Not true- the person who REALIZES that everything is relative should be (imo) less likely to act irrationally on a belief- and of course extremists acting irrationally on their beliefs cause almost all the misery in the world attributable to human actions (I do not wish to attribute the misery coming from natural disasters to humans). I do not believe you can point to any instance of relativists, who believed in nothing absolutely, getting together to massacre anyone, ever. All wars, all massacres, all atrocities are committed by people who believe in SOMETHING, and usually fervorently- so the danger is not relativism, the danger is belief, in anything.
Self generated belief is not the problem. Extremism is the problem. And I have found that people who generate their own beliefs, and understand they are generating them, realize that their beliefs are important mostly to them, and have no extrinsic value- save for the value they may have in making life livable for the person holding the beliefs- and these people would not, I think, foist these beliefs on other people by force no matter how tempting that might be. But when values are external, and when one has the opinion that they are "right" and that they are the only "right" way (partly because someone of the "outside" of the self is rubber stamping these beliefs as correct)- one can rationalize using force to foist these "correct" ideas on others. |
