I’m not sure that savagery is relevant when it comes to the issue of minimizing rape and murder. Surely the problem isn’t merely that rape and murder are uncivilized, but that they cause severe harm to other people? This isn’t to say that rape and murder can’t be called “savage” (especially if one is using the term to mean “cruel” or “violent”), but it seems either beside the point or a poor word choice to make savagery the prime objection. The same goes for other “savage” cultural practices mentioned already, like FGM. What makes FGM so bad is that it’s dangerous, painful, and has a lifelong negative effect on those it is practiced on.
If the only objection one can come up with to the practice is that it’s “savage” then I’d also agree we shouldn’t interfere. Plenty of harmless things could, and have, been branded “savage”. If members of a particular culture wish to go nude in the summertime, eat insects/dogs/raw fish/cow’s blood, or urinate in public then I don’t think the fact that such behaviors may strike outsiders as “uncivilized” should count for much. If a cultural practice is actually hurting people then that’s a different story, but in that case there should be a better argument against it than “it’s savage” or “civilized people don’t do that”.
I think you’ll find that any forced mutilation would be condemned by several of the commandments.
Additional chapters aren’t nessesary, but please read the ones we have and then feel free to discuss.
If you don’t believe in an absolute right & wrong then anything goes, anything can be justified and there’s no way to tell good from evil.
Look, if you don’t believe in God, I know I’m not going to change your mind with some clever little post causing you to re-think your whole outlook on life. And anyone who thinks that cleverly sniping at me as some kind of brain-washed Bible-thumping, Chick-tract zombie in order to make me change my mind is only fooling themselves.
I was asked a question and answered it, I think we’ve digressed from the point a bit and I don’t want to turn this into a pile-on with me “defending all the contradictions of the Bible” or “How can God allow this or that” as these lines of debate so often turn out to be.
Booger eating, however, is still up to the conscience of the individual church-goer.
But that isn’t what we are talking about, is it? We weren’t discussing if we could intervene, we were discussing whether we should.
So let’s clarify the situation a bit. Suppose there is a situation in which some great moral evil (by our standards) is occurring. There is something we can do that will improve the situation. Do we have any justification for doing so?
Say, for instance, Iraq were to invade Kuwait. An argument could even be made that Iraqis and Kuwaitis shared a culture. Iraq considered Kuwait one of its provinces, in fact. Both Muslim, neither democratic, both relying on petro-dollars, same language. Should we invade, or should we politely disregard this as an intra-cultural squabble that cannot be judged?
Or say that the Southern part of the US held slaves. The culture of the South is different from the North. The South was agarian, the North much more industrialized. The North also has a larger immigrant population. Should - not could, but should - the North attempt to eradicate slavery in the South via conquest?
Foreign policy is part of every country’s culture. Why are you trying to make a distinction between one part of a culture and another?
Whoops, you are trying that switch again. We are not discussing if we could or haven’t - we are discussing if we should.
What would constitute a criticism? How about if I refer to cultures that mutilate women as “savage and despicable” - would that constitute criticizing them?
I’ve read them, several times actually. I don’t have the time to delve into a full discussion of them, but I do have enough knowledge to discuss the issue intelligently. Basically the point I was trying to make is that the Bible, the part of the Christian doctrine which could most accurately be described as the word of god, gives guidance on some issues(murder bad, for example), is silent on a large number of issues(stem cell research), contradictory on others(male circumcision good, female circumcision bad). As a guide to life it is woefully inadequate. Look at the thousands of pages of doctrine developed over the history of the church designed to fill in the gaps. In a Christian’s daily moral decision making they supplement the Bible with parental teachings, church doctrine, social mores, cultural traditions, peer influences, and their own conscience(among other influences). I don’t think it is adequate to say “use the Bible” as a moral standard for all judgement. It just is not nearly comprehensive enough.
Yep. That’s the bottom line. Usually life isn’t that chaotic though. Most humans do not use their own judgement on a great many matters because it is just impractical to sit and ponder the morality of the hundreds of thousands of individual acts they are exposed to each day. Most citizens of nations allow the social contract they live under(the body of laws typically) to make many of these decisions. They also let other sources, like the Bible or the judgement of peers, influence their positions if not outright dictate them. Fairly evaluating a situation is exhausting, and it doesn’t put food in the kids mouths. Humans avoid it when they can and thus society is relatively predictable because most of them just go along with the flow. The bottom line is society COULD be a lot more chaotic, with each individual using their own judgement on every situation and doing whatever they felt they wanted to, regardless of outside guidelines like religious doctrine or society’s laws(until the police or the lightning bolts come raining down at least), but that’s too much work.
If I thought you were a brain-washed, Bible-thumping, Chick-tract zombie I wouldn’t bother to discuss the issue with you. Zombies are not known as intelligent conversationalists. Nor am I trying to snipe at you. I was actually trying to be succinct because I have a tendancy towards long posts(hiya!) and I had other things going on yesterday as well. I thought I made my basic point, the Bible is lacking in the detailed, comprehensive type of data which would make it a good source for a universal moral code. All this is without considering the questions of accuracy, translation issues, origins/authorship of the text, or a myriad of other issues which make it even harder to rely on a single text as a universal rulebook. As the sectarian nature of the Christian religion attests, this is not a simple instruction book we’re talking about here.
Wasn’t trying to guide the conversation along those lines at all. I’d be willing to bet, however, that if you take a minute to think about your own moral judgement processes that you’d find it is not as clear cut as “what does the Bible say about this?” as the first and only step. I strongly suspect non-Biblical religious doctrine(Sunday School teachings, sermons, etc.), social laws, parental teachings, peer influences, spousal/significant other’s likely reactions/feelings, and a myriad of other datapoints are considered as well.
Actually, Paul’s letter to the Romans spells out that you do not have to be physically circumscised to be a Christian.
many would disagree
Not all churches follow the Vatican. Most evangelical Christian churches will have a “Doctinal Statement” but they are pretty basic.
Doesn’t everyone do this to some extent?
what’s your point? That I don’t turn to the Bible to decide if I have a 2nd cup of coffee? I think you’re contradicting yourself.
When I said that I “use the Bible” I mean for the big questions.
Stem cell research… possibly a big question.
what socks to wear… most likely a little question, no moral ambiguity.
Frankly, the rest of your post was a such dizzying train of thought that I will have pass on further comments.
I’m not sure we’re on the same page. I was not talking about requirements to be a Christian or not, I was talking about using it as a basis to make moral judgements about genital mutilation. You said “any forced mutilation would be condemned by several of the commandments.” and yet eight day-old males(certainly unable to give informed consent) having their foreskin cut off is actually encouraged by the text. Not required, but certainly not condemned.
Again I see the fractured nature of the Christian faith as evidence that the Bible is anything but a clear statement of morals that all peoples can use the same way.
Yes. That’s exactly my point. All the non-Biblical sources of influence on moral decisions are clearly going to vary. Parents, individual churches, social mores, peer influences, etc. are not universal or absolute. As such they can not be considered part of an objective standard of right/wrong or good/evil. Yet these make up substantial portions of the moral standards even of Christians. So who is to say any one combination of parents, individual churches, et al. is superior or inferior to any other? Presumably god could, but he’s been rather silent on the issue for the past couple millenia. If my parents taught me that stem cell research is good and yours taught you it is bad, then who is right and who is wrong? The Bible is silent on the issue, but the two viewpoints are in opposition and can not both be right if some absolute standard exists.
I still cannot make a judgement. There’s not enough information on how such a thing would be done, what would be the cost in terms of human lives, how much improvement would be made, etc.
As I said before, and undoubtably will have to repeat, I do not make judgement calls until I have all of the facts in front of me, and, really, it would probably take you quite a long time to come up with the answers to all of the questions I would want to ask, and even then, I might not be sure.
On some issues, I never have fully made up my mind. Nothing is ever completely black or white. My personal opinion is that it’s often very foolish to judge and declare once-and-for-all that something is morally right or wrong when some things are bound to be ambiguous. You can’t put every single issue into one slot or another as a matter of course.
Again, invasion of another country is an act of war, and destabilizes the region as a whole. War is everybody’s business, and always has been due to treaties and defense agreements. It is not the same as a cultural aspect such as footbinding or oppression of women.
First of all, those few differences do not make the North and South independant cultures. They had many more similarites than differences, and the similarities covered the major points of culture: art, religion, behavior patterns, customs, as well as similar outward manifestations of culture: similar architecture, clothing, taste in foods, ettiquette, and social structure.
The Civil War does not simply boil down to “slavery.” There were a great many issues involved. Lincoln was correct in trying to stop the South from leaving the Union, but should we have invaded simply to end slavery? No. The cost to our country was enormous, in both financial terms and human life. Slavery would have most likely collapsed on its own within the next fifty years for purely financial reasons. Also, some scholars speculate that the bitterness left over from the war and Reconstruction have tainted racial relations in this country to this very day. (If slavery would have eventually died out, it’s possible that racial relations might have been better.)
Because there IS a distinction! Foreign policy is not a part of everyone’s lives in the way that common culture is. Do you think a guy in a remote villiage in the African savanna thinks constantly about trade deficits and whether or not hs UN representative should support sanctions? Hell, my next door neighbor doesn’t even know what NATO is.
I’m not “trying” to do a switch, I’m trying to explain a very simple concept: *Whether or not an action would be effective is very relevent to whether the action should be undertaken. *
Yeah, it would. I’m amazed you had to ask that.
There is a difference between saying: “This child works in a factory for twelve hours a day, making only a few cents, and is beaten if he doesn’t work hard enough”, and saying “This child is held in virtual slavery by heatrless savages.”
If you can’t see a difference, then, really, I can’t explain it to you.
As John Mace points out, this is pretty clearly an evasion of the question. You started by asserting that there was never a valid reason for one culture to interfere with the practices of another. Now you are trying to weasel out of it by admitting that there might be, but that you would stall on deciding.
If it is always wrong to judge another culture’s actions, then you do not need any facts to decide anything. Whatever they do is OK.
More weaseling. You claimed that we could never judge another culture. Now you are trying to say that sometimes you can, but sometimes you can’t, and that you will stall and evade on the hard questions.
Horseshit - a switch is exactly what you are doing. You started by claiming that no action should be taken against the practices of another culture. Now you are claiming that it is whether or not action would be effective that is determinative.
You are correct - you can’t explain it. There is no difference.
No, just cause you can’t see a difference doesn’t mean there isn’t one. Some folks see the world as “Our culture right or wrong,” “If you ain’t with us you’re against us,” and other similar culturally biased terms. Other folks realize that sometimes, just to survive, people have to do things that other cultures might not approve of.
Maybe we ought to turn this one around, and by your own standards of cultural bias, are you not a heartless savage if you don’t send some food and money to those people so they don’t have to go to such extremes?
I’ve studied a lot of cultures, and have seen things that would curl your hair. Personally, I didn’t approve of these things, but every one I looked closely at I saw a connection either to present survival needs or to entrenched practices which (although no longer needed for survival) had roots in survival-oriented practices. With this “aha,” I looked back at my own culture and decided that what we call “civilized cultures” are full of heartless savages.
Well, Meat, let me set you straight here. Naturally I will not speak for Lissa, she can speak well enough for herself.
What I “appear” to be arguing, is not, in fact, what I am arguing, or rather stating.
I have no problem with interfering with other cultures to educate them and allow them additional choices. I do have a problem with forcing other cultures to change simply because it doesn’t agree with what we have decided is “civilized.”
Even bribery, which you mention above, is OK. They still have a choice.
My main problem is with the categorization of cultures into “good” and “bad,” which is basically what “savage” vs. “civilized” does. We impose our “civilized” cultural standards upon others, and it leads to some pretty “savage” behaviour.
Instead, if we share our cultures, and act as an example, as history has shown, so-called “savage” practices get abandoned in favor of practices which are more satisfying (to the participants), even in some cases where it’s not in their best interests (my own home of Hawaii is a prime example - women in hawaii in the 1800’s adopted clothing that does not fit the climate). Not in all cases, but more often than not.
One of our most prized “civilized” cultural attributes is freedom, the freedom to choose (within certain restrictions). If we wish to act civilized, why can’t we extend that same freedom to others?
Sure, we can disapprove of the actions of other cultures, and often do. Iraq under Hussein, Cambodia under Pol Pot leftists, physical mutilation (have you been to the mall lately?), but what right do we have to call anything “savage?” Who set up anyone as world-wide arbiters of behaviour? Pure arrogance.
Personally, if these epithets are to be applied, I have not found a culture in the world I would consider civilized. Either we are all savages, or none of us are.
Can you imagine a culture that would kill other humans just for the “convenience” of others? Sound pretty “savage?”
In many “civilized” Western nations, the practice of killing unborn humans (called “abortion”) so that the mother-to-be has the convenience of: staying in school, not being embarassed, avoiding stretch marks, staying socially viable, etc., when her health is not threatened, but just because of the “savage” belief that her control over her body is more important than a new human life, is quite common.
It’s all relative, folks.
I’m not going to participate here much any more, because I’m stunned at the amount of bigotry and ignorance that is being posted by the “our culture is supreme” gang. I can’t even read all the posts, I choose to skim over repetitious blather, and I can’t give this subject the attention that I would feel obligated to do by virtue of being an anthropologist. If Cecil hired me for the Straight Dope Advisory Board (highly unlikely) then perhaps I’d be obligated. Otherwise, I won’t interfere (at least not too much) in your culture of bigotry: do what thou wilt.
Yeah, we started out talking about femal genital mutilation and footbinding, not about genocide and invading other countries. It’s like we were debating which flavors of ice cream were best and suddenly you wanted to challenge my opinion by saying that Ben & Jerrys is an evil corporation.
I’m sure if you stretch hard enough, you’ll find a hole in any piece of fabric. I feel its somewhat of a dubious debating tactic to keep widening the scope of the discussion, hoping that if the subject becomes broad enough that you can trip up the person with whom you’re debating. First we were taling about FGM and now people are bringing up nuclear bombs. Jesus Christ.
What is this, the fourth or fifth time I’ve said this? There is a difference between war and footbinding!
No, actually, you were not asking me to judge the actions of another culture in your scenario but to judge our culture’s response to it.
I will repeat my assertion that someone who makes a concrete decision on something as weighty as moral and ethical correctness only having a handful of facts before them is a fool.
If you really can’t see a difference between footbinding and war, then this debate is utterly pointless.
Xenophobia is universal. Just about every culture feels themselves to be the height of civilization and that the “others” are either ignorant barbarians or evil. This kind of thinking hiders our relations with other cultures and fosters misunderstanding. Lables make people defensive and hostile to the outsider they feel is judging them-- sometimes the well-intentioned actions of that outsider do more harm than good.
You proposed a general principle. It was not all that much of a stretch to come up with a few counter-examples.
And, for the fourth or fifth time, you receive the same response. Why is one aspect of a culture subject to judgement, and another is not?
If it is none of our business that they torment their women, then it is none of our business that they kill Jews, exploit children, kill Tutsis, invade Kuwait, etc. If you want to propose a universal principle, then it is no good at all to say “No fair!” when people shoot holes in it.
Distinction without a difference. How a culture “responds” to its environment is part of that culture.
And I will repeat my assertion that you are attempting to change the parameters of the debate.
You began the debate by asserting that there was no way to make a concrete decison on the actions of any other culture - that no standard could be applied. Now you are (apparently) asserting that if you collect enough facts, you can make such a decision. Ergo, you are suggesting that there is some universally applicable standard by which we can judge other cultures.
It wouldn’t be if they were examples of the same type of action or customs we were discussing.
Please read this sentance three or four times since I am not beside you to speak loudly and clearly: War is not the same as footbinding-- war affects people outside of the culture in question, whereas footbinding or FGM only affect those within the culture.
Look at it this way: if you were my next-door neighbor, I wouldn’t give a damn if you ran around in your house naked, or made your wife and children bow to you when you entered a room, or pooped on the floor.You can do whatever the hell you want to over there as long as it’s not forbidden by the laws of our culture. But if you shoved your way into my house and started doing the same things, then we’d have a problem.
Now, your behavior has affected an outsider. I can call the police and complain that you’ve pooped on my carpet. If I had called them and told them the day before that you pooped on your own carpet, they’d tell me to mind my own business. But once you’ve soiled my rugs, it’s an entirely different issue.
Get it?
Invading another country destabalizes the region. It’s everyone’s business at that point, because it has the potential to affect the world.
You’ve shot holes in nothing. You’ve just changed the subject.
Yeah, their environment!
Me??? Are you fucking joking? You moved it to an entirely different subject!
I will repeat again, using nice, big letters: THERE IS A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FOOTBINDING AND AN ACT OF WAR. One affects only those who chose to live within the culture, and thus has no (or at least relatively minimal) impact on other cultures, while the other has the potential to affect everone on the planet. No one is “judging” them-- we’re taking action to restabilize the region.
Lissa and I say that because people are different, that is no reason to label them with deprecative titles, like “savage,” or “primative.”
Shodan disagrees with this? I have not seen a cogent argument to support that allegation so far. All I have seen is attacks upon what posters are saying, which usually results from misunderstanding.
Shodan, what do you believe? Do you believe thAT YOUR CULTURE IS SUPERIOR TO ALL OTHERS IN ALL SITUATIONS? Oops, caps lock.
If not, then what DO you believe? And how do you support it?
Allow me as a disinterested party, I have not read most of this thread, to help.
It makes a difference what the difference is. If some pompus ass comes along and claims that people X are savages because they eat their bread butter side up while true civilized people all eat their bread butter side down, then he is a pompus ass and totally incorrect. If on the other hand the pompus ass says that people Y are savages because they hunt down their neighbors and eat them for food while civilised people respect human life, then he may be a pompus ass, but he is correct.*
The point, I think, is that a determination such as savage or primitive may be applicable to certain groups. But it cannot be applied based on trivial differences between cultures.
Is that a cogent argument?
After looking through more of the thread, I think this may be too simple. Oh well.
*Just to be clear, I am not accusing anyone of being a pomus ass. All pompus asses in this post were fictional. I could have formulated the paragraph the other way.
Well, as I posted above, if the only argument you have against a cultural practice is that it’s “savage” or “uncivilized”, you’ve really got nothing. I think the bread and butter example falls pretty neatly into this category.
There are other cultural practices which might more understandably be described as “savage”, but I don’t see how this does anyone any good. If there’s some reason other than cultural prejudice to oppose the practice, surely one should be able to come up with a better argument than “civilized people just don’t do that sort of thing”.
Yes, I agree, Lamia, it’s just their cultural means for describing others.
Some say that things like “eating your neighbors” classifies a group as “savage” or “primitive.”
Frankly, I don’t know of any large group of humans that do not, in some way or another, kill other humans. Perhaps they do it differently than your group (butter side down?), but the end result is the same.
So they eat them. Ho hum; they’re already dead, and at least this is an environmentally sensitive use of meat, instead of wasting it by burying it or burning it. Most cultures eat meat, and some prohibit certain types of meat. Cultural differences.
“Civilized” is a culturally loaded term that basically means “behaving the way we do.” Biased. Each culture thinks it is more civilized than others. Middle Eastern Muslims think the USA is barbaric, and we think they are.
“Primitive” is just a matter of degree of technological and cultural advancement, a matter of degree, not substance.
When you can show me a culture that doesn’t kill animals for food, and doesn’t kill other humans for any other reasons, then I might say you have perhaps found a group that is not “savage.”
