Cultural Relativism/Morals

The Challenge of Cultural Relativism by James Rachels, was a very interesting read that provoked many good thoughts from me. It had an obvious connection to Things Fall Apart, but also discussed Cultural Relativism in more detail. There was an obvious issue with cultures in Things Fall Apart, between their native tribe, and the new group that begun to take over. There is also the differences in morals between Things Fall Apart and today’s society. The first instance of this is when in Things Fall Apart, there was the deal made that if a boy and a virgin is traded to another tribe, they avoid going to war. In today’s society, that simply sounds absurd and wrong. Just because our society frowns upon deals like that, it does not make it morally incorrect to the people in Things Fall Apart. We are discussing two different societies, and the societies choose what is morally correct and incorrect.

I know I shouldn’t say this. Last time I brought up baby turtles in a piece of literature, my classmates could not get through the fact that I used turtles to prove my very serious point (If you want to know better details on this just ask Jess Vielma). The issue I have with this article, is with the claim that all cultures have some values in common. Rachels uses the first value, a value in protecting and taking close care of their young, to support her belief in common values. Baby turtles are born in the sand, far from the semi-safe water, and are defenseless overall. Their parents are long gone and did not think twice before they laid the eggs and swam away. This may seem a bit silly to some, but it does bring up the point that not all beings are cared for and protected by their parents. It also brings up the question if all animals, excluding humans, can have different “societies”. My answer to that question is simply of course. What makes us humans think we have the right to believe we are the only living organisms that are capable of societies?

Alright. I’ll be honest here. I did read The Challenge of Cultural Relativism, and parts of it was decently interesting to me. It is obvious that it was written in a sociological perspective, and I like to focus more on the individual, psychological perspective. With that said, I still wrote the top two paragraphs in order to get a good grade, but now I am going to blog about the other things I was planning on blogging about.

I have many morals. You have many morals. He has many morals. She has many morals. But how can we know that they are all the same? The answer is that we cant. There is absolutely no realistic way to know another persons morals. People who disagree might say “Well they can obviously just tell you what their morals are”, and how do you know what they are saying is true to them? I don’t believe that we, as individuals, don’t even know our own morals. Some may say that all people have at least the basic morals like “don’t kill people constantly” and “personal hygiene is important”, in common with each other, although, I strongly disagree with that statement. For all I know, that statement could very well be true, although, we will never know for sure that everyone shares a certain moral. It is near impossible to figure out your own morals, nonetheless every single persons morals in a world, or society.

At this time I will point out why I said “no REALISTIC way to know another persons morals”. I do believe that in a perfect world, there could be tests that a person is put through, in order to determine their morals. For example, there could be a test where the moral of when it is justified to kill an animal or another human. That actually brings me to an idea for a good “dystopian world” book, where people are raised by their parents, and at the age of 18, they are put through a series of tests that determines if the newly created adults, have the “correct” morals, which, of course, are decided by the leaders of this dystopian world. The people who pass get to move on in life and continue living the way they were before the tests, while the people who fail, are sent somewhere else. No one knows where these people are sent to, but there are many rumors, and none of them are positive. The whole story would follow the upbringing of a teen who fails the tests, and is sent to that location, and is able to break out of it and create an uprising of some sort. Could you tell that I recently watched Mockingjay Part 1?

Sorry for going off on such a random tangent, but I hope my “readers” are able to understand my views on Cultural Relativism, as well as my personal beliefs on morals.

Jake Gregan