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Virtually
every person throughout human history has been required
to look at different cultures of the world through his or
her own cultural paradigm. It is practically impossible
to separate one's cultural upbringing from an individual's
true identity to allow for a perfectly subjective outlook
on a culture different from one's own. Based on the assumption
that all cultures should be considered truly equal, no person
from one culture should have the right to judge the actions
or values of a person from a different culture. However,
there may be basic human rights that should not be violated
that could allow an individual to at least judge some of
the actions and/or values of an individual from another
culture.
Cultural
imperialism has been a factor in human civilization probably
since time began. Stronger cultures have either converted
or assimilated weaker cultures from the time when man still
roamed the earth in nomadic tribes. Darwin's theory of evolution
could probably applied to the human species' various cultures,
as "survival of the fittest" certainly seems to
describe the development of early cultures in particular.
Natural selection allowed those early tribes to either learn
and grow or fail to learn and die off as a culture. In the
beginning, it seems likely that the cultural traditions
that allowed human beings to survive in their environments
the best were probably the ones that were kept, regardless
of what other cultures thought of them or what traditions
those other cultures were practicing themselves. A low population
density probably kept most cultures from even coming into
contact with one another.
As
mankind developed and became more advanced, it is also likely
that the cultural traditions that did not necessarily mean
the difference between survival and death began to develop.
Different regions began to produce different cultures depending
upon their local conditions, their environment and the technologies
available to them. As populations increased and travel technologies
improved, cultures began to interact. The idea of ethnocentricity,
the belief that one's own cultural values, beliefs and traditions,
etc. are superior to others, would naturally have led people
to view other cultures as inferior, even though they most
likely were merely different. Obviously just being different
does not make a culture inferior just as it does not make
another culture superior.
It
is difficult to determine what aspects of human behavior
could be considered to be superior to others. It might be
helpful to start with what might seem to be a simple question:
What is the difference between right and wrong? But such
a seemingly simple question again comes back to the problem
of ethnocentricity and cultural bias - whose standards are
to be used to determine this apparently simple question?
Right or wrong even within a single culture is almost never
a purely black and white issue, and that issue only becomes
infinitely more complex when different cultures are compared.
There
are probably some cultural values that are common enough
among different societies that a judgment might be made
by one culture of another. The killing of innocent men,
women and children by whatever means and for whatever reason
would seem to be a universally deplored offense. After that,
the actions of a culture seem to move up the scale towards
a gray area rather than being a purely black and white,
right or wrong issue. Most people would agree that torture
and rape are wrong, yet both are tolerated in many cultures.
Again we must ask the question, whose values do we use to
judge a culture's actions and values?
The
right of an individual from one culture to judge the actions
of another culture is very much open to debate. Some basic
human rights would seem to be required of all cultures,
but in many that is not the case. Until such a day as the
world's population truly becomes one culture and each culture
is entirely assimilated into the other, an answer to the
question of who is to judge can probably never be answered.
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