- 08 Oct 2020 16:25
#15125969
I also think it's hard for people to objectively judge other cultures, because such judgment will always be relative to your own and also your own values. That's why the answer is cultural pluralism, rather than multiculturalism.
Also, what do you mean by "classism" here? You mean the crass, often explicit class discrimination one finds in Chile or you mean any sort of class discrimination? Using the latter definition I think classism is also present in the US, is subtle and is often (but not always) confused with racism for some reason (to the point that many of the things Americans find to be racism are actually classism) but is still not nearly as bad as Chile's. Since both countries are neighbors things should not be too different in this regard there... Right?
Pants-of-dog wrote:The way I see cultural relativism is as follows:
Not all cultures are equal. This is true in a basic, factual sense. They are all different. And we can definitely judge them according to whatever criteria we want. For example, Chilean culture is more classist than Canadian culture.
So if we wanted to desperately believe in cultural equality, we would have to (as you say) pretend that a culture with problems is just as intrinsically worthy as one without problems. This may be true in some spiritual sense, but not in any practical way.
So I do not see cultural relativism as thinking all are equal. Instead, it is about how we judge and compare cultures. Using my example of classist Chilean culture, I judge this classism to be a problem because I have lived in Canada and seen how cultures can work without said classism. And here is the important point: I am judging one culture according to the culture I live in.
To me, cultural relativism is simply the acknowledgment that we judge other cultures by how they compare to our own. And this is why we always think ours is better. That seems the only way that all cultures are actually equal.
I also think it's hard for people to objectively judge other cultures, because such judgment will always be relative to your own and also your own values. That's why the answer is cultural pluralism, rather than multiculturalism.
Also, what do you mean by "classism" here? You mean the crass, often explicit class discrimination one finds in Chile or you mean any sort of class discrimination? Using the latter definition I think classism is also present in the US, is subtle and is often (but not always) confused with racism for some reason (to the point that many of the things Americans find to be racism are actually classism) but is still not nearly as bad as Chile's. Since both countries are neighbors things should not be too different in this regard there... Right?