internal perspective' for being human? What does that mean for consciousness as a justification to itself? What is the Logic of universalism?

Doesn't even the need to make the statement 'morality is relative' require the universality of the concept of rationality? If the above statement was not universal, and was relative, the reverse would be true. And so there is a contradiction.

I suppose I can go further and deeper than just trickery: to defend your position of relativism of moral values, don't you have to assert that I am wrong? Or, are defenders of moral relativism just trying to say what I am claiming is in fact not what I am arguing for? My point: many people take the promotion of universal values as fascistic or totalitarian.

But I don't see how this could be so. Doesn't the concept of universal morality depend on its content, as well as the form in which it comes? For instance—I imagine that the objectivity of anarchist freedom would protect itself from developing into a system of domination. It would enumerate a principle of universal freedom to ensure that people's associations were only consensual.

To health and anarchy,

~vidak.