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Good and bad is in the eye of the beholder and what you value. Is American culture (a loaded term because American culture is the product of numerous sub-cultu
by apoverton 9y ago
Good and bad is in the eye of the beholder and what you value.
Is American culture (a loaded term because American culture is the product of numerous sub-cultures) better than all other cultures because of our economic strength? If not, then what are the objective measures that define a "good" culture.
I'm very glad slavery doesn't exist, because I value equality and freedom. Yet still, I'd ask who is the authority that determines that one culture is better than another because they hold that value?
Europeans via too many systems to name here (e.g. colonizing much of the world, forcing religion on indigenous people, slavery, apartheid, etc.) imposed their cultural values on the world and then held them up as the best.
Ultimately, it's not right to conflate what you believe with what is objectively good. It all depends what your solving for (e.g. profit, equality, harmony, etc.)
- Brakenshire 9y agoFrankly, a world in which we are not confident enough to say that slavery is worse than freedom, is a dystopia. It's valid to talk about difficulties of analysis, fragmented values, fallacies, edge cases, caveats, caution etc, but we cannot and should not abdicate from judgment.
- icebraining 9y agoI'm not confident enough to say that slavery is objectively worse than freedom. I have no reasons that lead me to consider that an objective answer exists. I'm still completely opposed to slavery and willing to fight it, by force if necessary. Is that dystopic?
- kareemsabri 9y agoThat's called moral relativism. It does't get you very far, because it is a belief system with no values, and therefore nothing to aim at. There are some tools for objectively judging morality aka "good and bad". One is the principle of universality. So an outcome is moral if you can reasonably state that you would be equally happy to be on either side of the table. Slavery generally fails this test, since most people would prefer not to be slaves. Virtually everyone on either side of the slavery divide (slave/free) valued freedom, some of them just didn't value the freedom of other people.
- apoverton 9y agoI'm not saying I don't have beliefs, and sometimes feel that those beliefs are right compared to what other people think, but I try to recognize where things may be objective (like slavery) and subjective (like government spending). The tool you mentioned makes a lot of sense for issues that have a clear preference e.g. slavery or not, but I suspect it would show cracks if we start looking at more subjective issues (which I imagine dominate nowadays).
- stinkytaco 9y agoAs an interesting aside, this statement shows the massive impact Kant has had on modern thought. To the point that it's difficult to overestimate his impact. The principle of universality is a relatively modern phenomenon. For much of recorded history that was not the dominant value.[1] [1]: There's several good texts exploring how people may have thought at various times in history (because it's all speculation, of course), but one I enjoyed was A Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England.
- kareemsabri 9y agoVery true, stinkytaco
- echaozh 9y agoThe principle of universality was and is still dominant value in east Asia by the teaching of Confucius.
- stinkytaco 9y agoFair enough. I stand corrected. I should have specified "western thought".
- StephenMelon 9y agoThe capitalism system itself fails the universality test, because a person wouldn’t be equally happy to be on either side of a table with Jeff Bezos on one side and an unskilled immigrant on the other. Arguably slavery never went away, it’s just that the slavery franchise was disguised/rebranded and then extended as social mobility was slowly rolled back.