A Trip to Middle America vs. Cultural Relativism (pt. 2)
Jun 30th, 2009 by Micah Tillman | 8 Comments |
On our recent trip I found myself thinking primarily about three things:
(1) How the people in each area look at (and therefore live) their lives,
(2) How the physical and cultural environment in each place must affect the ways in which people in each area look at (and therefore live) their lives, and
(3) What a culture is, anyway.
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I decided that a culture is a set of fundamental decisions about how to look at a broad range of things in life (food, friends, family, country, religion, government, the arts, clothing, careers, entertainment, living quarters, transportation, etc).
In large part, no one ever makes these decisions. Instead, one simply consents to them, and makes other decisions in light of them.
(E.g., the decision consented to is that one expresses one’s personhood through one’s car, and therefore one makes the decision to buy a particular car and do particular things to it.)
(On the whole issue of decisions and consent as it relates to “structures,” “systems,” and “groups,” see here and here.)
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Furthermore, I started to wonder whether anyone could take a trip like the one I just took, and hold onto the modern-relativist idea that all cultures arenecessarily created equal (an idea that stems from, though is not asserted by, Descarte’s Discourse on Method).
One set of decisions can be (though may not actually be) better or worse than another, and therefore one culture can be (though may not actually be) better or worse than another (since a culture is a set of decisions).
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For example, you yourself believe
- that the wedding Iattended this past weekend was either right or wrong, and that I should or should not have attended it,
- that driving cars on such long trips is good or bad (given things like “carbon footprints”),
- that the drinking of alcohol that occurred at the celebration (but in which I personally did not partake) was right or wrong,
- that the industries around which the various communities (through which we passed) seemed to center (e.g., farming, retail, medicine, shipping [by river or truck].) are good or bad (and they are or are not worth devoting your life to through certain career and education choices),
- that it’s okay to still be wearing your hair like it’s the 70s or 80s, driving showy cars, eating meat, shopping at huge chain stores that have a giant variety of in-season and out-of-season food products, etc.
For every opinion you have on each of those subjects, you agree with certain cultures, and disagree with others. You think you’re right, and those cultures (those sets of decisions) are wrong — at least in regards to that aspect of life.
Even if the people who live out those cultures (those sets of decisions) are all equal in your eyes, their cultures may not be.
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In other words, I wonder whether anyone could take even a relatively short trip like the one I just took, and still accept the following argument (which expresses the philosophy of cultural relativism):
- A is something that people in culture x do.
- All cultures are necessarily equal.
- Therefore, we must necessarily respect A.
You don’t have to even travel outside your own country to realize that you believe cultural relativism — the idea that all cultures are necessarily equal, simply because they are cultures — to be bunk.
You may believe that all (or most) cultures in the world today happen to be equal, all things considered.
But the trip would at least get you thinking about all the possible and actual cultures — i.e., pervasive sets of decisions — the world has known (e.g., fascism vs. democracy, communalism vs. individualism, industrialism vs. agrarianism, northern pluralism vs. southern racism, communism vs. capitalism) or could know (e.g., you can imagine cultures — i.e., pervasive sets of decisions — that are much better and much worse than any you see around you today) — and that would make you realize that you really do think at least some cultures are/were better than others, at least when you take all of the cultures throughout history into account.
Do most people who’d claim the label “cultural relativism” go this extreme? It seems like you lost the right to condemn practices like slavery if they occur in a traditional context if you do.
An analogy to individuals seems relevant. Most people don’t believe that “all people are created equal” means that all people deserve to be treated identically. Most people would agree that a coach potato doesn’t deserve the same income as an entrepeneur, or that a coward deserves the same congressional medal as a hero.
Similarly, it seems to me that it’s a much more reasonable premise to say that cultures ought not to be given inherent preference simply because (for example) it is the culture that the judge belongs to.
On a different note: In your definition of culture, what work is the word “decisions” doing? It strikes me as an unusual use of the word, to suggest that a decision isn’t actively made. And further, do you see any difference between the terms “culture” and “world view”; it seems like they end up being functionally synonomous on your account.
I like Jeff. He says the things I want to say.
I agree with him that very few people would go to the extreme sort of cultural relativism that you critique. (And your critiques of those that do are well founded.)
The critical question for me is whether there is a universal (and universally accessible) standard from which to judge. Are we judging based on standards unique to our culture (for example, the white protestant work ethic)? Or from some universal standard (such as not killing)?
The “work ethic” question is particularly interesting to me because of how it speaks to identity. In my dominant cultures (because I think each of us carry several) a person’s identity is determined by their job, and the quality of their character is determined by their success at that job. Therefore, working hard and pleasing bosses is considered virtuous. But what about cultures where that type of striving for success is viewed as taking time away from family? Or cultures with a legacy of slavery, where working hard and pleasing the boss might well be a negative reflection on character?
So which culture gets to determine who is right?
At any rate, for people who don’t believe there is a universal standard, I think a slide into wholesale cultural relativism is inevitable. For those that do, the trick is untangling our cultural assumptions from those universal standards.
Jeff–
I don’t know of anyone off the top of my head who would claim the label “cultural relativist” for her- or himself, so I can’t answer the question whether most of such people would “go this extreme.”
What I can say is that people often essentially make the argument: “A is part of their culture, therefore we should respect A,” which only works on such premises as “All cultures are equally worthy of respect” and “Everything in every culture is equally worthy of respect.”
This is how many people talk, even if they don’t actually believe what they’re saying.
Cultural relativism is the quasi-natural outgrowth of the rise of modern democracy. The reasoning behind democracy is that we’re all equal: no one’s better than anyone else, therefore no one should be able to tell anyone else what to do (therefore, the only legitimate power is power that is consented to, therefore, the only legitimate form of government is the one in which everyone has a voice).
But if no one has the right to tell anyone else what to do, what right do we in our culture have to tell people in another culture what to do? Hence, cultural relativism.
On a side note:
I run into people now and again who seem to represent a sizable portion of our population and who seem to think (a) that entrepreneurs are ruining the environment, our country, and the world with greed, exploitation, and capitalism, (b) that everyone deserves “a living wage” and no more (if you’re earning any more, you must be stealing it from someone else; the amount of poverty in the world is inversely proportional to the salary of CEO-entrepreneur-types), (c) that all war heroes are murderers, and (d) draft-dodgers and deserters are heroes.
On decisions: see my earlier posts (here and here) on consenting to a decision vs. actively making the decision.
For example, you use a QWERTY keyboard not because you actively decided to use a QWERTY keyboard, but because someone else made the decision to use QWERTY keyboards and you, along with almost everyone else, eventually consented to (went along with) that decision. You may have actively decided to use the particular keyboard you are using right now, but that the keyboard would be a QWERTY was simply given. You didn’t even have to think about it explicitly.
Also, the last time you went out to buy some formal wear for your job, the question wasn’t whether you were going to buy a suit or a skirt-suit or a sari, but which suit you were going to buy (two or three buttons? double- or single-breasted?). That men in our culture wear suits and ties on formal occasions is a decision that got made at some point in our history, and people have pretty much gone along with it (consented to it) ever since. We men in the West all make the decision, but not really. It’s more that we’re going along with a decision that’s already been made about “how things are done.”
Worldview and culture refer to the same thing, but with different connotations. “Culture” simply has a more active connotation; it brings out the fact that your decisions have consequences in what you do in life. “Worldview” has a more passive connotation; it brings out the fact that your decisions have to do with how you see things (as being good or bad, important or not important, optional or necessary, satisfying or dissatisfying, existent or imaginary, etc.).
Adam–
I’m glad my blog can help bring people together! :-D
I would respond by saying few people would hold onto their cultural relativism if the consequences of it were made explicit to them, but many people are willing to talk like cultural relativists until that happens.
Culturally-relativist talk simply feels like the good, democratic thing to do.
And you can thank Descartes (Part I, Discourse on Method) for your awareness of the arbitrariness of judging other people simply for not following the same culture as yourself. He did a lot of good through that book.
Yep, that is the question, ain’t it? See above RE democracy.
I have nothing deep to add to this interesting conversation–
Just wanted to say “thanks”– as I’ve followed Adam’s comments here, I’ve often thought, “Hey, I think I could enjoy sitting in a Starbucks and agreeing with Adam about a bunch of stuff.”
On the other hand, I’ve often thought of Micah, “hey, I think I could enjoy sitting in a Starbucks and disagreeing with him about a bunch of stuff.”
*grin* Awesome. And thanks :-)
I always saw it as my job in life to bring the people who disagree with me together, so as to make it more difficult for my side to win ;-)
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