Cruelty or Culture

A Series

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THE QUESTION

To what extent does ones belief in indigenous and religious knowledge systems act as a justification for violating moral codes?

SERIES DESCRIPTION

'Cruelty or Culture' is a series that seeks to analyze highlight certain cultures, practices and beliefs that are to an extent contradictory with the general sense of morality. It questions whether or not indigenous and religious knowledge systems should justify acts that go against our [the world's] moral codes.

THEORY OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM

Cultural relativism refers to the idea of viewing one’s cultural beliefs and norms from that cultures own context or perspective. It is the idea that a person's beliefs, values, and practices should be understood based on that person's own culture, and not be judged against the criteria of another.

UNIVERSAL MORAL CODE? HOW?

Can there ever be a common ground when it comes to morality? To a great extent most of us can agree that murder and killing is wrong no matter the reason. But do you know killing is sometimes honorable and praise-worthy in certain cultures? Even with a matter as beyond-the-bounds as murder there is more than one school of thought on whether or not it is wrong. This begs the question can we ever reach a point, where we can all collectively agree on what is right and wrong? Can we establish universal humans rights without infringing on the practice of indigenous cultures and religions?

WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE ON CULTURE? CAN WE EVEN DO THIS?

The theory of Culture is a very diverse one. People can find culture in anything and most cultures today, come from decades and centuries worth of practice. Cultures are formed through food, clothing, dance, music, ethics, and the general sense of living and how people go about it among others. Also true is the fact that the world is ever evolving. Due to development and technical advancements, there are a lot of things we do not regard or practice now. These progressions have also affected cultures to an extent. There are somethings that were once considered culture but are no more practiced anymore.

CULTURE OR CONVENIENCE?

Historians and anthropologists have long agreed that certain things considered culture now, were only practiced in the past for convenience sake. Eating with ones hands is a great example. At some point in time we were all eating with our hands because of the lack cutlery. Now with the introduction of cutlery some cultures still resort to eating with their hands. Of course this is a minuscule matter. But the concept is true for a lot of other things. Some practices back then were only in use because of the current situation/context but now, even though they are technically not needed, they still exist due to the notion of 'culture'.

ARGUMENTUM AD POPULUM

Argumentum ad populum is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it, often concisely encapsulated as: "If many believe so, it is so." It is often used to endorse certain morally ambiguous beliefs such as honor killing, female infanticide, force feeding, female genital mutilation etc.

UTILITARIANISM

- The doctrine that actions are right if they are useful or for the benefit of the majority.

FAITH vs. REASON

- Faith is believing without seeing. It is having an unwarranted conviction in something.

- Reasoning is the process of thinking about something in a logical way in order to form a conclusion or judgement. (Merriam-Webster Online)

1. Deductive reasoning is a logical process in which a conclusion is based on the concordance of multiple premises that are generally assumed to be true.

2. Inductive reasoning is a logical process in which multiple premises, all believed true or found true most of the time, are combined to obtain a specific conclusion.

AUTHORITY WORSHIP

Authority worship is the process of blindly accepting 'facts' from those in authority as truth without thinking about it.

SUBSIDIARY QUESTIONS

1. How do we, as a world, establish a universal set of moral codes while still honoring and respecting the sovereignty of our different and diverse cultures?

2. What elements of universal significance may we discern in indigenous knowledge systems?

3. Do systems like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights superimpose the beliefs of cultural and religious communities? And to what extent?

4. Should indigenous knowledge systems be respected above more universal knowledge systems such as the Natural Sciences?

5. To what extent are our actions based on what we actually feel is right as compared to what we feel we just need to do?