Sure, but across humanity it's the same cake with different frosting. Different notes but always the same tune.
What kind of answer is that? The definition of justice and human rights (which is what we were originally discussing), can be vastly different between cultures. And assuming your music metaphor is correct, if everyone does play the same tune, what's the problem with the music some other people are playing?
All my moral concepts are mine. That doesn't mean that they're wrong, or that things stop being right or wrong simply because they're not happening to me.
Agreed, with one caveat. They don't stop being right or wrong FOR YOU, even if their not happening to you. I'm on board with you having moral feelings. And that when you look at someone doing something you feel is wrong, it upsets you, whatever culture they are in. You will say that is wrong. If you are a relativist, you would then caveat that yourself with "to me", understanding that within their concepts this might make sense.
The question of whether you "have to do something about it", particularly across borders, is a question of justice itself. You know these tribes didn't ask you to come there and check them out. And if we weren't living off the riches of previous generations who missionized other cultures, raping them, flattening them to amusement pieces, and then taking their wealth... you probably wouldn't know about these new ones, or have any ability to change their ways.
But I digress...
It's racist, it seems to me, to assert that the "poor benighted savages just are that way" when the people of another society face injustice. And I think it's a moral outrage to stand idly by when people are oppressed, in the name of "cultural diversity."
Nice cognitive dissonance. Accuse the people not willing to change other cultures to fit their own whims as racist, while portraying yourself as knight in shining armour rescuing people from oppression of their own practices?
As it is, I didn't say let the ignorant people do as they will. I said they had a different world view. I am accepting the validity of another point of view, not just because they are poor or of a different race? Not sure how that entered into it. I would be arguing the same thing if it was a culture that had equal power and wealth and learning and etc etc etc.
The question of justice looms again. Would you want someone to say their theory of what oppression is counts more than yours and change your practices, just because they had some technical and financial ability to go to your community and do it?
It shouldn't result in good people doing nothing when faced with evil.
Okay, I'm serious that is a joke right? Evil? If you are serious, what is the difference between Bush's arguments and your own? He's wrong because his convictions and moral set come from his God, as opposed to the social group you happen to belong to?
But outcomes are objective, and those are what I'm talking about changing. An outcome where young women are being held down and having clitorectomies against their consent is an outcome that needs to be changed, period.
Actions and results are objective. That fact that you feel something based on both is objective. Evil is not. The conclusion that a culture somewhere in the world must be changed because of the fact that within it women are being held down and having female circumcisions (FCs) against their consent, is NOT objective.
Lets use this ritual as our standing example.
You look at this culture, poked your nose in where it was not asked, and factually see a young girl being held, lets say screaming and crying, as some adults cut her genitalia and then patch her up. You see this through your wealthy, western, individualist moral lens, and get enraged as the interpretation is some "helpless" person being needlessly tortured and mutilated by some adults.
But they are not seeing that through their own lens. The adults are not trying to hurt her, that is not the purpose. They view it as an essential ritual or practice to improve her life, and perhaps that of the community. It would be like having your kid inoculated. Kids have this done all the time, usually screaming and crying too. It can even be scarring and in some cases fatal, but we view it as having a purpose beyond what else it might do.
I suppose it is possible that a society could believe the pain is an important part, but that kind of stuff is usually done in right of passage rituals. In that case the pain holds significance since life itself is painful. Getting used to pain as a step toward endurance they will need.
As I mentioned I saw one documentary where the specific society viewed as an aesthetic point as well, mirroring an act performed by their Gods during creation of the world.
That you believe children have some special rights as separate from the will of the parents, is truly subjective. And the concept of consent is also subjective. Both I would argue are also rather arbitrarily enforced (for example the inoculation example).
As you noted, you an MC and are opposed to it. If these girls were that traumatized and begging for your help, its odd to see so many older women who have had it done... Not. Yes some examples can be found, but one can also find examples of people in modern Western society unhappy with the unusual proscriptions/prescriptions here. That would not lend legitimacy to some other nation coming over to fix how you live your life, because they agree with those complainants.
There are some arguments that the women who do not protest and inflict such "torture" on their daughters are brainwashed. My first question would be what is the difference between someone liking something because they've been brainwashed, and someone liking something? My second question is why are we dismissing the claims of people as if we can tell them why they like something? We know better?
I don't think its legitimate to say your interpretation trumps theirs, and I think it is an act of injustice (indeed much greater than little girls having FCs) to go mess with entire societies simply because we have the financial wherewithal to do it, and the inability to keep our noses out of their business. What happens when they start screaming and crying at the death of their traditions and culture?
It is also against the Prime Directive.
The whole world is my community. Why wouldn't it be? Why, in the year 2007, would my obligations to my fellow human being end simply because we don't share a country or a language?
That is pure arrogance born of wealth and power. It is a moral global Manifest Destiny. Did these people you just criticized invite you to stay with them, to correct any mistakes they might be making? Most couldn't give a shit about you, and some are not even cognizant of the nature of the world, much less the concept of global community. This isn't to drum them down, its a fact. They certainly weren't asking for everyone in the first world to come and join them.
I'm hip to the Citizen of Earth thing. That just means the globe is your home. There are many diverse communities on that globe, and to join them my thoughts are the best method is NOT to say... hey you guys are evil, you need to be stopped.
Just because you currently enjoy the wealth and power to get to any place in the planet, and the ability to change other cultures by forced programming and sanction, does not make it just.
My thoughts are you did not buy the argument you just made when the catholics, and then the protestants swept the globe using the same decree to help their fellow citizens.
How insular and racist to assert that only those who are exactly like myself are deserving of help!
Exactly like myself, if you define it as within my nation and culture, yes I'd say that is right. Because they are the only ones I know that definitely share the same history and "Lens" as I do, or similar anyway, such that I can legitimately define what requires help.
Its like in the past seeing an inuit on a floating ice sheet and "saving" them by pulling them to safety. Only they didn't want your help that's how some in that culture go to die.
I will accept the insular title, though my feeling is I'd get accepted into the societies you badmouth quicker than you, and stay longer. As or racist, I still don't understand the charge. We are a mixed race culture, and I'm willing not to stick my nose into other white cultures as well as any other race.
Even here in just my house there's two different ways of thinking about the world, two different ways of acting. Two different ways of culture.
This is an interesting point. It is true that within a culture there can be many different sub-cultures. The point I'd make is that unlike your claim to world community earlier, you really are in a local community. Your town, state, country. Within that realm you are working to advance your own life and interest with those that share that locale. It is a total illusion that you're working with anyone outside that locale.
So within your own society/culture, which happens to be more diverse than many other nations/societies/cultures, it is not only valid but necessary for there to be interaction and influence between the many sub-cultures.
Its when you decide to travel, or others do and report back what they saw, and you suddenly think that tentative connection gives your morality a passport to their world, specifically to change it, that a line is crossed.
Your line of argument is almost like me saying, well I vote in my community right and there are all sorts of people with different ideas and from different nations, so why can't I go vote in any other nation I want? And there's the rub, our attempts to change them aren't even coming from taking the time to join their community (as people would have to do here) and get some laws passed. It is by dictate from us.
They're a human being who can speak, too, so that's who they are to tell me to butt out, and then it just becomes a function of who wants it more.
You honestly think these other cultures have the ability to tell anyone in the first world to butt out? Hey I hate to tell you but they already did! And its not a question of who wants it more but who has the raw power to effect the other's will. Gee guess who's going to win.
Yeah, I guess the native americans and aztecs just didn't want it enough.
For a "moral relativist", you certainly appeal to absolute principles quite a bit.
Nice try. I am a moral relativist. As I already agreed with you, they can have tastes and the ability to effect change around them based on those tastes. You are part of my culture, and nation, so I have a legitimate issue with what you do, particularly when it becomes an "act" from my culture to influence another. And from my view an injustice.
I did not declare anything absolutely wrong, even what you want to do. I don't like and am telling you why I don't like it. It is unjust, given my perspective that cultures have relative validity. I am appealing to you on that idea, hoping that perhaps you share the concept of moral relativism, or failing that would not want to be in the hypocritical role of demolishing another culture in the same fashion as our ancestors did, as well as you would not want done by any rise in fundamentalist cultures (to give an example).
Hypocrisy IS an objective quality, though of course it is neither objectively right or wrong.
How would they know? Maybe they think sex is supposed to be painful and bloody every time.
And you were claiming I was the racist thinking they were savages?
Dworkin's dead, and maybe what you're thinking of is her frustration with the fact that nearly every discussion of feminism of which a man is a part becomes all about the man's needs, the man's experiences, the man's sexuality. You know, like you tried to make it.
Uhhhh... I didn't try to make it all about men, remember? It was all about women so far, so I showed the flipside and then REPEATED the female side of the equation (using the short hand vs a short hand for the male side). I was discussing both. I was saying both sexes have expectations for behavior which work against them from either direction... though I still disagree with your assessment of frigid to slut in one step.
As for Dworkin, I read her writings. I read the writings of those from her side. I then read writings of other feminists which disagreed with her, not to mention criticisms (by both men and women)from people outside the feminist camp (or not allied with it anyway) of the specific theory she laid out. I didn't interrupt her, and the women who disagreed weren't men, and I agreed with them. So now where does that leave us?
Female genital mutilation is objectively wrong and its an affront to human rights.
Okay, you opened the can of worms... How is it objectively wrong? What absolute law are you appealing to? If they believe it is right, how can it be an absolute law?
I'm going to grant you that it is against human rights for sake of argument. While in reality it can be defended within that framework, I see a valid argument that according to YOUR definition of human rights it could be. The question of the universality of human rights is also in question, but I can leave that for elsewhere.
That is unless the universal objective wrong is directly connected to the human rights thing... in that case, do go on...
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"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing." - Robert E. Howard
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