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Matt's avatar

I don't understand how anyone would believe that all cultures are equal to each other.

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Passion guided by reason's avatar

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.

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