Soda, or pop? It's a simple question, with a seemingly simple answer: soda. Unless, of course, you live in western Pennsylvania. Then the answer is clearly pop. So, which is the true answer? If you had asked me an hour ago, I would've replied that there was no true answer, because the difference in vocabulary was simply a difference in culture. How can one culture be more right than the other? They can't, obviously. That part of my answer hasn't changed. However, after reading the excellent article "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" by James Rachels, I can no longer say that there is no truth, as easy as it that is to say. The soda vs. pop example is obviously not very dramatic, but there are indeed some aspects of life that are right and wrong. To illustrate this concept, let's look at Things Fall Apart, shall we?
While reading this book for the first time, I went through three "stages" of comprehending the text. The first stage was my initial reaction to everything. Okonkwo's multiple wives, his beating of them, the killing of twin babies, etc. It was general culture shock. After a while, I entered what I considered stage two of my reading, which was the "Cultural Relativism" phase. I watched as Okonkwo repeatedly beat his wives for not performing duties I found akin to those a slave would perform, and told myself, "I can't judge these actions, because they're acceptable within the culture they're surrounded by, and it's just different from mine, and that's okay." I watched Okonkwo kill the boy he had come to see as a son in order to cement his manhood, and thought "It's just part of a culture that isn't my own, that's why it seems wrong and I can't blame them for that." But then, I read Rachels' article. That led me to the third stage of Things Fall Apart.
As the article states, there are serious problems with the theory of Cultural Relativity. I believe the foremost among those problems is the false sense of security, if you will, that comes with the theory. If all we ever say is, "We're different, therefore there's no right or wrong here", we allow for wrong to exist when it should not. Things are wrong, as the article points out. Across the board, we as humans, in every society, have deemed murder and lying inherently wrong. But according to the Cultural Relativism theory, nothing can really be "wrong", because everything merely becomes "different", and people cannot be judged for their differences. Having been enlightened to the dangers of fully getting behind the theory of Cultural Relativism, I reexamined some aspects of Things Fall Apart. Certain things that bothered me before, such as leaving the twins in the forest to die, still upset me, but made more sense when I looked into the reasons behind such an act, instead of just saying "Well, it's different, so I don't have to worry about it." If the village believed that twins were a source of evil, doesn't it make sense that in order to protect their society, they would remove this threat? I believe it does. I also believe that under the protection of Cultural Relativity, I was allowing myself to forgive too easily the hand Okonkwo played in murdering Ikemefuna. I had been willing to accept that it wasn't something I could have done, but in a cultural that prized manliness, if Okonkwo needed to take part in killing his foster child, that's just a different culture and I can't judge. Well, as it turns out, I can judge, but not because the culture of the Igbo people is different from my own. I can judge Okonkwo for striking the fatal blow because he willingly participated in murder. I don't care where you're from or what your traditions are, as the article points out, killing people is not accepted by humanity as a whole. Okonkwo's voluntary part in the murder of Ikemefuna is not "different", it is wrong. And just as the article suggests we look past the Cultural Relativity theory to better understand each other, so too should we look past it to better understand literature.
Excellent.
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