Cultural Relativism
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Cultural Relativism
Cultural Relativism argues that moral facts are determined by cultures and no objective standard can be used to pass judgment upon other cultures. Cultural relativism teaches us to overlook the faults of other cultures, should cultures beliefs be neglected if there is cruelty involved? Over looking the harm one culture is doing to its citizens would be immoral to many different cultures. Even today in a world that presents us with the ideology to be accepting of cultures, there is always an underlying stigma between two cultures. To be accepting of another culture is difficult, this maybe do to their different beliefs or actions, but one culture is constantly judging another. Cultural relativism permits discrepancies from a culture and helps that culture to escape constant critiquing from another. Cultural relativisms gesture of acceptance is right but it is just that a gesture because there is a difference between morals and savagery. To ignore savage crimes of would be wrong, especially when the human race claims to be civilized. Depending on what happens in neighboring cultures should be a general interest for everyone, for what happens to one may affect others.
Cultural Relativism emphasizes that what is morally correct is connected to how a society perceives it and different societies have different moral codes. It suggests that it is prejudice to judge the conduct of other cultures. Other societies can not judge different moral codes because there are no set morals to say that their cultural beliefs are correct or incorrect. Under this ideology the moral code of one society has no special status it is merely among many, because each culture should be equal.
On many levels, cultural relativism is accepting of other cultures and their morals, even though cultural relativism is merely a lesson on being polite. It does allow us to improve our culture; but it doesn’t recognize developments. Relativists find themselves caught when trying to analyze progress; because they cannot say the cultures have progressed because one can not judge the same culture in given eras. Cultural relativists would say the slavery in the United States would be correct because it is what the culture thought was right at the time. Now that the society has progressed, slavery has been impolished from most countries.
Progressing according to relativists the judgment of even our own cultures could be wrong even if analyzing our own culture gives us a skeptical view and allows us improve, however they are not always beneficial to a society For instance in technology if we were always looking for something better and critiquing the products we have now, there would lead to technological advancement. Judging is needed to motivate and advance. Without advancements many cultures would be extinct.
I believe that cultural relativism is partially right. Because we should respect other cultures. If there is no respect for the other culture then one culture tries to dominate another because nationalism will take place and can be harmful to other cultures. The Europeans for example prejudged other cultures because they were not like there own and managed destruction of other cultures because of greed and egocentrism. But how tolerant can we be? How far can cultures push other cultures moral boundaries? When should other cultures step in and say what they believe? With cases such as genocide we ask how the killing a mass amount of people can be justified. The answer is it cannot be validated. Mass killing or any killing, cannot be ignored. If we were to go along with the “politically correct” cultural relativism, no one culture could try to destroy another because it despises the practices of that culture. If one culture believes another culture is inferior it goes against the meaning of cultural relativism one society believes and needs to be wiped out, it makes cultural relativism false, because that one culture doesn’t respect the other.
In order to determine when a culture should