100 Treatises

Should We Respect Different Cultures?

I recently visited a WordPress blog (which will remain unnamed to protect the innocent) in which a western woman wrote that in her travels in some regions of India, she had a tough time finding the women. She found few walking around in public, dining in restaurants or visiting the beach. Whenever she did see other women, they were typically with their husbands or families, rarely in groups with other women or out alone. The beach, for example, was populated overwhelmingly by individual men and groups of men, and the few women who were there were not swimming, but rather preparing the family picnic (excluding the western tourists, of course).

In response to the post, many commenters expressed disappointment or disgust with the patriarchal character of much of India, while nevertheless being of the opinion that “we should respect the local culture.” In the context of traveling, it is of course always the best policy to follow the local customs in dress and behavior. But beyond that, many commenters still noted the importance of not projecting our (western) value system onto other societies, and judging them as we would judge ourselves. This position I find highly questionable.

Is it really all that relative?

This kind of cultural moral relativism stems, as I see it, from at least two major assumptions. The first is that culture has value in its own right. It does not. Culture has value only relative to people, to the wellbeing of people. If a culture is or becomes oppressive or harmful to the overall project of human advancement and human happiness, everybody—foreign or domestic—is legitimate in criticizing it and judging it.

The second assumption follows from the first, and is that culture should be preserved for its own sake. This, too, is wrong: culture, if it should be preserved, should be preserved for the sake of people, and that applies also to cultural products and to particular aspects of a given culture. In the same way, insofar as a culture has a negative impact on people’s lives, it should not be preserved. It should be updated, reformed or discarded.

Aside from all this, the simple logical inadequacy of relativism is aptly summed up in the following:

Relativists believe that all truth is relative. Therefore, the statement, “All truth is relative,” would be absolutely true. If this statement is absolutely true, then not all things are relative and the statement is false.

Relativists declare that “there are no absolute truths.” However, this is an absolute statement, which is supposed to be true. Therefore, it is an absolute truth and the statement is false.

It’s as simple as that.

Many cultural and moral relativists are uncomfortable with the idea of absolute truth, absolute right and wrong, in and of itself. Many have been disappointed one too many times by the lack of a clear “right answer” on various questions. And many have simply fallen in love with the superficial diversity they have encountered in their travels. The many flavors of food, the different clothing and hairstyles, the charm of new styles of greeting, the incredible array of language—in none of these, it could be said, is there right or wrong, better or worse. They then assume the same rule applies to deeper and more profound stuff. That a woman’s freedom to travel, or lack thereof, should be understood “in context.”

Whatever the rationale, the logical and moral shortcomings of relativism are overwhelming. Why should we respect white American women when they demand equal pay for equal work, but not brown Indian women? Are we all human beings, or aren’t we?

Past or present: the rules haven’t changed

“Oh, but we must understand the culture on its own terms.” Really? The same kinds of people who say this were singing a very different tune in middle to late 20th century America. No self-respecting liberal would be “culturally relativist” vis-a-vis the American culture of the 1950s and 1960s. People at that time worked to change the culture because they believed it was flawed and backward, tradition be damned. But true cultural relativists would not have approved of the changes occurring at that time. When Martin Luther King Jr. said “America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay,” the cultural relativist would have responded: “justice is relative.”

Herein lies the fundamental problem for any self-respecting liberal. It is the inevitable clash between social justice and multiculturalism—and only one can have the last word. This clash is becoming more urgent and more obvious every day due to the ever-tinier “global community.” What in the past may have seemed like an unfortunate incident in an unintelligible foreign land suddenly becomes a violation of human dignity, compelling our empathy, as immediate and relevant as anything else we watch on cable news or youtube.

Saying that a given society isn’t ready for certain social or political changes, as I have said of Afghanistan, does not excuse anything. Instead of being relativist, it should be seen as grudgingly accepting the injustice of the moment in the name of smart strategy, with the ultimate purpose of true justice firmly in place, but to be pursued carefully and intelligently. Indeed, my proposal for Afghanistan is a method of getting to where we ultimately want that country to be—prosperous, democratic, egalitarian, free—as quickly and as efficiently as possible, accounting for the realities of history and the (ugly) realities of the place now.

So it turns out that relativism has little to stand on. It is of course important to understand cultures on their own terms—but this is an epistemological issue, not a normative one. Those who truly seek justice and the enhancement of the human condition should question with a deeply critical eye the assumptions implicit in relativism. And then make a judgment.

MORE ARTICLES:

Secular Reason: The Mother of Moral Absolutes

Religion Leads to Moral Relativism

Evo-Morality