blog #4

The article The Challnge of Cultural Relativism is completely true in the fact that each culture has its own customs and that their customs are “right.” This is shown perfectly through the experiment Darius had done. I think the theory of Cultural Relativism is totally true as well, and that not only do morals change as you go to different cultures, but also as you go through different time periods in the same culture. For example, slavery was once widely accepted a few hundred years ago. However, today it is looked down upon in our culture. The only problem I see with this theory being plausible in today’s world, or even in the future, is that people will always be trying to force their customs and morals onto others. This article reminds me a lot of how I was feeling when I read Things Fall Apart. Not in the fact that I thought their culture and customs were wrong, just that it was weird and different to what I was used to. For example, the kola nut custom was nothing I had ever heard of before, so it was a new thing for me to have learned. And how the Africans had a “forbidden forest” where they put twins and miscarriage babies and those that had done something to disgrace themselves, such as if someone hanged oneself. Within the novel, this is kind of like how the white man was towards the Africans way of life when the white men were introduced, and vice versa. The white men were shocked that Okwonko’s friends couldn’t even take him down after he hanged himself and that they had many gods. The Africans found it weird that the white men had “iron horses” and had only one god. In our society, Cultural Relativism is seen in the Muslim extremists. They are viewed as heroes in their own culture because they attack the “evil land” of America. Of course we see them as being terrorists and that their way of life is wrong because we’re the ones they are attacking. However, our government would step in even if it wasn’t us they were attacking, because we find it necessary to force our customs onto others because we are “right.” This tendency is probably what caused the terrorists to attack us in the first place. And this “forcing of one’s customs onto others” has been around forever, like when all the missionary work was being done years and years ago, and will always be around because it is human nature to want to be dominant over someone and to have them follow your ways.