Every person has a culture. It could be the internet, religion, ethnicity or anything that someone believes in. More often than not individuals use their beliefs as a base to judge other people and their way of life without taking time to understand them. Cultural relativism is the practice of refraining from judging and critiquing other people’s traditions without full knowledge of the reasons behind the culture (Oyowe, 2014). For example, in East Africa, sweet potatoes are a breakfast delicacy made mainly prepared through boiling and serving while in the rest of Africa, the meal is enjoyed as dinner and lunch. Also, the meal is served with stew or can be fried. Therefore, it is easy for someone from East Africa to feel disgusted by the fried sweet potatoes. Likewise, a person from other parts of Africa would easily get offended by the practice of boiling sweet potatoes for breakfast. Cultural relativism teaches against the judgment and advises on taking time to understand other people’s traditions. This element is what makes the concept of cultural relativism correct. Everybody’s beliefs should be understood based on their culture. Cultural relativism entails practicing tolerance and patience. The principle of cultural relativism allows no right or wrong, weak or strong, strange or normal, instead, it observes impartiality. The practice alone could prevent life-threatening activities such as terrorism. By practicing cultural relativism, the world would achieve harmony because no community would feel judged by the other, hence leading to the promotion of respect and coexistence among the parties involved. Therefore, this would end human conflicts and leave the world at peace. By constantly understanding the rapidly changing cultures around the world, cultural relativism allows human beings to co-exist without conflicts leading to economic growth. Additionally, by adopting to other people’s beliefs, people are able to increase their knowledge and learn new ways. Cultural relativism exhorts humans not to judge the practices of others because there is usually no wrong or right beliefs. However, this approach leads to the questioning of the role of morality, societies, and rules (Teira, 2021). For instance, some communities have lived in the forest for thousands of years and used trees as their source of living. An international organization feels that cutting trees is dangerous for the environment and should be stopped. However, this belief does not make the people’s culture wrong, or right. Notably, this is contradicting because while the organization could be right about preventing deforestation, the people have had their culture and beliefs for ages. Cultural relativism leaves no room for moral actions since there is no right or wrong. A society without moral obligations where everything is right paves way for a chaotic environment (Teira, 2021). Confusion would always be expected in such an environment due to predetermined knowledge and preconceived judgment among people. A society is made up of moral values. Therefore, it is impossible for it to exist in a world of cultural relativism. Upholding this practice is impossible because it thrives on optimism. This practice is hard to survive in a world with several different daily events. For instance, in a day, a woman might commit suicide because of a cheating husband while another woman celebrates their husband for marrying a new wife. Judging something as right or wrong is relative and can harm many innocent people. A good example is a slavery. The slave masters thought it was good to get cheap labor and increase their profit margins while the slaves and their families were hurt and felt that the actions were wrong.
References
Oyowe, O. A. (2014). An African Conception of Human Rights? Comments on the challenges of relativism. Human Rights Review , 15 (3), 329-347.
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Teira, D. (2021). On the limits of cultural relativism as a debiasing method. Philosophy of science .
