Not sure I Know it when I see it...

[Andrew Clarke Walser]

On Thursday, 20 February 1997, Henry M wrote:

   Moral relativism is, I hate to say it, a lot of academic 
  buldada.

	More than a lot of academic buldada, "moral relativism" is an
ill-defined phrase.  Does Henry mean to suggest that some unchanging
authority fixes such abstract values as "good," "just," and "beautiful"?
I personally have no faith in such an authority, and so I must assume that
we define such values only by agreement, only for a while.
	Yet the values agreed upon by humans are not worthless and,
although unstable, are not arbitrary.  I see Pynchon's work as (among
other things) an instance of persuasion, an attempt to attach us to those
uncertainties he cares about most.

			Only waist-deep in the buldada,
				Andrew Walser
				University of Illinois-Chicago