Re: MD A Question of Balance / Rules of the Game

From: David Harding (davidharding@optusnet.com.au)
Date: Sun Nov 06 2005 - 05:35:39 GMT

  • Next message: Case: "RE: MD A Question of Balance / Rules of the Game"

    Case wrote:
    > [David]
    > I disagree,
    >
    > What with the popular, of cultural relativism I actually think this is a
    > dangerous standpoint to take. People are poor, people are rich, it's all
    > relative; people live, people are killed, it's all relative; people lie,
    > people are honest, it's all relative.
    >
    > It's not. What happens in one culture is not completely disrelated to
    > another. Just because hedonism is bad in one culture and O.K. in another
    > doesn't suddenly make hedonism 'relative'. Hedonism, i.e intellectual
    > advocacy of biological quality, threatens social value and so it is bad not
    > just for one particular person in one particular culture at a certain time,
    > but for all people, everywhere.
    >
    > [Case]
    > If this were just nonsense I could have let it slide, as I have no desire to
    > get into this debate but this not just nonsense it is pernicious nonsense.
    > Letting it alone is like leaving a loaded gun on a preschool playground. The
    > idea that there are Moral Absolutes and that one culture is "right" and
    > another is "wrong" is exactly the case the Muslim extremists make make and
    > use to justify their guerilla wars against the Great Satan. It is a very bad
    > idea to judge one culture from the perspective of another. This practice has
    > been soundly condemned within the social sciences and rightly so.
    >

    Exactly, I'll agree with you. What your pointing to is the problem of cultural relativism where any 'condemnation' of one culture is 'from another' and and so there is no real justification for the
    condemnation to begin with. But when the MOQ is involved, condemnation not only becomes possible, but in certain circumstances desirable. One can make the call and say, here is biological behavior
    in the face of social and intellectual quality, this is evil for everything everywhere, and must be stopped, (in the case of terrorism, by killing them).

    Anyway, thanks for the reply (no one else did).

    -David.

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