An Experiment With Relativism and Sophist Philosophy

If I were to say “justice” or “courage,” it would conjure up something in your mind. Something different, perhaps, than what I would see in my mind. I could ask my friends, my parents, my teachers, my neighbors. They would all say something different. Why is that so? Because there is no definition for something like justice or courage. The definitions one can find in dictionaries are simple, clear, and yet their wording leads only to more questions. The definition that is truly useful is the one that can be used to interpret what we see around us, but these definitions are also the ones that cannot remain constant. I can give you my definition of an abstract concept based on my experiences and values, but the beauty, or the curse, of our species is that no two individuals could possibly have the same experiences. Does that mean these abstract concepts simply don’t exist? These concepts do exist, but they do not exist outside of one’s mind. We define these concepts differently, but they still exist. 

Then are humans alone in the world? Will I go through my life never finding a similar mind, a similar experience outside of my own? Yes, but there is beauty in knowing so, is there not? There is beauty in knowing that it is my mind only that can define the world I see. There is beauty in knowing. Knowing with such a degree of certainty that something is the way it is, but having no one else see it as you do. Knowing that my mind and my consciousness have created for me truth. Truth only I can see, touch, or feel. A personal truth.  

But then is this all a dream? If I slap myself in the face enough times, will I wake up in a different bed? A different world? Maybe, but I don’t want to attempt it. Does the fact that there is nothing absolute that exists between us mean that there is nothing absolute at all? Is this a table? Am I writing on a computer? Surely. It is not the physical world that our consciousness journeys alone in. It is the abstract. We can all agree that I’m writing on a computer at a table. But we cannot all agree on whether justice is the strict adherence to laws or the carrying out of what is “right”. There is a place where our consciousness wanders, a whole world inside this one. Each and every one of us has our own world. 

So then our purpose here as intellectual beings is to find a common lens through which we can all see the world in the same light. If we were all to find a common lens through which to converse, does that not force each mind into an ugly sameness not unlike the matrix? I think that’s the greatest challenge our species faces. Yes, global warming and poverty and crime are all bad, but these issues can never be “solved” when different sides see them as completely different things. Is poverty the result of a widening wealth gap? Is it the result of a ridiculously low minimum wage that traps one in place, never giving them the opportunity to study, to get a better job, to (for lack of a better phrase), to actually get richer? Or is poverty the result of someone just not working hard enough? 

But wait a minute. It’s everywhere. We’re already doing it. Politics is the result of people trying to understand the world the way others see it and use that understanding for the good of the people. Writing is the result of an author trying to create their own world or to share the world they live in. People make music to convey something so intangible that it cannot be conveyed without tune and melody. Are the liberal arts all just the way intellectuals try to bridge the gap between one person’s mind and another’s? I believe they are, for there is no other reason for them to have been established and pursued.

So is this good, desirable? The process that has already started, in which we all give up our own understanding of the world for a common view? Honestly, I don’t know. On one hand, I can rest assured in my belief that humans are inherently different from one another in how their minds process their surroundings. I can be confident that the continuation of this process is desirable, that we will never be able to achieve the degree of sameness that would contradict the concept of humanity itself, that the discourse entailed in the process would lead to a better understanding of how people think. Or I can fear the process that will inevitably transform our society into an Orwellian dystopia, lacking the original thought that stems from how the world appears to different people.