Thinking it through a little more... I do remember thinking that Cultural relativism was sort of about reacting to the idea that there was a singular ultimate truth about the independent world, or rather that there was one True World which we aimed to describe. I recall thinking that perhaps the World was actually multifarious and could be seen from many different perspectives and that these perspectives could generate different truths about the many fold World. This isn't to say that anything goes. The World still exists and it still resists. Reality can still be demonstrated by thumping the solid table and yet things can be seen in different ways. This isn't a call to lazy thinking. You can't just dismiss the importance of rigorous thought and some ideas, thoughts or theories have more utility then others (and sometimes they even show us that our ideas are flawed) for while our understanding of the World is shaped, in part, by our vision of it, yet it still resists, for it doesn't simply bend to our will, it is beyond us, and is also in an important sense beyond our understanding, even while we learn more and more as much as we can.
So I guess not everything is relative... yet its still true that everyone I know who is right mysteriously agrees with me.
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