Culture, are some better than others?

[bullskitur]

My philosophy teacher argued that western culture was better because all cultures have stages and that western culture had reached more stages than other cultures. For example that hundred years ago western culture was roughly on the same stage middle eastern culture is on now. And since it had advanced it was better because advancement implies improvement. (I don't know if this was really his world view or if he was just getting us to debate)

Others say that you can't judge cultures as either good or bad because you are judging it from your cultures perspective and that other cultures might just as easily judge yours. Also cultures aren't measurable quantities.

What do you think?

[earth]

i think the second option. how can you judge a culture like that. and also, even if our culture had gone through more stages, it wouldnt mean it was better, just possibly more developed. i think cultures are different, none is good or bad, or better or worse. you'd be surprised what you can learn from a culture you think is worse or less advanced.

[krzych32]

I have an easy way to measure cultures. The one with a bigger stick wins.

[Ryan]

what I don't get is why people hold so dearly to any culture. People almost ALWAYS defy cultural change, and as such humans have ceased to evolve as a species, and now only evolve as a society. I'm personally looking at this situation you've proposed and thinking that all cultures are bad period. Unfortunately I live in one, but I'd like to think that I live beyond my cultural norms, and therefore defy the fact that I am forced to have culture at all.

[krzych32]

"and as such humans have ceased to evolve as a species"
that's not true........
" I'd like to think that I live beyond my cultural norms, and therefore defy the fact that I am forced to have culture at all. "
So would many people, but if you step back and look on your life you will see that you are not free of the ideas that were given to you. Unless you live in the woods or something.

[Ryan]

Please name one evolutionary advancement that has occurred for our species in the past 500 years, a time in which several species have evolved to compensate for the fact that humans stole their space, and several others have gone extinct due to their inability to evolve fast enough to our lack of evolving. (this isn't the point of the thread so lets move on)

and what ideas were given to me? Aside from manners, my parents refused to teach me ideologies because they thought it was best for me to figure out what I should think about on my own. While I enjoy the internet, and a bed, and electricity, and college, and other things that are common in my culture, I have gone many nights sleeping on dirt, in a field, with nothing but my clothes and a fire that I made. (again, not really the point of the thread, read below for the actual post)

But really, I wasn't say abolish culture - that's impossible, really I just think that people need to get over culture, b/c culture should change rapidly. Many people use their culture as an excuse to do nothing and not move along with the rest of society. But culture is something that needs to be refined. Which really is what culture comes from - cultivate. Culture should grow and evolve just like everything else in the world, and people need to not hold on to past culture, but instead embrace changing culture.

[lumorilla]

Culture should grow and evolve just like everything else in the world, and people need to not hold on to past culture, but instead embrace changing culture. [/quote]


Agreed, we shouldn't need to hold on, as in stubbornly or rigidly, but i think we should evolve on the grounds of it. For example, if Confucianism was altogether wiped out of the Chinese culture, then there is no more Chinese. I guess, sometimes we have to hold on steadfastly to our cultural beliefs, because in those beliefs are our roots. And without roots, no plant can live; without culture, no human can exceed his own limitations.


I think there is nothing as the best culture. I think it depends on the individual to accept and learn the best in every culture. Like how the Africans treasure the earth, or how the chinese respect the elderly... Dunno, haha, my thoughts aren't really well thought out...

[earth]

darn ryan is smart.

[krzych32]

Just going back to the evolution for a second, coz I don't want to leave it like that. Not every species is evolving at the same rate, evolution often goes thru cicles where a species evolves slowly for a very long time and then very fast for short periods of time.You are asking me to provide you with evidence for the evolution in the last 500 years, with is hard to do because its a shord period of time, but even in the last 500 years humans have gotten taller. Also, our immune systems evolve very rapidly right now, due to the fact that large part of our population lives in a highly populated area.

[Yokailo]

I agree with krzych (I'm not around here enough, should I call you differently?). We definitely still are evolving, not in such an apparent way, but without evolution every species would go extinct after a while, even one that manages to manipulate nature in such a way that it forces other species to evolve.

On the subject of culture.
I think, with our current technologies, we are coming in contact more and more with totally different cultures. As such, we start judging each other by our own rules and values: and I think this is a very bad thing. We should try to take a look at cultures unbiased, and while I realize this is very hard, it's not impossible.
Every culture is the result of people adjusting to their current needs, and if a culture doesn't fulfill those needs any more, it'll change to fit the new lifestyle.
So, no, there's no way to tell whether a culture is 'good' or 'bad', merely whether it fits the people it applies to.

[rialvestro]

Anyone who really thinks "my culture is better than someone elses" doesn't really know what the hell they're talking about or just want's to believe that as a way to cope with how bad their culture really is by believing it could be worse somewhere else.

The truth is that there are good and bad in all cultures. Canada has free health care which sounds much better than living in the U.S. till you realize they're years behind in medical technology.

I think I'd rather have medical advancements and have to pay for it then to get free medical care without the advancements. It's still bad either way though. I don't really trust any medical procedure that involves stabbing people especially if said procedure does not include any medication for pain. This to me is not an advancement, I see it as the same as 100s of years ago before we learned to sterilize our medical equipment. Just for me personally, I don't care if the blade is rusted or sterilized I'd rather have a shorter life span with my body in tact than a longer life span with people cutting me up like a thanksgiving turkey.

This being said, no culture is perfect. We have not and probably will never reach a point where any culture becomes so great that they can honestly call themselves better than anyone else. And if we did reach that point we still wouldn't be able to say it because if said culture was so great they'd be willing to share said greatness with the rest of the world. If we don't reach that point then said culture is just going to be seen as greedy bastards and the rest of the world will most likely invade it or destroy it then so long greatness.

And this is all because the human race is filled with greedy arrogant self centered bastards. So we'll have a perfect world wide culture when the world is no longer filled with greedy arrogant self centered bastards.

[tehincoreuptable]

I don't believe that any culture is necessarily better than any other, is one person to say that they are better than another? Or one people to say they are better than another? Is that not how genocides such as the Holocaust and Rwanda happen?

I do, however, believe that some cultures are more efficient at progressing than others. Western society vs. the middle east, for example. We have all these technologies that stem from Westernized society, we have developed further in terms of morals, ethics, racism, and gender equality. We aren't better than them, and they aren't better than us. We live different lives, that's all. Higher efficiency =/= superiority

[krzych32]

My society is better then others! and that's a fact

[lumorilla]

I was under the impression that a better culture would lead to people leading better lives, or in other words, happier lives. So seriously, higher efficiency=/= superiority???

Polls and researches have proved that people who lived in less-wealthy (i'm not about to say less priveleged, cause who knows what more they've learnt spiritually without the distractions of a wealthy material environment) are in fact, happier. Say, Bhutan or Nepal, people are poor but they are contented, far contented with people living in the city.

[Deleted]

I'm going to risk myself and say that I think that the western culture is possibly worse than other cultures (I live in a western culture and I couldn't imagine myself living in any other, so don't call me biased against western culture).

First I'm starting by defining how I will classify cultures. To avoid any unfair bias, I've decided that, for a culture to be good, it must follow certain ethical rules to a certain extent. These ethical rules can be any of the famous philosophical views (utilitarianism, deonthologism, etc). Basically, I'm trying to see which cultures are trying to make everybody live a better live.

Well, western culture gets crippled right at the beginning with its economy. Capitalism/Liberalism/Neo-liberalism/whatever promote extreme richness to some and extreme poorness to many (yes, I know I'm risking myself here too). This happens because in its most pure form (I say the most pure form, we don't live in a pure capitalism), companies/corporations have the freedom to treat its workers as slaves, and pay them as slaves.

Furthermore, even if parents somehow try to give their children good values to live by, practically nobody in western society applies them. We see people stealing, people lying, people treating other people like animals, and all of these behaviors are seen as ok by most people.

At last, everybody is self centered (almost everybody is in a stage 3 tribe). People only think of themselves, and ignore everybody else. I'm not saying people shouldn't think of themselves, but that people should also think of other people. In the other day, in IRC, we were talking about Michael Jackson's glove being bought for a million (or billion, not sure) dollars! Does anybody here think that was money well spent? Does anybody in here even think that the glove should have been sold? The glove should have been donated to a museum of arts (or something similar) and the money should mostly have been spent on something good for society (unless the person had to buy something he needed).

Yes, the western culture is the most technologically evolved culture, but as we have some amazingly good people, that do the greatest things in name of mankind, we have much more self centered people who only think of their own life and like to see people in worse conditions than them so they can boost their ego. I think morality is more important to define a good culture than anything else, and so, I can't define such an egoistic society as totally "good".

In this case, I think a better culture than the western one would be, for example, the culture of a few African tribes. Don't think so? They live in harsh situations, and so, they know they must help each other and ignore the "I", or else they wouldn't survive. They probably have better ethical ideas than most western people, so I think they might have a better culture.

At least these are my 2¢.

[tehincoreuptable]

Jun 28, 2010 9:09:46 GMT -5 lumorilla said:

I was under the impression that a better culture would lead to people leading better lives, or in other words, happier lives. So seriously, higher efficiency=/= superiority???

Yes. The Westernized culture -based on the fact of technological developments, advances in science, getting to complete understanding of everything- is more "efficient", as the point of life is to survive and diversify and advance. That said, just because we are more efficient at advancing we are not better than anyone because of our culture.

[coltonbrown]

I agree with the second opinion. Every culture will have their pros and cons. We have no right to judge other cultures.

[IMAGINARYphilosophy]

Over the last half century we have watched the effect that the rapid process of globalization through technology has had on human societies around the world. While this process can boast as a positive its erosion of cross-cultural ignorance leading to subjective and often unfounded claims of one culture being superior to another, it has by the same stroke brought about an unintended and unfortunate side-effect. Specifically, I mean the rather absurd contention that no culture is superior to any other culture when viewed comparatively.

While it may be said that all cultures have their good points and bad points, not all measures of cultural worth are equivalent. Example: Whether or not a culture promotes Freedom of Speech as fundamental right is vastly more significant than whether or not it promotes Universal Healthcare as a fundamental right.

Furthermore, it is possible to subjectively select criteria based on perceived merit without sacrificing the integrity of the conclusion. Conclusions such as these are inherently subjective. Example: I place merit in women having rights equivalent to those of men. This is a subjective judgment on my part, as not all cultures agree to this principle.

To say that it is not possible to determine if one culture is superior to another (or that no culture is perfect, thus all cultures are equivalent) is to forsake one's own intellectual and moral honesty. Despite the conditioning we receive to be respectful of cultures different from our own in this global age, we can and should still make subjective determinations based on the best available evidence as to which cultural model is most advantageous. To do otherwise is to become complacent and accept that the status quo is tolerable, thus abandoning any motivation toward progress.

[bullskitur]

Jun 29, 2010 15:14:36 GMT -5 IMAGINARYphilosophy said:

Over the last half century we have watched the effect that the rapid process of globalization through technology has had on human societies around the world. While this process can boast as a positive its erosion of cross-cultural ignorance leading to subjective and often unfounded claims of one culture being superior to another, it has by the same stroke brought about an unintended and unfortunate side-effect. Specifically, I mean the rather absurd contention that no culture is superior to any other culture when viewed comparatively.

While it may be said that all cultures have their good points and bad points, not all measures of cultural worth are equivalent. Example: Whether or not a culture promotes Freedom of Speech as fundamental right is vastly more significant than whether or not it promotes Universal Healthcare as a fundamental right.

Furthermore, it is possible to subjectively select criteria based on perceived merit without sacrificing the integrity of the conclusion. Conclusions such as these are inherently subjective. Example: I place merit in women having rights equivalent to those of men. This is a subjective judgment on my part, as not all cultures agree to this principle.

To say that it is not possible to determine if one culture is superior to another (or that no culture is perfect, thus all cultures are equivalent) is to forsake one's own intellectual and moral honesty. Despite the conditioning we receive to be respectful of cultures different from our own in this global age, we can and should still make subjective determinations based on the best available evidence as to which cultural model is most advantageous. To do otherwise is to become complacent and accept that the status quo is tolerable, thus abandoning any motivation toward progress.

Dude, that answer just blew my mind.

[oblecedemorsa]

Why does your philosophy argue that Western culture is better just because it has been through more stages? Stars that are supernova-ing have been through more stages than our sun, yet they are neither better nor worse than our sun.

I'd argue that Eastern culture is better because of its work ethic, even though it does have some drawbacks. Eastern culture is also superior because of its promotion of those who are skilled and only those who are skilled, its acceptance of all forms of creativity, etc.

To say that stages define quality is to say that all adults are smarter than all children. I'm not saying that age doesn't bring wisdom, but I know a few adults who are stupider than me, and several that are stupider than other kids I know. Age affects not quality. Environmental factors, surrounding cultures, etc. define cultures.