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Wrong and Dangerous

Entry 2381, on 2025-01-17 at 09:47:40 (Rating 4, Philosophy)

According to the Oxford review, "Cultural relativism is the philosophical perspective that posits that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture rather than be judged against the criteria of another culture. This concept encourages individuals to approach cultural differences with an open mind and a willingness to understand varying worldviews without imposing their own cultural standards." and then goes on to indicate its importance in relation to DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion).

I'm sure that most people will accept this to a certain extent. Clearly people believe in different things, and behave differently depending on their background, so really this is just common sense... or is it?

The problem here is a familiar one: that is that the concept of cultural relativism, just like so many others, has sensible and fair initial assumptions and aims, but has been pushed to extremes where it is no longer a positive force. No doubt people do act based on what their culture dictates is appropriate, but the concept goes beyond that now and often states that all cultures are equally valuable and moral.

To the contrary, I think that some cultures are just naturally better than others, and members of the more moral cultures should have the right to criticise the less moral aspects of others. I'm not saying that some cultures are perfect in every way, or better in every way than others, but on balance some are just better overall.

Here is my justification for this view...

First, are all cultures the same? Clearly not, because apart from the simple common sense view that they appear to be different, there is the following argument: we often hear demands for integrating the views of other cultures into our society. In that case they must have some value which ours doesn't. If that is the case then they must be different.

So if they are different it makes sense that some must be better than others. Complex human constructs, like a whole culture, inevitably have attributes which can be assessed by their intrinsic value, including in both a practical and a moral sense, so we must be able to say that some cultures are better than others.

Now, what about the source of these apparently subjective moral judgements? Unless we believe in a divine source for morality, how can we even say the concept has any meaning? Well, there are various philosophical approaches to this problem, including utilitarianism, but they all have faults, so I agree it is difficult to say for sure that something is good or bad, and why. I take a pragmatic approach here and say what is good is what the majority of honest, sane people think is good when asked in a way which bypasses their political, religious, or philosophical ideology (evaluating these sorts of beliefs is a thing which experimental psychologists are fairly good at).

Finally, if we look at the world as a whole we see certain trends which indicate how attractive some countries (and by extension, their culture) are in comparison to others. For example, how many people are illegally leaving Germany or the UK so they can live in Syria? How many are leaving the US so they can move to Venezuela? That's right, almost none, but in the opposite direction we see large numbers. Surely this indicates that some cultures are just better than others, and everyone knows it!

When asked in a way which bypasses the automatic biases people have, we can find things which almost everyone agrees on: we should have a high degree of freedom, everyone should be treated equally, criminals should be punished but must have a fair trial, etc. Some societies do these better than others, for example I think Western societies do all of these better than Islamic societies, so again, it is obvious not all societies are equal.

So sure, be aware that people can only be judged when the society they belong to is taken into account, but don't pretend that makes certain actions OK, and never believe that all cultures are equal. That is both wrong and dangerous.


Comment 1 (7810) by EK on 2025-01-18 at 10:31:46:

You are touching on a very important issue here, too complex to respond fully. Here is a practical example about to what extent the notion of cultural relativism and its socio-political consequence of cultural freedom should be tolerated or overruled in the age of globalisation: e.g., should the world intervene when the Taliban regime in Afghanistan sinks more and more into a crass “medievalist” version of Islam (stoning, gender inequality, etc.), or should their cultural sovereignty be respected. Let’s have your thoughts (in a new extensive blogpost) on the dilemma that arises when cultural relativism and the needs of the modern world collide.

Comment 2 (7811) by OJB on 2025-01-18 at 12:41:20:

Thanks for the comment. Yes, I generally oppose intervention, even in regimes which I clearly see as problematic. I will explain in a future post.


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I do podcasts too!. You can listen to my latest podcast, here: OJB's Podcast 2025-01-30 Pragmatic Libertarianism: Freedom is important. Maybe it's all that really matters..
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