
On March 14th, 2011, Canada’s Minister of Immigration released the “Discover Canada” citizenship study guide for new immigrants, a 68-page document that laid out the rights and responsibilities of Canadian citizens.
But at the top of page nine, it said this:
In Canada, men and women are equal under the law. Canada’s openness and generosity do not extend to barbaric cultural practices that tolerate spousal abuse, “honour killings,” female genital mutilation, forced marriage or other gender-based violence.
Those guilty of these crimes are severely punished under Canada’s criminal laws.
And then-immigration critic, Justin Trudeau, wasn’t having it.
We accept that these acts are absolutely unacceptable. That’s not the debate. In casual conversation, I’d even use the word barbaric to describe female circumcision, for example, but in an official Government of Canada publication, there needs to be a little bit of an attempt at responsible neutrality.
In my article, The Israel/Palestine Integrity Test, I argued, without a hint of responsible neutrality, that values like equality under the law and opposition to forced marriage are the bedrock of the fairest, freest, most prosperous societies the world has ever known. And that we only run into trouble when we fail to live up to those values.
Siete wasn’t convinced.
Siete:
There's always been something vaguely racist about "western values". I say "vaguely racist" because there are interpretations of "western values" which are not racist at all. "Every man is equal" is obviously not racist.
But sometimes having "western values" allows you to get on your high horse and say that you are superior to other civilisations because you're just better. Some of that is racism in disguise.
It allows you to look at a country like China and instead of giving proper credit for being able to go from an basket case third world country (like North Korea today) to the greatest economy success story in recent times, you instead criticise it for not having "western values". Then, instead you might say "but I would rather not be like them". You can thumb your nose at all the achievements of the Eastern World because they didn't do it the Westerner's way.
Then you might look down on your noses at Muslim countries for their treatment of women. Conveniently forgetting that in the West, not only do the men treat women like shit, the women also treat men like shit.
The most racist thing about Western values are the presumption of universality. Some values are truly universal - the golden rule, and the taboo against stealing and killing. But some others are particular to westerners. Free speech, human rights, one man one vote. Not everybody subscribes to them, and not every society which turns its back on these values is doomed to fail. (many countries in Asia) Sometimes I see this holier than thou-ness applied to people who have moved on up in life in their own particular way. Which is really strange.
Steve QJ:
Then you might look down on your noses at Muslim countries for their treatment of women.
Yes, I do. "Looking down my nose" is actually something of an understatement here.
For all the many flaws of Western civilisation, women can get an education and drive a car, they can walk the streets without a male chaperone and won't get beaten to death for exposing their hair. Gay people can hold hands in public and get married. Nobody faces execution or jail for their religious beliefs. This is obviously "better." I feel zero shame or hesitance in acknowledging it.
And you describing pre-industrial China as a "basket case" sounds an awful lot like a value judgement to me. Ditto for North Korea. So you're fully aware that some countries/societies are better than others too, you're just reluctant to admit it in some cases because you've been led to believe it's "racist."
But the fact that some cultures/religions/systems of government are obviously better than others (where we define "better" as produces societies where the maximum number of people get to live their lives freely and equally), in no way suggests that we in the West are better people or that the West is perfect or that the people in those other countries deserve to die. The West is deeply flawed, largely because of the hypocrisy of consistently failing to live up to its values.
But I have zero time for the idea that it's "racist" or "holier than thou" to say that women and LGBT people should have rights and countries where they don't are bad.
Siete:
This is the reason why Confucian societies and Western societies talk past each other.
The biggest problem with the western conception of human rights is that it's a very one sided social contract. It only prescribes that people have rights, and it doesn't say that people have obligations to society. That is why late stage capitalism happens: because a few people have reaped the rewards and they don't feel like they have obligations' to society, and some of them go even further to say there's no such thing as society.
Whereas in many Asian societies, people have obligations as well as rights. People actually demand good behaviour from each other to a larger extent than they do in the West. And the societies that didn't have human rights are also gradually changing in that regard. East Asians demand of each other that they think before they speak, pipe down, smooth over conflicts. I've lived in America before I think that these things would benefit it considerably, but also it would be an extremely hard sell.
And looking at the level of inequality that you have in western societies today, it is a big big stretch to say that it's a place where the maximum number of people get to live their lives free and equally. This is not a very well thought-out defence of western values. In fact, I'm not sure you can say this is happening in spite of western values rather than because of western values, because that's like saying that the ideal is more real than the reality.
Even something like slavery could be couched as rights. Half of slavery is the defence of property rights. You have got to recognise that slavery as an institution lasted so long in the West because so much of it was compatible with western values.
You should learn your history about China and North Korea today before you say that China during the last days of Mao was not a basket case. It's not racist because I'm Chinese. It's more racist when you haven't learnt your history. You do not know that I'm actually referring to post-industrial periods of China (1970s) and North Korea (today). (In fact if you want to talk about pre-industrial China, my grandparents voted with their feet to leave pre-industrial China to move to Singapore but that's another story.)
And what a great way of missing the point: it's definitely not racist to say that China today is miles miles better than it was in 1976. In fact, it's such an uncontroversial statement that to say otherwise would be a little ignorant.
Fundamentalist Islam is problematic, but a sizeable proportion of Muslims allow women to drive and don't require women to cover up. It's a bit of a stretch for the western mind to contemplate, but some of the women are wearing hijabs for the some reason why some western women are dressing down: it's a tribal gown and also an expression of feminism. Because feminism can take many forms. There are many ways in which Muslim countries are moving ahead in this world. Indonesia and Bangladesh are progressive societies. You can condemn Islam all you want but many cities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE are making a lot of great progress. (Do you know what Dubai was like 50 years ago?). I don't equate Christianity with the Amishes, so why do people always equate Islam with the Taliban?
I wish I could say nicer things about Pakistan but now they're fighting India. But India is a rising country, and quite possibly a future great country. I can understand why the bosses of Microsoft and Google are Indians.
While I believe in human rights and gay rights, I don't believe that they are the only ways of running a society. Matt Healy made a ranty and sweary speech on stage when performing in Malaysia, condemning their LGBT record and he even managed to piss off the local LGBT community. Things work differently here: LGBT people do not have rights, but people still treat them with a level of civility that you wouldn't expect from westerners who don't respect LGBT rights. Even the LGBT people in Malaysia know that they may be repressed today, but it won't be forever because Malaysia is a society that has a capacity to grow and change.
As for women demanding equal rights, some of the changes are positive, but it's actually resulted in a world where men and women are barely talking to each other. Some people believe this is a wonderful world, I'm not one of those people.
I certainly don't believe that western values are the best. It's just a good way, amongst other good ways. In the last 50 years, western societies have maintained their standards or gone backwards. Many countries in Asia have moved forwards. That is not an indication that western systems are superior.
In fact I would say that at this point, Asian societies are superior because we have the ability to learn from the West and take the best of the West and incorporate it with the best of the East, whereas the West is failing to learn anything good from other cultures, including its own culture. (This ties in with the charge of racism). It talks a lot about all men being equal. It doesn't actually believe that its own culture is the equal of anybody else's culture.
So what I feel is that there is an insistence on the superiority of western values that doesn't really square with reality. That said, I don't really have a problem with you decrying what's being done to Palestine, under whatever justification or philosophy. They don't have human rights in China but people in China would also be outraged at Palestine because they know that Israel shouldn't be doing it to them: you don't really have to believe in human rights to know that it's wrong.
Steve QJ:
It only prescribes that people have rights, and it doesn't say that people have obligations to society.
I completely agree that people have obligations to society. But I will never agree, for example, that one of women's obligations is to cover their entire face, hair and body in public, or to forsake an education, or to marry a man who rapes her so as not to bring "shame" on her family (that's if someone doesn't "honour kill" her first).
And the claim that wearing the hijab (I think you mean burka) is in any way "feminist" is pure Stockholm Syndrome-esque blindness.
If a woman can walk around without the burka and suffer no consequences whatsoever, if there is not enormous social and cultural pressure on women—and only women—to cover themselves from head-to-toe, then yes, wearing a burka is a free choice and could be argued to be an expression of some feminist philosophy.
But if women risk beatings and imprisonment if they don’t wear one, if the cultural pressure is so great that they risk being disowned by their families and friends, then no, wearing one is obviously not a free choice. And any conversation about feminism is immediately nullified, because the entire point of feminism is changing societies where women do not have free choices.
I would probably wear a burka if these same pressures were exerted on men in the West. And not because I wanted to.
Again, I have never even hinted at the notion that Western societies are perfect. They are absolutely not. I've pointed out the hypocrisy inherent in the actions of Western societies vs their values countless times. So I don't know why you keep pointing to our failures to live up to our values as a problem with the values rather than a problem with the West.
Slavery, for example, was absolutely not compatible with Western and even American values. Even the founders acknowledged this. It persisted because of hypocrisy, inertia and, of course, racism. Again, a failure to live up to your values doesn't mean your values are wrong.
I love Asian cultures as found in Japan, South Korea and Vietnam, say (though these cultures certainly have their problems too), so I'm not disputing the idea that we could learn a great deal about collective responsibility and many other things from them.
I've spent a lot of time in Asia and would import lots of values and social norms from there if I could. Though, to be clear, Asian countries have imported lots of values from the West too, mostly to their benefit.
And to be even clearer, I didn't say it was racist to call China and North Korea basket cases. That would indeed be silly and ahistorical. I said that calling them basket cases was a clear value judgement on your part. As in, you think it's better not to be a basket case than to be a basket case and therefore better not to be like North Korea and pre-industrial China. For the record, so do I.
So in summary, societies that emphasise responsibilities as well as rights are better than societies that don't. Yes, agreed. Societies where people think before they speak are preferable to those where people don't. I would agree wholeheartedly here too, but I guess you could make arguments for and against more generally.
And in the same vein, societies where women have the same freedoms as men, societies where gay people can love who they want, societies where people are free to believe or disbelieve in whatever God they choose, are better than societies where these things aren't true. And while most of these haven't been fully achieved in the West, societies that aspire to these values are better than societies that aspire to their opposite.
It is not "racist" to admit this.
Western values have given us the fairest, freest, most prosperous societies that humanity has ever seen. Democracy, freedom of speech and religion, equality under the law, including for women and minorities, every good thing about our societies today, we owe to the degree to which we live up to these values.
Because what Trudeau failed to understand is that barbarism is the default state for humanity.
Despite our aspirations to equality under the law, homosexuality was widely criminalised across the West until around 40 years ago, and same-sex marriage is still illegal in several Western countries.
Go back in time 100 years and you’ll find black people hanging from trees while families that ostensibly believed “all men are created equal,” had picnics with their kids.
You only have to talk to the relatives of the women who died because they were denied medically necessary abortion care to see the power that religious dogma still exerts over women in the West today.
Our societies aren’t better than they were 100 years ago because we’re any less barbaric at our core, they aren’t better than Iran and North Korea because we’re superior people, our societies are better because we’ve built systems and laws that drag us, occasionally kicking and screaming, towards the best of our ideals, because we’ve institutionalised, to some degree, fairness and justice.
It is not racist to admit this, it is not racist to prefer this, it is certainly not racist to remind people who come to the West seeking opportunities that this is how the opportunities were created.
In fact, one the many reasons to uphold these values is that racism is only possible when we don’t.
I don't understand how anyone would believe that all cultures are equal to each other.
Siete appears to divide values into "universal" values versus "Western values" in a fairly arbitrary or idiosyncratic way. If Siete agrees strongly enough, it's a universal value which all of humankind should adopt; otherwise it's a "Western value" which would be racist to promote to other cultures.
OK, universal: "all men are equal, the golden rule, and the taboo against stealing and killing."
Not OK, racist: "free speech, human rights, one man one vote."
Siete describes no moral calculus for distinguishing "universal" versus "racist" values, other than their own opinion.
That is, Siete is not actually a dogmatic cultural relativist, disdaining any universal value which can be promoted without racism - but a very selective one, seemingly based on Siete's personal values and feelings, rather than on any articulatable principles.
However, there is a larger irony in Siete's framing:
S> "In the last 50 years, western societies have maintained their standards or gone backwards. Many countries in Asia have moved forwards. That is not an indication that western systems are superior."
What is the value yardstick used by Siete, by which to assess "forward" progress vs "backward" regression? Well, look at the examples Siete provides of progress in non-Western cultures. In every example Siete cites, the "progress" actually consists of adopting more Western values. For example "a sizeable proportion of Muslims allow women to drive and don't require women to cover up" is one of their examples of progress in the Islamic world - ie: intermittantely beginning to catch up to the West.
Or in regard to gay rights, the Western world has changed dramatically in the last 50 years rather than being static or moving backward, and in general most non-Western societies have lagged behind rather than leading the way. Some of the successes in this area consist of trying to be only a few decades behind the West rather than centuries. For example:
S> "Even the LGBT people in Malaysia know that they may be repressed today, but it won't be forever because Malaysia is a society that has a capacity to grow and change."
So in what direction are they hoping their society will grow and change? Basically, they hope in future decades to follow in the footsteps of the advances that Western societies have made in the last 50 years, in regard to acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality, etc.
So it's racist and offensive to consider western values in any sense "superior", but the examples of positive "progress" or "forward" movement consist of adopting more Western values.
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Let me clarify something. I can see why in the above, one might think *I* believe that "Western values" are superior in all cases, but that's not really my point. My point has been that Siete unconsciously seems to believe that "progress" points towards adoption of more Western values. Siete has adopted a very Western framing (albeit partaking more of some political subsets of the West than others) without seeming to show much awareness of it - even when attacking the West, it's done in the ways that some Westerners have modeled for Siete. Even the characterization of Western values as the universal pejorative "racist" comes mostly from the Western left.
Speaking for myself (rather than observing Siete), I believe that it's pretty nearly impossible to logically show that one set of cultural values is objectively better than another. I can say that some are more comfortable to me than others (eg: FGM personally appalls me, but that doesn't mean it's "objectively" wrong".
The best I can do is suggest some yardsticks which might have wider appeal, and then look as objectively as possible at which values have a real world tendency to improve societies by those yardsticks. For example, reasonable prosperity versus grinding poverty - a society whose values tend to produce the former may be preferable to one which tends to produce the latter, all things being equal (which they never are - so this must be multidimensional and consider tradeoffs).
Most cultural differences (or subcultural differences) involve differing tradeoffs rather than simply being good/bad. There are positives and negatives to culturally having high respect for elders, for example. Some societies will have certain benefits from doing so, while other societies have benefits from not deferring to elders; neither approach is all benefit with no downside.
Even a cultural practice like FGM, as much as I detest it from my "Western" values, likely has served as a socially stabilizing institution in some societies. Prohibiting it would potentially destabilize some survival-positive dynamics of a society which has practiced it for eons. This is for me, however, a relatively extreme example - most cultural practices will have less dramatic tradeoffs, and thus be more subject to discussion.
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S>"In fact I would say that at this point, Asian societies are superior because we have the ability to learn from the West and take the best of the West and incorporate it with the best of the East,"
Interesting how quick Siete is to assert "superiority" when they can frame it so that they come out on top, even if they would detest other societies for claiming superiority on some analogous rationale.
I think Siete is wrong about Western cultures not learning anything from others (at least until the recent concept of cultural appropriation being terrible). But I'm happy for Asian societies to have the option of selectively choosing the best from their own cultures and the West. If Asian cultures had been first to colonize the planet (which could have easily happened; some of them were ahead in much of history, and it just turned out that the exponential growth in technology happened at a time when they were not in the lead - though I believe they are regaining that lead), then the Europeans would likely have been in that position - choosing the best from their own culture and from an Asian world spanning culture.
Let me put it another way - why is it that Malaysians have the opportunity to choose the best from their own culture and "Western" cultures in your description of their superiority - rather than from their own culture mixed with Zulu culture, or Aztec culture, or Indian culture? Out of the tens of thousands of non-Malaysian cultures, why not pick and choose equally from all of them, if all are more or less equally valuable and successful?
Malaysians are quite capable of studying Arabic values and defining their future as a hybrid of traditional Malaysian values and Arabic values and Innuit values and Ibo values? Why do they find some cultural values more worthwhile to "borrow" from than others?
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I would likely agree with Siete that some recent developments in Western culture (largely along the lines of abandoning its own traditional values) are not worth adopting. So for example, a non-Western culture might want to adopt tolerance and acceptance of LGB people, without thereby buying into queer theory.
But I now have a genuine question of curiosity for Siete. I would love to hear which values they believe the West should be adopting from Asian cultures, in some specificity. I fully expect that there are some which I would agree with; I really do NOT think that Western values are always superior; learning from each other seems like the essence of wisdom. But I'd really like to hear Siete's take on that - from real curiosity, not as a trap.