Of course we can, but should we? Depends on whose ox is being gored. Cultural relativists are convinced that there are no good or bad cultures, just different kinds of cultures, but then get all pissy about practices like FGM. We like to pick and choose. I did not celebrate and embrace deep fried rat-eating during my tenure in Malawi, and none of my Malawian friends celebrated and embraced my veganism culture.
Maybe Charles Napier (allegedly) got it right:
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
It’s true we all like to pick and choose, but in a globalized world, I wonder if “Let us all act according to national customs” has any benefit, especially if one takes a progressive standpoint. We need to ask ourselves if the cultural custom is still functional for its people, and then ask ourselves who it’s functional for. If it’s only benefiting those in power, it’s likely worth discussing and changing. And maybe it’s not about finding all the answers, but about asking each other questions. Whether it be on an individual level or a societal level, I think we can all benefit from asking ourselves and others about the cultural practices we find morally dubious.
At some convenient Year Zero, culture began as local responses to local conditions (plus whatever instinctual urges we picked up genetically), and by local conditions I include the local environment, climate, other living things, and neighboring groups of strangers who did slightly different ritual scarification and were therefore suspect. Elements accrued in the group’s common mental operating system in response to the changing conditions around them. Some changes were beneficial in the real world, some in the campfire tales world, some were bunk that got a free ride from the inability of a culture to prune itself. Sort of a metaphysical blackberry patch.
One needs only look at the US government bramble to see evidence of the need for cultural pruning, because government is nothing if it’s not a cultural artifact. Do we really need a bureau to oversee ketchup manufacturing? Does the General Mining Act of 1872 still make sense in 2023? When is it time to start pruning our own culture? If we can’t do it to ourselves, what standing do we have to accuse of cultures?
Now I have no idea what you mean by morally accusing a culture, since we are unable to come to any consensus in our exuberantly overgrown cultural bramble about what is and what isn’t moral. We’re waist deep in the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” phase of cultural disintegration. So as an e plurbis unum sort of culture, we probably have no standing.
As far as a globalized world, how deep is the “global culture,” which can’t functionally exist by my definition above, at other than as a layer of Coke and Toyotas temporarily imposed over the deep and tangled bramble of widow burning, ketchup testing, and ritual scarification? Nothing fundamental is changed.
So we are left with the situation where morally accusing a culture is futile without force and the past hundred years of attempts to prune and dig out cultural bramble to create the New______Man gets extremely bloody very quickly. Remember Pol Pot’s Year One effort to morally accuse his own culture?
So what’s the point of morally accusing a culture? The warm feeling of moral superiority? The exhilarating feel of gaining a sense of moral superiority? I don’t know, because after a lifetime of working on every continent that doesn’t have a permanent snow pack, I don’t have enough cultural confidence in my own culture to go around hammering on other cultures. Sure, I think to myself that, say, Somalia might be a dead end (er, no outlet) culture, but what good can my grumbling do? Other than an occasional “hey you guys, knock it off,” I don’t think we can achieve much.
So maybe sit back, guzzle a can of kombucha, eat a burrito of injera stuffed with ludefisk and hummus, and finish off a durian for dessert. Then head off to the cave for an adventure in procreation. Those are about the only ways we can agree upon to have fun in this tangled mess of a world, where all that really matters is our bellies and what’s beneath them.
"We are unable to come to any consensus in our exuberantly overgrown cultural bramble about what is and what isn’t moral." True, and that's why I'm hoping to get some more perspectives. And I don't advocate blaming a culture. I also don't feel confident in the various cultures I was raised in, but the more I learn about different believes and ideas, the more confident I feel when try (and fail) to make a moral decision. But for today, I'm happy to finish the Kombucha, hummus, and burrito in my fridge. Durian will need to be for another time. Cheers.
I enjoyed the chat. Come visit me at switters.substack.com. where I celebrate what I found wonderful in the world (and it truly is a wonderful world) and grumble about some of the really stupid things I experienced in the dark underbelly of the planet. I'm at the get of my lawn phase in life, so I get to grumble.
And I'll have an Otter Pop with my injera/hummus/limburger cheese/ludefisk burrito, with a side of fresh garlic and the fresh durian for dessert. It's a great way to find out who truly loves you.
Thanks for a really interesting and thought provoking post!
Thank you!
Of course we can, but should we? Depends on whose ox is being gored. Cultural relativists are convinced that there are no good or bad cultures, just different kinds of cultures, but then get all pissy about practices like FGM. We like to pick and choose. I did not celebrate and embrace deep fried rat-eating during my tenure in Malawi, and none of my Malawian friends celebrated and embraced my veganism culture.
Maybe Charles Napier (allegedly) got it right:
“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”
It’s true we all like to pick and choose, but in a globalized world, I wonder if “Let us all act according to national customs” has any benefit, especially if one takes a progressive standpoint. We need to ask ourselves if the cultural custom is still functional for its people, and then ask ourselves who it’s functional for. If it’s only benefiting those in power, it’s likely worth discussing and changing. And maybe it’s not about finding all the answers, but about asking each other questions. Whether it be on an individual level or a societal level, I think we can all benefit from asking ourselves and others about the cultural practices we find morally dubious.
At some convenient Year Zero, culture began as local responses to local conditions (plus whatever instinctual urges we picked up genetically), and by local conditions I include the local environment, climate, other living things, and neighboring groups of strangers who did slightly different ritual scarification and were therefore suspect. Elements accrued in the group’s common mental operating system in response to the changing conditions around them. Some changes were beneficial in the real world, some in the campfire tales world, some were bunk that got a free ride from the inability of a culture to prune itself. Sort of a metaphysical blackberry patch.
One needs only look at the US government bramble to see evidence of the need for cultural pruning, because government is nothing if it’s not a cultural artifact. Do we really need a bureau to oversee ketchup manufacturing? Does the General Mining Act of 1872 still make sense in 2023? When is it time to start pruning our own culture? If we can’t do it to ourselves, what standing do we have to accuse of cultures?
Now I have no idea what you mean by morally accusing a culture, since we are unable to come to any consensus in our exuberantly overgrown cultural bramble about what is and what isn’t moral. We’re waist deep in the “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” phase of cultural disintegration. So as an e plurbis unum sort of culture, we probably have no standing.
As far as a globalized world, how deep is the “global culture,” which can’t functionally exist by my definition above, at other than as a layer of Coke and Toyotas temporarily imposed over the deep and tangled bramble of widow burning, ketchup testing, and ritual scarification? Nothing fundamental is changed.
So we are left with the situation where morally accusing a culture is futile without force and the past hundred years of attempts to prune and dig out cultural bramble to create the New______Man gets extremely bloody very quickly. Remember Pol Pot’s Year One effort to morally accuse his own culture?
So what’s the point of morally accusing a culture? The warm feeling of moral superiority? The exhilarating feel of gaining a sense of moral superiority? I don’t know, because after a lifetime of working on every continent that doesn’t have a permanent snow pack, I don’t have enough cultural confidence in my own culture to go around hammering on other cultures. Sure, I think to myself that, say, Somalia might be a dead end (er, no outlet) culture, but what good can my grumbling do? Other than an occasional “hey you guys, knock it off,” I don’t think we can achieve much.
So maybe sit back, guzzle a can of kombucha, eat a burrito of injera stuffed with ludefisk and hummus, and finish off a durian for dessert. Then head off to the cave for an adventure in procreation. Those are about the only ways we can agree upon to have fun in this tangled mess of a world, where all that really matters is our bellies and what’s beneath them.
"We are unable to come to any consensus in our exuberantly overgrown cultural bramble about what is and what isn’t moral." True, and that's why I'm hoping to get some more perspectives. And I don't advocate blaming a culture. I also don't feel confident in the various cultures I was raised in, but the more I learn about different believes and ideas, the more confident I feel when try (and fail) to make a moral decision. But for today, I'm happy to finish the Kombucha, hummus, and burrito in my fridge. Durian will need to be for another time. Cheers.
Fun, though. Right?
I enjoyed the chat. Come visit me at switters.substack.com. where I celebrate what I found wonderful in the world (and it truly is a wonderful world) and grumble about some of the really stupid things I experienced in the dark underbelly of the planet. I'm at the get of my lawn phase in life, so I get to grumble.
And I'll have an Otter Pop with my injera/hummus/limburger cheese/ludefisk burrito, with a side of fresh garlic and the fresh durian for dessert. It's a great way to find out who truly loves you.