After writing the article for the Willamette Collegian about the contradiction between relativism and philanthropy, a friend of mine wrote a response here on campus. He said that you can “resolve” this apparent contradiction through the use of consensus truth and the democratic system. His article, in turn, compelled me to write about the inadequacy of that system.
My response was published the next week. The full text is below. I reference his article specifically, which can be found here.
“I think democracy is a great system of government, especially in the democratic-republic form in the United States. But the very moment that democracy becomes used in order to determine right and wrong, it breaks down into one of the worst institutions that can exist – the tyranny of the majority.
In a bit of recap, thus far we’ve discussed the contradiction present in our academic training. How can we justify our involvement in social justice on a worldwide scale while simultaneously preserving the idea of relative cultural worth? In answer to this dilemma, the idea of “consensus truth” is offered as a mechanism to decide when intervention is good and when it is bad.
This view posits that social justice and cultural relativity are two objects on a scale where democracy serves as the fulcrum. In some situations one is valued above the other.
Unfortunately, using democracy as a determination of truth only casts the same contradiction about cultural relativism and social justice into a different context, rather than actually resolving it.
First, consensus truth is still oppressive to social justice on a national level. If the courts of this country are the determinant of what is right or wrong, then it is difficult to lobby for any type of change. Slavery was a majority oppressing the rights of a minority. If the majority gets to decide truth, slavery as an institution was right and if a majority decides to enslave a minority today, that isagain right. A majority can be just as oppressive and tyrannical as any other body.
The author of the previous article, “Resolving contradictions” by Tej Reddy mentioned how the court system is used to “decide the truth” here in this country. I think we can see the difference between “deciding” and “creating” the truth. A jury is asked to decide whether the facts constitute a pre-defined definition of murder or self-defense. Yet, even a jury can decide wrongly. A jury can accidentally condemn an innocent man or free a guilty one. The very fact that we can say that a jury “chose wrongly” means that the jury is not creating truth. They are appealing to something above and separate from the function of the jury. They are using the preexisting and even absolute truth as a standard in a specific case, not arbitrarily oppressing some and rewarding others.
In short, does it resolve our contradiction to put our faith in a mechanism where the whim of 51 percent of the people can determine the fate of the other 49 percent?
Internationally, it is the same set of problems. Can we call an action “progress” if a majority agrees to a U.N. resolution but a minority does not? Declaring the Uganda or Sudan situations genocide may still be oppressive to a culture, even if it is contrived by the majority. This does not serve to give us much of a bright line between when seeking social justice trans-culturally is oppressive and when it is warranted. We simply have more people weighing in on the decision, not an actual resolution of the contradictory sides.
If we take a brief survey of the history of democracy, our penchant toward serving others, and the idea that we should not infringe upon their cultural values, we are faced with the same questions and fewer answers. Does oppression become “right” when most people agree to it? Does cultural relativism prevail because most people say so?”