Kaiserschmarrn wrote:@Tainari88
I don't think the difficulties in the social sciences are very different to assessing or learning about cultures. In fact, I would argue that most social science research has to take into account culture.
If the idea of cultural relativism is simply that everybody has biases, then it seems rather trivial, although nevertheless the takeaway of many people seems to be that we cannot judge other cultures. I'm mainly arguing against the latter, not least because we do judge our own past culture all the time despite the fact that people have different biases at different times in history.
For me what creates tremendous conflict between cultures and peoples, and nations and governments are a total lack of empathy. There is a sense of using power for or against a group of people without consideration for the needs of the
less powerful. It creates tremendous conflict.
I will give you an example that is biblical since I recently saw a great documentary on the history of the Pope in the Catholic church. St Peter is considered the first Pope. Peter means 'rock' and he was crucified upside down, since he did not want to die like the Christ died, since he was 'less' than the Christ. So, the Romans punished him. With an upside down crucifixion. One of the explanations of the biblical scholars and Christian scholars who they interviewed of why the Romans persecuted the early Christians with these terrible punishments was about POWER. 75% of the people in Rome were slaves. Slaves in Roman times were raped, beaten and killed with impunity, they had no rights. No rights to marry, inherit property, have disputes brought up in court, or legal rights. They were like horses, cattle and goats. To be bought and sold like livestock. The majority of the people living in those conditions were told for the first time in their lives that in Christ they were equals. That they mattered, and their eternal souls mattered, that they had rights to dignity and self respect. And many converted. It was a threat to Roman authority that message. It was a power struggle. The Jewish Rabbis resented the Christians for upsetting the political and religious traditional alliances with the established order as well. It was about power and control.
If you study the RC church through the Papal history? They also became corrupted by mundane power, they had teenage popes from vicious, greedy, power hungry families vying for political positions, they had every kind of vile sin happening in the seat of 'spiritual' leadership. Human history is filled with injustices and it has to do with power struggles. The racism, the discrimination, the judgments against foreign cultural traditions, the biases, the prejudices, the need to dehumanize other peoples are all played into the bottom line. Human power struggles. How one copes with human power relationships is your political point of view.
I will never support class systems. Throughout human history all it does is justify exploitation in some form. Because they are women, because they are foreign, because they have darker skin, because they speak a different language, because they are poor and they are poor because they are weak, because they are NOT US. Because, because, because. They are human. They have the same needs. They got to eat, sleep, drink water, have sustenance, shelter, reproduce, love, marry, hate, be angry, be rational, be irrational. They are human.
Accept their common humanity and stop looking for ways to deny them rights that help them get their needs met. In the end all of us are going to be dust anyway.
Multiculturalism only becomes problematic if you think variation and difference is to be inhuman. But it is not. It is about as human as can be.
- By Dr House
- By JohnRawls