So are you saying all cultures are equal? Also now that I think of it “bushmen in the jungle” can sound pretty racist to some people, sorry.
For themselves, the employers, and Papua New Guinea.
Equal in what way? I think the people in those cultures are equal and it’s ignorant and supercilious to decide that they can be “better than bushmen.” That is holistically dismissive in a way which is purely ethnocentric.
Why do they need employers? For those who do have employers, what is your basis for saying they’re not productive already?
Cool story bro.
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As a general rule, barbaric practices should be stopped, but let’s not in haste forget to make an exception for skimpy fur bras and Conan.
I mean be part of the global economy.
After all, skimpy fur bras and Conan are what’s best in life!
Cultures are greatly influenced by their natural environment. There’s nothing racist about that observation, and it does help to explain to a certain degree why some regions are “doing better” than others.
Curtis, I’d recommend you read “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond. I’m quite sure you won’t agree with all of it, but the book does make a good argument for environment being an extremely important factor in the development of civilizations.
I don’t really consider cannibalism to be barbaric. The person’s dead, who cares what happens after?
I would totally impose my values on things like torture though, especially for cultural and religious reasons. I’m against genital mutilation in all forms, for any reason. I don’t really give a shit what people think, I’ll gladly slaughter a whole village of idiots if they insist on mutilating their daughters.
So 100 people<having clitoris cut. A wonderfully balanced morality you have.
Who is the aggressor in the other culture to decide what is appropriate for their victim and impose their values on the victim?
This sort of anti-ethnocentrism falls apart under the most cursory examination. If it’s poor form to impose your values on a culture, then it’s poor form to impose your values on a culture that’s ethnocentric, and you should knock it off. If it’s reasonable to impose values on another culture, then doing so is reasonable, and this anti-ethnocentric argument is silly.
What’s more, it’s ridiculous to suggest that morality is determined by political boundaries, to suggest that it’s okay to throw one’s wife into the cooking fire in Mumbai but not in Manhattan, or to suggest that it’s acceptable to let people freeze to death on the streets of Chicago but not Oslo. Folks are folks, and humans are humans, and if your neighbor shouldn’t eat your kid, then some dude halfway around the world shouldn’t eat his neighbor’s kid either, no matter what cultural tradition dictates there or here.
So yes: let’s do our best to end barbaric practices, starting with our own.
As Dio hinted, however, it’s very difficult to make effective headways in other cultures, especially for Americans and Europeans. We’ve got a very long history of declaring other cultures wrong simply because they’re different from our own, and that understandably pisses other folks off. Women in Africa who are working to end FGM, for example, have written an open letter to Western feminists telling them to butt the hell out and let them handle it. Yog Sothoth’s post demonstrates why: he’s yet another Westerner willing to destroy the village in order to save it, whereas the women in Africa working to end FGM have grandmothers, sisters, and daughters in that village of idiots.
Moral relativism only works with things that are minor, and thus more trouble to change than they are to allow.
Heck, despite what most fundamentalists teach, Christianity even teaches a form of moral relativism. Take a look at Romans 14, for example.
Why in hell is it necessary for the resident of Papua New Guinea to “be part of the global economy?” If their way of life is working for them (and that’s for them to decide), who are you to interfere and decide that they need to be part of the “global economy?”
There is a pretty good argument to be made that if the Nazis had stayed in their own playground we wouldn’t have done jack.
Lives don’t have intrinsic worth. Pain, however, is felt pretty universally, and detested. So the lives of a hundred torturers aren’t worth shit compared to the pain and suffering of one girl. There’s also the fact that those who uphold such practices do so of their own choosing, but the girl has no such option to choose. It is forced on her, thus it makes it worse
Yes, I do have a great sense of morality. Better than yours, it seems
Well, that, and crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentation of their women.
I think it means certain people are more likely to be tempted by say drinking than those whose faith are strong.
They were raised in their culture to do so and isn’t something you can change in one day.
Yet in reality the opposite appears true; it’s the faithful who tend towards “immoral” behavior, who demonstrate less self control and more self indulgence. It’s the Bible Belt that has the higher divorce rate, the teens who swear to chastity that are more likely to have underage, unprotected sex. Religion is not a good influence on society.