Thursday, January 19
Ethnocentricism
I want to briefly make something clear. When I say that there is no one right way to live and attempt to show deference to other ways of living (such as civilization), I am, of course, not attempting to exempt myself from the very human emotion of feeling that my way is the right way. Of course that is how I feel. How could I go about acting on anything unless I personally believed it was the right thing to be doing? My point is that this is simply a feeling- not based in fact. There is no one to say in absolute terms that one way to live is better than the other (unless you create an abstraction to do that for you). This feeling is the basis for all ethnocentricism and definitely anthropocentrism. It is absolutely fine for a culture to feel like they have it down. They have figured out the way to live. But they have only figured out the way that they are able to live successfully, not the way for everyone to live. Regardless, every culture believes that their way is the right way for everybody. Our culture just has the unique trait that we have equiped ourselves with the means to actually force other cultures to assume our way of living (it's agriculture, if you haven't figured out by now). So when I try to defer to other people living as they wish, it is not in an effort to be unnaturally perfect, just respectful.
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Tom,
ReplyDeleteI think your argument really breaks down on this point of not having one correct way to live. You say there is no one correct way to live, but then you say the way that our society/culture lives is not the correct way to live. Here is my argument: There are a finite number of people and a finite number of cultures in the world. Each person and culture more or less has his own way to live. Thus there are a finite number of ways to live. If you say some of these people are living wrongly, then by default the others are living rightly. If it is wrong to impose one's views on another then by default it is right not to impose one's views on another. I don't think you can escape this. Humans live by making judgements. Judgements can be as simple and personal as saying "now I will eat lunch" or as complex and universal as saying "homosexuality is acceptable." But we have to make judgements. And when we make judgements that are complex and universal we are in effect saying "this is the right way to live." And I don't think there's anything wrong with having a critical minimum to which all cultures must adhere--at any rate, you've implied many times in this blog that you think the same thing. Everytime you say there is something wrong with society or the culture or the church, you are saying that you think there is a contrary way of living which you think everyone should adhere to. And this sort of judgement is perfectly acceptable--it's the way humans live; it's inescapable; it's not merely an ego-centric judgement on the world (though it can become this). Rather, morality is an integral part of the human experience and every person knows implicitly that there are certain moral data that every person who lives should adhere to.
I think a big problem with your approach is that you take diversity to be that primary good. Diversity, it seems to me, is just a state of life. It's the way the world is. People are different. That's just a fact. Sure, we encourage people to take up different jobs, and it's good to have different viewpoints on things, and different cultures contribute valuable things to the human experience. But these are just tools. It doesn't seem to make sense to make diversity the goal. Those primitive cultures certainly didn't--in tribal society, conformity to the norms of the tribe was essential. Those who fell outside the critical minimum of tribal standards were ostracized. Apparently now-a-days we are more enlightened than these ancient people so we realize that we need to accept various--even conflicting--viewpoints. But this diversity (if sought at all) cannot be an end in itself. It must be only a step on the way to higher things. No one is fulfilled by sitting around and marvelling at how different we all are. Human beings want to be doing--we are always actively concerned with our world. We want to explore, learn, discover, fall in love, see beautiful things, make stuff, do things. Human beings want truth and beauty and goodness. These, it seems to me are real goods. If diversity helps us get there, fine. But mere different-ness doens't seem like much of a "good" to me.
Anyways, those are just some thoughts I had. I hope you are doing well with everything in your life. God bless.
Peace in Christ,
Mark Spencer
Well said, Mark.
ReplyDeleteI have only one judgement to make... and as a nearly 45-year-old-goat who for 44 years spelled it wrong... "Judgement" has only one 'e'! Judgment.
I don't know how many times I must've misspelled it, but it was like a piece of spinach sticking to the front tooth of my blatherings, that alas, no one ever pointed it out. And so therefore, like Jacob Marley bearing the weight from the chains of improper spelling, I wander the blogosphere seeking the reclamation of all who would judge "judgment" worthy of use.
Even Microsoft and Bill Gates renders its judgment upon "judgement" with their infernal squiggly-red-lines. And Merriam-Webster concurs. O' WOE to Jerusalem!
Somebody must've changed the original spelling and I never got the memo!
Tom's Uncle Dan
Man of peace and substantial free time.
Hey Mark,
ReplyDeleteThat was very well said. Your coolheaded, insightfullness is very persuasive. The only thing I can respond with is, as to the first paragraph about morality, in the statement "there is no one right way to live," my emphasis is on "one" more than "right." Of course, there are wrong ways and right ways (plural). But civilization only has room for one way, its way (and again, I'm talking about on the fundamental level of food production- that which sustains us as a civilization). I may judge as I wish, but that doesn't matter. Wrong ways are wrong simply because they don't work, evolutionarily speaking, and they will pass away because of their instability eventually (10000 years is an incredibly short period of time for a way of living to prove itself so unstable and to have its collapse so imminent). So I am using my reason to make a judgment about this particular way of living, judging it to be wrong. I am not able to judge similarly what is right because I have yet to experience any such way myself, and even if I will eventually find a "right" way, that will not be the only right way or the one right way. It will be one of many right ways. And that is my point.
Perhaps I am inclined to make diversity a primary good because it is so threatened by civilization. On the surface, it appears that civilization makes diversity more acceptable as we become more sophisticated and liberal. But this globalizing effect is just a melting pot, where diversity is boiled away in order to be able to move money around more efficiently. Perhaps when that threat is removed, I'll see diversity as less of a primary good. I don't know. And of course humans want more. I'll agree to that too. But we're looking in all the wrong places. You, of course, believe that the right place to look for more is an infinite God. I personally thing more is all around us in this finite world, but we've masked it all, silencing it, turning it all into products that we can buy and sell and kill and make into crap. Perhaps I'm looking in the wrong place too. But I'm certainly going to try and look.
I hope you are doing well, also.
Again, thanks for the insightful comment.