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Cultural Relativism, like so much of Post Modernism, falls apart when the logical consequences are taken to the extremes. Everything can be deconstructed, leav

Cultural Relativism, like so much of Post Modernism, falls apart when the logical consequences are taken to the extremes. Everything can be deconstructed, leaving nothing of meaning. “I ground him in the mill, down to subatomic particles, and there was not one atom of life! Not one particle of consciousness!” Good and Evil do not exist, or so the argument goes, only arbitrary constructs. And yet. I look at the Aztecs; their worship of death, and I question.

whythre 3y ago
Evil absolutely exists. Pretending it doesn’t is a device of people who have some vested interest in ignoring it, or people who are so limited by their own comfortable experience that they have never been confronted by it. I have been reading Team of Rivals, a deep dive book about Lincoln’s presidential cabinet during the civil war. It is amazing that many of the men write about how, after having personally witnessed slavery, they then vigorously oppose it. (Seward, for example, goes on a trip to the South for vacation and basically comes back hating slavery because it is so clearly wicked). I imagine human sacrifice, death camps, gulags, they all evoke similar responses. ‘Societal good can only be reached through mass slaughter of the undesirable’ is the subtext. That should be repulsive to any with a functional moral core. The amount of suffering enacted by the Aztecs as they killed their neighbors children… I can’t imagine.
- ElemenoPicuares 3y ago
  In the real world, evil is a morally lazy concept for people unwilling to consider that some abhorrent behavior that adults must be held accountable for also has root causes that we might have some culpability in. Pretending bad behavior happens in a vacuum shirks out duty as stewards for our society, pushing all responsibility of it onto the people who have to deal with the worst of it. Personal responsibility is the start, not the end of addressing the bad things that people do.
AnimalMuppet 3y ago
But the same people who refuse to see the difference between "civilizations that systematically conduct large-scale murder" and "civilizations that don't" will, if you disagree, call you a Nazi. But if the two are equivalent, then what's wrong with being a Nazi? Note well: I am not endorsing the Nazis. I am merely pointing out a bizarre aspect of cultural relativism and associated movements. Also note: They could make a case that the Spaniards were also in the "systematically conducting large-scale murder" category. But if that's the argument, then there's still a moral judgment to be made between civilizations.

whythre 3y ago

Evil absolutely exists. Pretending it doesn’t is a device of people who have some vested interest in ignoring it, or people who are so limited by their own comfortable experience that they have never been confronted by it. I have been reading Team of Rivals, a deep dive book about Lincoln’s presidential cabinet during the civil war. It is amazing that many of the men write about how, after having personally witnessed slavery, they then vigorously oppose it. (Seward, for example, goes on a trip to the South for vacation and basically comes back hating slavery because it is so clearly wicked). I imagine human sacrifice, death camps, gulags, they all evoke similar responses. ‘Societal good can only be reached through mass slaughter of the undesirable’ is the subtext. That should be repulsive to any with a functional moral core. The amount of suffering enacted by the Aztecs as they killed their neighbors children… I can’t imagine.

ElemenoPicuares 3y ago
In the real world, evil is a morally lazy concept for people unwilling to consider that some abhorrent behavior that adults must be held accountable for also has root causes that we might have some culpability in. Pretending bad behavior happens in a vacuum shirks out duty as stewards for our society, pushing all responsibility of it onto the people who have to deal with the worst of it. Personal responsibility is the start, not the end of addressing the bad things that people do.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago

But the same people who refuse to see the difference between "civilizations that systematically conduct large-scale murder" and "civilizations that don't" will, if you disagree, call you a Nazi. But if the two are equivalent, then what's wrong with being a Nazi? Note well: I am not endorsing the Nazis. I am merely pointing out a bizarre aspect of cultural relativism and associated movements. Also note: They could make a case that the Spaniards were also in the "systematically conducting large-scale murder" category. But if that's the argument, then there's still a moral judgment to be made between civilizations.