Is it still wrong if another culture says it is right? A teacher’s surprising discovery

_{Denyse O'Leary

December 3, 2011

Culture, Off Topic}

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Anderson recounts what happened when he tried to show students what can happen to women in a culture with no tradition of treating women as if they were fellow human beings with men:

The picture is horrific. Aisha’s beautiful eyes stare hauntingly back at you above the mangled hole that was once her nose. Some of my students could not even raise their eyes to look at it. I could see that many were experiencing deep emotions.

But I was not prepared for their reaction.

I had expected strong aversion; but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture.

They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.”

More.

Comments

I'd like to know how many of you who are outraged by the treatment that young woman received are ok with the two wars initiated by the Bush administration, when anyone with the least knowledge of history knows that when you start a war, killing and maiming like that woman received and worse will inevitably be visited on innocent people as a result? How many of you feel that it is in fact a moral duty to participate in such a war if called upon by "your country" to do so? I contend that morality in the real, messy world is seldom clear cut, and not in the final analysis, objective. What is regarded as absolute morality, justified by whatever sect of whatever religion you happen to hold allegiance to, changes over time. Many acts that were immoral one hundred and fifty years ago in a given religion are not so today (eg, women showing any part of their bodies below the neck or above their feet in public) and vice versa (eg, corporal punishment of children). Morality also varies according to religious belief and even by sect within a given religion, and even in some cases within a given sect itself (witness the major divide within the Episcopal church engendered by the ordination of an openly gay cleric recently). Morality, my friends, is a movable feast. Here's an interesting idea: there is actually no such thing as morally right and wrong. There is only what works and what doesn't work, given what you want to be, do, and have.Bruce David_{December 4, 2011
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PPS: Let me observe here on what happens in an increasingly radically secularised, individualistic, morally endarkened and benumbed culture that also improperly objectifies women.kairosfocus_{December 4, 2011
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GUN: Unfortunately your response just above inadvertently but aptly illustrates the point of my earlier comment; an instinctive empathetic response on intuitive identification with the other as a person in her own right, cut off into a chaos due to political correctness in the culture, leading to a patently absurd result. Pause for definition:
confused [k?n?fju?zd] adj 1. feeling or exhibiting an inability to understand; bewildered; perplexed 2. in a disordered state; mixed up; jumbled 3. (Social Welfare) lacking sufficient mental abilities for independent living, esp through old age confusedly [k?n?fju?z?dl? -?fju?zd-] adv confusedness n Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003
Now, in fact, evolutionary materialists -- as I cited above with Provine as an illustrative case -- imply, assume or outright state that morality is only subjective, and thus a matter of tastes or preferences inculcated through culture and relative thereto. This is exactly what appears in the students' response, as cited in the original post:
I had expected strong aversion; but that’s not what I got. Instead, they became confused. They seemed not to know what to think. They spoke timorously, afraid to make any moral judgment at all. They were unwilling to criticize any situation originating in a different culture. They said, “Well, we might not like it, but maybe over there it’s okay.”
The radical cultural relativism cutting off sound moral intuition is clear. Do I need to recast this cultural relativism as say a response to cases of slavery, or [near-]genocide [let's just use the 1914- Rape of Belgium, through Nietzschean thought of the German militarists, to get fresh thinking going . . . ], to get the point home? In short, we have here a case of patent reduction of the evolutionary materialist cultural relativism to absurdity. Do you see how a false doctrine of evolutionary materialism -- it is clearly self-refuting -- imposed by power centres in our civilisation has led to an inability to think coherently and clearly on morality? To confusion, in short? That problem of an amoral worldview imposition leading to radical relativism and onwards to chaos in thought, life and community is also just what Plato explicitly traced from evolutionary materialist philosophy, c. 400 BC, in his The Laws, Bk X. (Note, this was linked above -- did you follow the link and see what Plato had to say, before attempting a dismissive rebuttal on what looks a lot like the now standard talking point that I am incomprehensible so can be brushed aside?) Citing from the linked above:
[[The avant garde philosophers, teachers and artists c. 400 BC] say . . . The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them-of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity. After this fashion and in this manner the whole heaven has been created, and all that is in the heaven, as well as animals and all plants, and all the seasons come from these elements, not by the action of mind, as they say, or of any God, or from art, but as I was saying, by nature and chance only [--> note the evolutionary materialistic philosophy] . . . . [[T]hese people would say that the Gods exist not by nature, but by art, and by the laws of states, which are different in different places, according to the agreement of those who make them; and that the honourable is one thing by nature and another thing by law, and that the principles of justice have no existence at all in nature, but that mankind are always disputing about them and altering them; and that the alterations which are made by art and by law have no basis in nature, but are of authority for the moment and at the time at which they are made.- [[Relativism, too, is not new; complete with its radical amorality rooted in a worldview that has no foundational IS that can ground OUGHT. (Cf. here for Locke's views and sources on a very different base for grounding liberty as opposed to license and resulting anarchistic "every man does what is right in his own eyes" chaos leading to tyranny.)] These, my friends, are the sayings of wise men, poets and prose writers, which find a way into the minds of youth. They are told by them that the highest right is might [[ Evolutionary materialism leads to the promotion of amorality], and in this way the young fall into impieties, under the idea that the Gods are not such as the law bids them imagine; and hence arise factions [[Evolutionary materialism-motivated amorality "naturally" leads to continual contentions and power struggles; cf. dramatisation here], these philosophers inviting them to lead a true life according to nature, that is, to live in real dominion over others [[such amoral factions, if they gain power, "naturally" tend towards ruthless tyranny; here, too, Plato hints at the career of Alcibiades], and not in legal subjection to them . . .
The above shows precisely why the proper response on the other logically equivalent form of the Categorical Imperative was cut off through radical relativism. Namely, that another human being must be viewed and treated as an end in him-/her-self, not as a mere object or tool to be used to one's own ends. (Here, BTW, on the underlying case we see some of the saddening consequences of a shame/honour culture that objectifies women. And, we see an example of a moral premise that is transcultural and an illustration of the law of human nature that lies in us as the voice of conscience.) In short, here we see a cross-cultural problem with moral reasoning: (i) the islamists, who follow a patently defective and wrong law, and (ii) the students, who in today's relativistic, evolutionary materialism-dominated politically correct culture, have also been crippled from thinking clearly on moral issues. We need to address both, not use (i) to distract from the concern on (ii), which the original post highlighted. And, as for the attempt to dismiss the appeal to the inherently good Creator God as the grounds of morality -- the only credible IS that can ground ought, you need to be aware that it is precisely the clash between what core moral principles would inculcate, and what is being done that highlights what has gone wrong in this case. The right is not right because it is alleged Holy Writ or theocratic law -- the actual case in view for (i) -- but because there are underlying rational principles rooted in the inherent goodness of the Creator. (Cf. here the actual non-quotemined text of the current pope's Regensberg lecture.) Indeed, it is the incoherence and patent absurdity of wrongful behaviour rooted in a misunderstanding of God and what he wants, that allows us to see that something has gone wrong with a particular tradition and needs to be fixed through reformation. Kindly, listen again to Isaiah in that light:
Is 5: 18 Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes . . . 20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus built on just this point:
Matt 6: 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23 But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
See how powerfully such words cut across even the misuse of the name of God to put darkness for light? GEM of TKI PS: For a backgrounder on morality and ethics, I suggest a glance here. Do notice the context for the course session.kairosfocus_{December 4, 2011
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Thanks for posting the videos.bpragmatic_{December 4, 2011
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Nick; that song keeps turning up in weird places with you atheists;
What was Sam Harris doing on his Mac? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ABkDDRmI0c
further notes;
The Knock-Down Argument Against Atheist Sam Harris' moral landscape – William Lane Craig – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvDyLs_cReE Stephen Meyer - Morality Presupposes Theism (1 of 4) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSpdh1b0X_M Hitler & Darwin, pt. 2: Richard Weikart on Evolutionary Ethics - podcast - November 2011 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2011-11-30T15_33_04-08_00
The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth he is giving in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);
Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011 Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?) Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.html “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning...” CS Lewis – Mere Christianity "But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" - Charles Darwin - Letter To William Graham - July 3, 1881 “It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.” J. B. S. Haldane ["When I am dead," in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], Chatto and Windus: London, 1932, reprint, p.209.
Verse and Music:
Isaiah 6:3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." Oceanlab - Miracle http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZHGMbQhmIM
bornagain77_{December 4, 2011
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It is true 'evolution' does bring with it no accountability, and no hope of better conditions. God is the link from one man to all others. But today we see a world where many say there is no God. We also have thousands of religions, all declaring their own God. That brings with it other problems. And is just as destructive as as saying no God. The only bottom line is, all serving one God. That also means there would be no religions, but just away of life. Man has had his time to go his own way. We see the results. All types of governments have been tried, all types of religions have been tried and even the scientists way has been tried. The evidence tells us man does not have the ability to rule himself. Man rules man to his own injury. God has to step in, before man ruins the earth as well as himself. So our own actions demands this. So why should this be surprising that God said he would do that?MrDunsapy_{December 4, 2011
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Clever. In reply:
I Am Legend 2: Awakening - official Trailer [HD] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8qe6V_P6olA
NickMatzke_UD_{December 4, 2011
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The confused and/or intimidated reaction of students in the face of patent abuse, and the talking points that then come up CLEARLY show the impact of the deliberate and radical relativisation of moral judgements in our civilisation, often done in the name of science [i.e. evolutionary materialism presented as unquestionable fact sanctioned by the last institution deeply respected in our civilisation].
I couldn’t make heads or tails of most of your post. But I notice that according to the professor the students felt empathy towards the woman and were horrified by it – they could barely look at her. Perhaps they don’t feel that empathy and reason are grounds for morality. Who teaches that? “Evolutionary materialists”, by and large, claim that empathy and reason are grounds for morality. I’d be surprised if even the people that disfigured her didn’t feel empathy toward her. Unfortunately, the moral outrage that they themselves probably felt, generated by empathy, is probably dismissed by them as “warm fuzzies” . Let’s hope that the people who did this to her someday become “confused” - and actually start to THINK about what’s moral, instead of “knowing” what’s moral since it’s already been long “established” according to their religion by “the Creator”.goodusername_{December 4, 2011
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Sports scores???;
Theists - Infinity vs. Atheists - 0
verse and music
Proverbs 21:30 There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the LORD. Addison Road - Fight Another Day- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HsM2eFJO8J0
a song just for you Nick: the Atheists' theme song
Winning - a Song by Charlie Sheen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QS0q3mGPGg
bornagain77_{December 4, 2011
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ba77 -- I get why you post lists of links, sort of, but what's with the videos and songs you add on? You might as well add the sports scores to each post. Oh well, it's your time to waste I guess...NickMatzke_UD_{December 4, 2011
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This story appears to have struck a nerve with you. Is it safe to say that you are not on board with moral relativism and all choices leading to equal outcomes? I'll go ahead and go on the record as saying that what was done to this woman is flat out evil and any culture that would endorse such activity is reprobate, primitive, and inferior to a culture based on Christian values and ethics.wgbutler_{December 4, 2011
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notes:
Top Ten Reasons We Know the New Testament is True - Frank Turek - video - November 2011 (41:00 minute mark - Despite what is commonly believed, both Mother Teresa and Hitler fall short of the moral perfection required to meet God's objective moral code) http://saddleback.com/mc/m/5e22f/ Objective Morality - The Objections - Frank Turek - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5MWBsPf5pg
Poem and Song:
Ten Foot Tall and Bulletproof: Ten foot tall and bulletproof He lived by the bloody swords edge Ten foot tall and bulletproof with the manners of a sledge To take by force, to have it all Were his only creed and call Ten foot tall and bulletproof My Oh my how hard they fall No love for life, no love to be Save the love he had for he Ten foot tall and bulletproof My Oh my he could not see Any need for God, any need for Jesus Despite his mother's plea Survival of the fittest, and dog eat dog Or so he thought, thought he Thus, Ten foot tall and bulletproof Came to meet his fateful day With no clue of the fate For all of the hate That he had called his play Yes, Ten foot tall and bulletproof Without any slight delay Soon found that the cost For all that he had lost Was not in his strength to pay Yes, Ten foot tall and bulletproof Despite his mighty strength to prevail Soon found out without any slight doubt That he was in the mouth of hell! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ivh4Chvi0dL3UjBbqTknjFkn6hUvpTYaN0BZaVX0RUg/edit?hl=en_US Heather Williams – Hallelujah – Lyrics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX2uM0L3Y1A
bornagain77_{December 4, 2011
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Wow! How scary! This is what evolution can easily lead too. Without God, there is no foundation for morality and these kids are actually right - if there is no God. No one has any right to judge anyone else. In the ultimate sense, there can be no real right and wrong - only what people decide is right and wrong. And in that case, then others can decide something different and who is to judge?tjguy_{December 4, 2011
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Onlookers: Red herring, led away to a strawman caricature. The confused and/or intimidated reaction of students in the face of patent abuse, and the talking points that then come up CLEARLY show the impact of the deliberate and radical relativisation of moral judgements in our civilisation, often done in the name of ~~science~~ [i.e. evolutionary materialism presented as unquestionable fact sanctioned by the last institution deeply respected in our civilisation]. Instead, the reaction News has documented shows just how corrosive evolutionary materialism-driven amorality is for our civilisation. For, bad ideas have sobering consequences -- in this case, pointed out as long ago as 360 BC, by Plato, in The Laws, Bk X. In short, this sort of utter moral confusion is nothing new, and its roots -- as the sudden appearance of an apologist for just such materialism underscores -- are not exactly a secret. Let us cite Provine in his notorious Darwin Day keynote speech, in U Tenn, 1998; to further underscore the point:
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent . . . . The first 4 implications are so obvious to modern naturalistic evolutionists that I will spend little time defending them. Human free will, however, is another matter. Even evolutionists have trouble swallowing that implication. I will argue that humans are locally determined systems that make choices. They have, however, no free will . . .
If we have no free, responsible choice, we can have nothing more than programming by genes and memes or the like: nature and nurture pushing us around like clay. And so, the heart and mind are confused and benumbed, leading to the loss of confidence in ability to stand up in the face of any sufficiently strong theme pushed by sufficiently powerful manipulators. The confusion that can look in the face of a lovely young lady willfully and horribly disfigured and not see that this MUST be wrong, is itself a mark of widespread serious deception and confusion, as well as a subtext of politically incorrect intimidation such that those who know better usually know that to speak their minds in the face today's evil day and age of radical political correctness is most imprudent. This state of confusion is of course exactly what is being exploited to create and promote the notion that, say, the definition, durability and importance of marriage are subjects for manipulation by clever rhetoric, as though there are not serious and patently deleterious consequences that stem from playing around with so foundational an institution in a civilisation. (For those who came in late, I just made an allusion to the Kantian Categorical Imperative, as a useful test for evil: if a rule of action were to spread far and wide in society, what would its consequences be? If destructive, then it is wrong. Cf. for instance how, if lying were to become the norm, communication would break down, destroying society in a chaos of mistrust and broken promises. [Cf discussion here, which ties the ethics of the CI to sustainability going one way, and to the roots of the golden rule the other way.]) Similarly, that state of moral confusion and intimidation has been exploited to create the patently self-refuting view that there is indeed a moral absolute: thou shalt not judge morally in ways that cut across the politically correct agendas that promote certain classes, views, behaviours etc as sacrosanct -- especially if you are a member of one of the designated scapegoat classes. On pain of being hounded by a hornet's nest of vicious attack, and/or subjected to the politics of personal destruction. (As just became quite evident in the US's Republican Party primary races.) And, that is the underlying reason why the students found it so hard to make (or in some cases, doubtless, to express) a cross-cultural judgement on what should have been patent: nothing can morally justify disfiguring abuse of a young miss, just as nothing can justify a case where a young miss is blamed for being raped and gaoled, being subject to pardon and release on the condition of marrying the rapist. At least, it would have been patent, absent such conditioning and background messages on the groups not to be challenged on pain of serious consequences for being politically incorrect. But, the prudent man keeps quiet in an evil day. The one who speaks out in the teeth of the agendas of the power brokers invites vicious attack. (As will predictably happen to me in the anti-UD hate sites for this post; I cannot forget how one of the first vicious personal attacks against the undersigned came in response to a post elsewhere on the horrific consequences of Web porn, including how it is reportedly implicated in over half of current divorces.) And, we have a massive promotion of an inescapably amoral worldview, in the name of that which is so often held to be the gold standard of fact and truth and logic, "science." (which is being ideologised by various politically correct agendas, precisely because it is seen as the arbiter of truth and right). That old, "imprudent" prophet reportedly pushed in a hollow log and sawn to death for speaking out inconveniently, Isaiah, has our civilisation in its current state pegged:
Is 5: 18 Woe to those who draw sin along with cords of deceit, and wickedness as with cart ropes . . . 20 Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. 21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight.
A perfect and bitter storm is brewing, and we are in for rough seas ahead. But, given that we were warned by Isaiah, Amos and Plato etc thousands of years ago, we can hardly say we were not warned. But, "whose report will we believe [in good time to act wisely] . . . " GEM of TKIkairosfocus_{December 4, 2011
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And here I thought I was going to be accused of defending relativism...NickMatzke_UD_{December 3, 2011
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And of course Nick Matzke is the epitome of objectivity himself. He would never have anything invested in believing that a society can maintain a moral standard without religion.tragic mishap_{December 3, 2011
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LOL -- this confirms that this guy wasn't just some random philosopher teacher, going along through his day, who was then shocked and surprised to discover that his students were all floppy relativists:
Dr. Stephen L. Anderson teaches at A.B.Lucas S.S. in District 11, Thames Valley. In 2010, he completed his PhD thesis on the Character Education movement
It's clear that someone who got a Ph.D. in 2010 must have been studying the Character Education curricula for years before that, and had undoubtedly developed some detailed opinions on it. And that's all well and good, but don't try to tell me that we've got raw unfiltered observation from the field with his observations on his class here. For all we know, students were just arguing with him for the hell of it, precisely because the students sniffed out that the teacher was more than usually opinionated on this topic, and arguing about things for the hell of it is what you do in senior philosophy class. Especially if you have a few default contrarians, which you always will in such a class (full disclosure: I was one).NickMatzke_UD_{December 3, 2011
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"The teacher even tells us precisely what the students said, which was that the violence may have been acceptable in their culture and therefore ok."
Yeah, but I can imagine myself saying such a thing, simply as an anthropological-like comment explaining why another culture exhibits such behavior and considers it OK, without it being intended in any way as an *endorsement* of such behavior. The odds of high-schoolers being able to successfully convey that kind of nuance, especially to a teacher who also does not show much aptitude for nuance, are somewhat low.NickMatzke_UD_{December 3, 2011
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Your suspicion is hypothetically possible. People often misinterpret the words of others because of a predetermined grid they've constructed for themselves. That said, there is no evidence for your accusation in this case. Based on the teacher's words - which is all we have to work with here - it was actually the opposite. The teacher expected one reaction and got another. The teacher even tells us precisely what the students said, which was that the violence may have been acceptable in their culture and therefore ok.APM_{December 3, 2011
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I suspect this essay is telling us more about the teacher's preconceptions than the students'. The teacher looks like they came into this with a very strong "relativism is taking over our culture, multiculturalism education is the problem!" narrative already predefined and ready-to-go. Confront some innocent high-school students with some emotionally-fraught horror, get confused reactions along the lines of "why would anyone do this?", and a teacher with a preexisting strong ideological narrative will interpret it accordingly.NickMatzke_UD_{December 3, 2011
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Very nice article Ms. O'Leary!bornagain77_{December 3, 2011
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