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I am shocked by your comment, and I disagree with your implicit definition of cheating on multiple levels. Your miss-application of 'morality' in the US/China

I am shocked by your comment, and I disagree with your implicit definition of cheating on multiple levels. Your miss-application of 'morality' in the US/China example is blatant racism, and should not be tolerated. It's also completely false, and the worst kind of personal conjecture. Just because you have been socialized from a Judeo-Christian/Greek Moral traditione and Western does not give you the right or the authority to make such a judgment on another culture. I can't even respond cogently to your arguments on cheating my computer is smoking so hard.

nostrademons 13y ago
It's an observation, based on the personal experience of his brother. Just because people within a culture may not share judgments about it doesn't prevent a culture from being judged.
- btilly 13y ago
  Absolutely. I hate it when people try to tell me what thoughts I may or may not try to think.
btilly 13y ago
Please answer this. By what moral standard do I have no right to make moral judgements according to my own moral standards? By what right do you apply that moral standard to me when it is not my moral standard? People frequently misunderstand moral relativism. It does not properly mean that you can't make moral judgements. It just means that you can't expect people of other backgrounds to agree with those judgements. My favorite statement on cultural relativity comes from Charles J Napier, about the Indian custom of Sati, "Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." By British standards, the burning of widows alive was immoral. By Indian standards, failing to do so was immoral. There can be no meeting of minds on the moral question - only people acting as their morals compel them to. Now let's move to the comment that offended you. My brother has lived in various parts of Taiwan and China for the better part of two decades, interacting with people at all levels from uneducated peasants to the state council. He has had many things to say about Chinese people and culture, some positive, and some not. I regard his observations as observations, not racism. Let me repeat this observation. His observation is that the average Chinese person is much more likely to try to lie, steal, or take advantage of you than the average American. Not a question of right or wrong, just a fact of daily life in the two countries. But his observation of high Chinese officials - based on personal interaction - is that on the whole they sincerely are trying to make things better for everyone. His (admittedly less direct) observation of elites in the USA, particularly flavored by issues like CEO compensation, the financial crisis, and so on, is that they are out for themselves with little regard for doing what is right in any broader sense. Use what labels you want for the observation. I still find it interesting.
- guimarin 13y ago
  You can make moral judgments all you want, that is of course your capability. That doesn't absolve you of racism. Let me make an observation. The average Chinese person has much less real 'wealth' than the average American, and when you hold 'wealth' equal, American's are just as likely to lie, cheat and steal, because lying cheating and stealing have little to do with morality below a certain socio-economic level. You just can't generalize a result of poverty to an entire class of people, and then try and make a comparison to another class that doesn't live in poverty. And if we really want to get down to it. Average Americans have more of their basic needs fulfilled, and so less excuses for 'degraded morality' and yet it is they, and not the 'immoral chinese' who waste more food per capita when people in their own country and the world are starving, it is they who waste more water when over a 1 billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. It is they who through their political power and free-information ( certainly more than the average Chinese person ) choose to directly and indirectly support a government which subjugates not only millions of people directly around the world through its military empire, but also uses its preferential status as the world super-power to drive political and commercial entities in those same countries to commit terrible atrocities on their own people. All for the sake of maintaining the lifestyle of the Average American, who is so moral. and I'm sure if the chinese were afforded the same privileged position they would behave the same as the americans. But you do not recognize this, and feel it necessary to make a false equivalence and assert the moral superiority of one v the other. And it is this moral superiority complex that you seem to have, and which you seem to apply so liberally to Americans, but not Chinese who are evil and bad for stealing and lying and reacting to poverty, nevermind the people in poverty in the US who do the same thing, which makes your observation racist. As to your selection bias for evaluating elite morality. I would first indicate that the US has a much better and more vigilant news apparatus than China's. And that from a US perspective you haven't been 'informed' on all the bad things the chinese gov't does to its own people. Like how many people died as a direct result of flooding and displacement from the three gorges dam project, how many continue to die for lack of an EPA in beijing and other cities? All people are equally corrupt, regardless of nationality or socio-economic status ( above a certain level, below which 'morality' ceases to be relevant ). The reason why it appears the elite are more so is that their status as elite gives them much greater impact and reach than the average corrupt person. I don't have a problem with you giving an opinion or observation or even stating your moral position, I have a problem with the assumptions behind it, and the moral superiority you are displaying which I believe to be racist.

nostrademons 13y ago

It's an observation, based on the personal experience of his brother. Just because people within a culture may not share judgments about it doesn't prevent a culture from being judged.

btilly 13y ago
Absolutely. I hate it when people try to tell me what thoughts I may or may not try to think.

btilly 13y ago

Please answer this. By what moral standard do I have no right to make moral judgements according to my own moral standards? By what right do you apply that moral standard to me when it is not my moral standard? People frequently misunderstand moral relativism. It does not properly mean that you can't make moral judgements. It just means that you can't expect people of other backgrounds to agree with those judgements. My favorite statement on cultural relativity comes from Charles J Napier, about the Indian custom of Sati, "Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." By British standards, the burning of widows alive was immoral. By Indian standards, failing to do so was immoral. There can be no meeting of minds on the moral question - only people acting as their morals compel them to. Now let's move to the comment that offended you. My brother has lived in various parts of Taiwan and China for the better part of two decades, interacting with people at all levels from uneducated peasants to the state council. He has had many things to say about Chinese people and culture, some positive, and some not. I regard his observations as observations, not racism. Let me repeat this observation. His observation is that the average Chinese person is much more likely to try to lie, steal, or take advantage of you than the average American. Not a question of right or wrong, just a fact of daily life in the two countries. But his observation of high Chinese officials - based on personal interaction - is that on the whole they sincerely are trying to make things better for everyone. His (admittedly less direct) observation of elites in the USA, particularly flavored by issues like CEO compensation, the financial crisis, and so on, is that they are out for themselves with little regard for doing what is right in any broader sense. Use what labels you want for the observation. I still find it interesting.

guimarin 13y ago
You can make moral judgments all you want, that is of course your capability. That doesn't absolve you of racism. Let me make an observation. The average Chinese person has much less real 'wealth' than the average American, and when you hold 'wealth' equal, American's are just as likely to lie, cheat and steal, because lying cheating and stealing have little to do with morality below a certain socio-economic level. You just can't generalize a result of poverty to an entire class of people, and then try and make a comparison to another class that doesn't live in poverty. And if we really want to get down to it. Average Americans have more of their basic needs fulfilled, and so less excuses for 'degraded morality' and yet it is they, and not the 'immoral chinese' who waste more food per capita when people in their own country and the world are starving, it is they who waste more water when over a 1 billion people don't have access to clean drinking water. It is they who through their political power and free-information ( certainly more than the average Chinese person ) choose to directly and indirectly support a government which subjugates not only millions of people directly around the world through its military empire, but also uses its preferential status as the world super-power to drive political and commercial entities in those same countries to commit terrible atrocities on their own people. All for the sake of maintaining the lifestyle of the Average American, who is so moral. and I'm sure if the chinese were afforded the same privileged position they would behave the same as the americans. But you do not recognize this, and feel it necessary to make a false equivalence and assert the moral superiority of one v the other. And it is this moral superiority complex that you seem to have, and which you seem to apply so liberally to Americans, but not Chinese who are evil and bad for stealing and lying and reacting to poverty, nevermind the people in poverty in the US who do the same thing, which makes your observation racist. As to your selection bias for evaluating elite morality. I would first indicate that the US has a much better and more vigilant news apparatus than China's. And that from a US perspective you haven't been 'informed' on all the bad things the chinese gov't does to its own people. Like how many people died as a direct result of flooding and displacement from the three gorges dam project, how many continue to die for lack of an EPA in beijing and other cities? All people are equally corrupt, regardless of nationality or socio-economic status ( above a certain level, below which 'morality' ceases to be relevant ). The reason why it appears the elite are more so is that their status as elite gives them much greater impact and reach than the average corrupt person. I don't have a problem with you giving an opinion or observation or even stating your moral position, I have a problem with the assumptions behind it, and the moral superiority you are displaying which I believe to be racist.