The crisis of western civilization

[dr_mabeuse]

Just to put in a word for where we are today, I'd like to point out that the Victorian Era, which was probably the apogee of moral certainty and clarity for Western European moral values (i.e. Truth, Beauty, Goodness), was also the era of colonialism and enslavement of non-western European peoples, who had their very humanity denied and who were systematically denigrated and exterminated for just that reason -- that they didn't share Western moral values.

As late as the 1960's, the Australian government was forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families and sending them to live in state run homes to teach them to be "white". What was done to the Amerindians in the name of moral superiority hardly needs be mentioned, or African Americans, Chinese, or Indians. All because we didn't understand moral and cultural relativism.

So whatever you may say about moral relativism, it's at least enabled us to see the people we share the globe with as human beings, something we weren't able to do 200 years ago in the era of Capital T Truth, and something many of us still have a very hard time admitting. We no longer countenance genocide as something natural and laudible. We no longer look at those who are different from us as natural enemies. Or at least we shouldn't, if we had fucking half a brain.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

DOC

Actually it was the 16th-18th Centuries when colonialism was everyone's primary foreign policy. But even this is not correct. Colonialism and enslavement goes back as far as anyone can trace the records. It existed in Africa from the time of the pharoahs. Everyone did it.

 

[amicus]

Two usually unspoken premises to add here:

First, there is an aura of intellectual superiority, righteous in nature, by those moral relativists who proclaim to know nothing and make no firm decisions on anything and claim that as a virtue.

However, that inability to make a firm decision, to act with absolute certainty, is not congruent with the actual manner in which the human mind functions. Rather than a firm step along a pathway because one is 'certain' that the ground will not suddenly turn to ice cream, our moral relativist falters in his walk, fearful of putting a foot forward.

The second premise is more abstract, but also, never acknowledged by our intellectual apologists. That being the assumption that all truth exists in the mind and that we have only to discover it.

In other words, mankind should have just thought and he would have known that rats carry fleas which carry Bubonic Plague, which ain't good for people.

The point being that man learns the hard way, through observing reality and then following the dictates provided. It seems, to our relativistic intelligentsia, that man was really stupid to urinate upstream from his drinking water, but then, being tabula rasa, we have to use our senses to learn and then conceptualize that learning.

Although there is a school of thought who maintain the Egyptians did not use slave labor to build the Pyramids, most scholars assume they did. The Romans however, apparently never thought twice about using slave labor to build their monuments, knowing the could exploit an inferior species to do their dirty work.

Knowledge, absolute knowledge, must be gained a sensory perception at a time, compared to the other senses and reality and then abstracted, collated and added to similar bits of absolute knowledge which the mind happily accepts and files away for further reference.

Those who claim one cannot know, effectively destroy the function of the mind by filling it with uncertainty and doubt and thus are relegated to the backwaters of the undecisive and deserve to be stay at home wives and servants.

Amicus...

 

[Pure]

to doc

those are good points about the ages of 'moral certainty' being a bit dangerous for the darker folks, non-xians, etc.

conversely, rox has, in hundreds of words failed to give an example of "moral relativism" or stances of "we never know the truth of moral judgements" leading to propagation of a major evil.

it seems she would have us believe that Churchill and Roosevelt decided NOT to bomb the RR tracks leading to Auschwitz and other extermination facilities because they were sitting there, saying to themselves, "we're unsure if killing jews is wrong; after all, everything's relative, and the Germans just have a different point of view."

here's another nice example, the SS St Louis, a shipful of jews, turned away by the US gov in 1939. would she say roosevelt was uncertain if sending away desperate refugees is morally wrong? was he thinking "the German gov wants them turned away, and after all everthing is relative, so why not?"

wiki on 'voyage of the damned' : the story told of the SS St. Louis, which departed from Hamburg, Germany, carrying 937 Jews from Germany to Havana, Cuba, in 1939. By this time, the Jews had suffered the rise of anti-Semitism and realised that this might be their last chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers who gradually become aware that their passage has been an exercise in propaganda and that they were never intended to disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be used as examples before the world, the point illustrated by a comment made by a Nazi official who says that when the whole world has refused to accept them as refugees, no country can blame Germany for the fate of the Jews
The government of Cuba refuses entry to the passengers, and as the liner waits near the Florida coastline, they learn that the United States has also rejected them. They have no choice but to return to Europe.

likewise she'd likely have us believe that the US doesn't do much to stop the killing in sudan and starvation in darfur, because western leaders are saying "we're unsure if this is evil.' rather than 'we need Sudanese oil, so we shut up.'

the spiel about 'moral decay', 'relativism' and 'nihilism' is mostly far right crap with various not so hidden agendas, such as making birth control less accessible to teens.

 

[amicus]

What a complete and total load of odorous crap.

Jews and other morally firm minded Germans left the Fatherland in the mid 30's, seeing with absolute certainty the writing on the wall put there by the moral relativists who claimed superiority by enslaving those less able to think or defend themselves.

Those who did have the moral certainty to identify the evil about to emerge, also had the courage to uproot their entire family, give up their homeland and all their possessions and flee to the free world of the West.

They also incurred disfavor by warning the world of what was in store if the National Socialists were permitted to re-arm and expand.

Nobody listened. The French reinforced a defensive line from the days of WW1, the Belgians kept making pottery and the English attempt to appease mine fuerer and the Americans wanted nothing to do with European conflicts.

American intellectuals, cozying up to their socialist buddies in Russia, began plotting and planning for a socialist America and lobbied for support to the USSR.

Since moral relativism, subjective ethics, works any way you want it to, idiots like the puerile one can advocate intervention to save the Jews and out of the other side of their mouths, claim there is no moral imperative to invade anyone anywhere at any time for any reason.

Then the audacity to chide the free world for not invading modern Africa, tossing out the Islamic terrorists and feeding the people of Darfur and Sudan.

The United States of America provides more food and medical aid to the people of Afican than all the other nations in the world combined and now you want us to invade African and bring democracy to those impoverished and oppressed nations?

We'll get around to it, I hope the Democrats get in, draft you and send you in the front lines to Africa. Serve you right.

Amicus...

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

those are good points about the ages of 'moral certainty' being a bit dangerous for the darker folks, non-xians, etc.

conversely, rox has, in hundreds of words failed to give an example of "moral relativism" or stances of "we never know the truth of moral judgements" leading to propagation of a major evil.

it seems she would have us believe that Churchill and Roosevelt decided NOT to bomb the RR tracks leading to Auschwitz and other extermination facilities because they were sitting there, saying to themselves, "we're unsure if killing jews is wrong; after all, everything's relative, and the Germans just have a different point of view."

here's another nice example, the SS St Louis, a shipful of jews, turned away by the US gov in 1939. would she say roosevelt was uncertain if sending away desperate refugees is morally wrong? was he thinking "the German gov wants them turned away, and after all everthing is relative, so why not?"

wiki on 'voyage of the damned' : the story told of the SS St. Louis, which departed from Hamburg, Germany, carrying 937 Jews from Germany to Havana, Cuba, in 1939. By this time, the Jews had suffered the rise of anti-Semitism and realised that this might be their last chance to escape. The film details the emotional journey of the passengers who gradually become aware that their passage has been an exercise in propaganda and that they were never intended to disembark in Cuba. Rather, they were to be used as examples before the world, the point illustrated by a comment made by a Nazi official who says that when the whole world has refused to accept them as refugees, no country can blame Germany for the fate of the Jews
The government of Cuba refuses entry to the passengers, and as the liner waits near the Florida coastline, they learn that the United States has also rejected them. They have no choice but to return to Europe.

likewise she'd likely have us believe that the US doesn't do much to stop the killing in sudan and starvation in darfur, because western leaders are saying "we're unsure if this is evil.' rather than 'we need Sudanese oil, so we shut up.'

the spiel about 'moral decay', 'relativism' and 'nihilism' is mostly far right crap with various not so hidden agendas, such as making birth control less accessible to teens.

Actually, those two examples you cite indeed contain elements of the kind of rot that concerns me. I don't know but I imagine that the effete, "high-brow" State Department crowd back in 1939 weren't all that different from today's crowd, and probably had all kinds of good, cynical, realpolitik reasons for excluding the St. Louis, many of them founded in the kind of "who's to say what is right and wrong?" I'm discussing. The same kind of cynical moral rot plays into the crime against humanity that is the UN's (non)response to Darfur.

IOW, there are dangers in this brand of relativism. You want to insist that the absolutists are a greater danger. Historically they clearly have been, because this other thing is a relatively new thing. But why quibble? I say they're both dangerous and bad. I make the case for an alternative fairly succinctly in my most recent post here.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Just to put in a word for where we are today, I'd like to point out that the Victorian Era, which was probably the apogee of moral certainty and clarity for Western European moral values (i.e. Truth, Beauty, Goodness), was also the era of colonialism and enslavement of non-western European peoples, who had their very humanity denied and who were systematically denigrated and exterminated for just that reason -- that they didn't share Western moral values.

As late as the 1960's, the Australian government was forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families and sending them to live in state run homes to teach them to be "white". What was done to the Amerindians in the name of moral superiority hardly needs be mentioned, or African Americans, Chinese, or Indians. All because we didn't understand moral and cultural relativism.

So whatever you may say about moral relativism, it's at least enabled us to see the people we share the globe with as human beings, something we weren't able to do 200 years ago in the era of Capital T Truth, and something many of us still have a very hard time admitting. We no longer countenance genocide as something natural and laudible. We no longer look at those who are different from us as natural enemies. Or at least we shouldn't, if we had fucking half a brain.

DOC

Actually it was the 16th-18th Centuries when colonialism was everyone's primary foreign policy. But even this is not correct. Colonialism and enslavement goes back as far as anyone can trace the records. It existed in Africa from the time of the pharoahs. Everyone did it.

Indeed. And toward the end of that long period of human history, on the threshold of modernity, the Enlightenment promulgated a set of principles that made those traditional practices morally untenable. That it takes a while for those principle to become ingrained, that the old viewpoints held on for a while, should not surprise, and does not diminish the superiority of those Enlightenment principles.

 

[3113]

asserting that the standard of value is that which is good for human life is a pretty doggoned valid statement. If that itself is "relativism" then I don't see that the term has any real meaning.

I didn't say that was relativism. I said that relativism was a fact. Morals are different in different places and between different people. There is no single agreed on morality. Period. There's a major misunderstanding going on here, Rox. You are taking the word relativism and chauvinistically defining it, as Pure said, as limp-wristed lefties who say, "Now, we can't interfere with their culture...let them slaughter all those people....." i.e., you're saying that relativism IS a value system.

That's not how I define it. To me, relativism is NOT a moral position, or anything to do with conscience, or those feelings we have that us act in certain ways toward each other. It is simply a fact that people may or may not use when they decide to act or not.

But, Okay. Fine. Let's, for the moment, define it your way, with your bias. I can see where such people might worry you. But what's absurd and bizarre about this fear of yours is that you seem to think that this "do nothing" belief system is spreading like the plague and everyone is going to let millions of people be slaughtered because they don't want to interfere with the murder's "cultural values."

This is ridiculous in sooo many ways. Let's start with this: Do you LIVE in this world? The FACTS (and I really, really wish you would pay attention to facts) show that people are FAR more likely to go for absolute morals and act badly on THOSE. They will follow leaders who say, "Jews are evil, kill them!" They will watch news shows that have a clear bias. They want absolute good to believe in and absolute evil to believe in; people are ultimately lazy, and it's far easier and less work to have a god and a devil and a belief that everything you do is good and everything those you don't like do is evil, then try and see the world from another person's perspective. Relativism--even as YOU define it--holds very little attraction for most people. Which is why most people can say, "Those Jews are evil; take away their rights, imprison them, kill them," rather than, "Those people have a different culture than I do; so long as they're not trying to hurt me and mine, I should try to respect them and live and let live."

Ultimately, all I'm saying and all others are saying is that you're being inherently absurd if you're trying to prove to us that relativism and nihilism should concern us because they and they alone are going to perpetrate evil in our "modern" world. The whole of human history up to and including the present says you're wrong. Totally and completely wrong. If you're worrying about relativism and nihilism making people inactive, you can put your mind at rest. Like evolution, everyone want to ignore relativism (i.e. the fact that morals are relative) and only certain teens (as always) want to be nihilists.

As the last 20 years prove, you're far more in danger of evangelicals and neo-cons and their absolute morals dictating your life than of what you call "relativists" letting someone be mean to you because it would be wrong to interfere with their culture.

 

[CharleyH]

You have a beautiful idealistic vision. True, by human standards there can be no civilization without humans to define it. Humans are, in fact, only distinguished by their desire. No other animal has desire.

 

[amicus]

You fire off a shotgun blast, scattergun, if you will, to make and support your point, which makes it difficult to discuss and/or refute, as you have already made your case and proved it to your satisfaction.

Morals are different in different places and between different people. There is no single agreed on morality. Period.

What world do you live in? To present you with your own statement; if anything is evident, it is that basic morals and ethics are far more similar at all times and places in history than they are dissimilar.

If you are not open to even thinking about the issue, then no discussion is possible, but even you should acknowledge that self interest in preserving ones own life, is a moral virtue and an absolute that is shared by all men at all times.

Thus, life becomes the primary value, virtue, ethic and moral foundation for all other ethical considerations.

This argument used to be confined to philosophical circles and was basically an attempt to replace faith, following Darwin's discoveries concerning evolution, which challenged the historical imperative of divine creation, with a logical and rational system of values.

There are entire schools of philosophy dedicated to promoting a rational, logical foundation for human actions, e.g., ethics and morals. There are also entire schools devoted to promoting that all moral judgments are subjective and relative.

This argument is well over a hundred years old.

Following the atrocities of the Germans and the Russians and the Japanese and the horrific discovery of atomic weapons, the entire philosophical world went into a tizzy of confusion concerning the fear of another dictatorial realm, such as Stalin and Hitler, and the misuse of atomic energy in the form of weapons.

Atomic scientists were quick to moan, 'What hath God Wrought?!", and promoted that some 'absolute knowledge', was too dangerous for men to possess.

This trickled down to the pop philosophy realm and transferred from the physical sciences to pop psychology and thus has arrived at the current confused state of affairs.

It is further confused by the contemporary moral dilemma over the justification of taking an innocent human life for no cause, i.e., abortion, which brings into conflict opposing view points of choice, concerning one's own desires.

It is the ambivalence, the uncertainty as to how one forms moral imperatives, the relativistic and subjective claim that prevents this current generation from evening knowing how to discuss that which is right, moral and good, and that which is wrong, immoral, evil and bad.

In the eyes of the relativist, there is no distinction between good and evil, they are simply facets of individual preference.

That is why some say, and I agree, there is great danger for all of humanity, in the acceptance of moral relativism as a working philosophy. The viciousness of those who object to inquiries concerning moral absolutism is evidence of the seriousness of this issue, if nothing else.

Amicus...

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

AMICUS

Youre wasting your breath. When their socialist masters take over the country they'll be snatched up and shot, then they'll get it.

 

[Pure]

question for amicus

dear ami,


you are the perennial fighter for truth and spokesperson for rigorous morality; please tell what the dr's answer should be: one approved by you, and objectively correct.

let 'objective virtue theory' address something simple and modern:

lucid, composed, dying man in great pain: "Will you give me a lethal drug cocktail to drink?"

virtuous physician: [[ yes, no, maybe, ask me later]]

---

JBJ-- your answer too, please!!

 

[CharleyH]

In ami's response - consider mine.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

My fave amateur philosopher friend adds this:

"But arguing against the skeptic (to me the moral relativist is a strain of skeptic) does require a shift of focus to the unreasonability of the skeptic's position in light of basic nature of the subject. (W)hile his job is purely destructive, he builds no credibility that he has any answers himself based on the slightest promise of rational guidance. The sooner the wider audience recognizes the skepticism as a non-starter of a philosophical position, the sooner we can get to a point in the Great Dialogue where the practical implications of important, substantive ethical questions are getting good attention, because the true standard for human progress, the human good, is placed at the center of mission statements in schools and institutions across America and elsewhere."

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

You have a beautiful idealistic vision. True, by human standards there can be no civilization without humans to define it. Humans are, in fact, only distinguished by their desire. No other animal has desire.

This is a lovely, generous post, because every person who posted prior to it can imagine it applies to them.


(BTW, what desire? Or, which desire?)

 

[Pure]

"in ami's response..."

i have no idea what you mean, charley!

 

[dr_mabeuse]

An excellant post. As so often happens in these discussions of abstracts, we literally don't know what we're talking about. For some of us, moral relativity means what we might call trans-cultural morality, the precious and hard-won ability to see the world through a different culture's value system. For others, it designates negotiable or situational ethics, those areas of morality that can't be solved by simple appeal to authority. For others, including Rox, "moral relativism" connotes a nihilistic system in which values have no value because they're fixed to no absolutes.

Then we take these three (or maybe more) different definitions and start arguing about them as if we're talking about the same thing. And we'll do this for pages and pages. Watch.

I didn't say that was relativism. I said that relativism was a fact. Morals are different in different places and between different people. There is no single agreed on morality. Period. There's a major misunderstanding going on here, Rox. You are taking the word relativism and chauvinistically defining it, as Pure said, as limp-wristed lefties who say, "Now, we can't interfere with their culture...let them slaughter all those people....." i.e., you're saying that relativism IS a value system.

That's not how I define it. To me, relativism is NOT a moral position, or anything to do with conscience, or those feelings we have that us act in certain ways toward each other. It is simply a fact that people may or may not use when they decide to act or not.

But, Okay. Fine. Let's, for the moment, define it your way, with your bias. I can see where such people might worry you. But what's absurd and bizarre about this fear of yours is that you seem to think that this "do nothing" belief system is spreading like the plague and everyone is going to let millions of people be slaughtered because they don't want to interfere with the murder's "cultural values."

This is ridiculous in sooo many ways. Let's start with this: Do you LIVE in this world? The FACTS (and I really, really wish you would pay attention to facts) show that people are FAR more likely to go for absolute morals and act badly on THOSE. They will follow leaders who say, "Jews are evil, kill them!" They will watch news shows that have a clear bias. They want absolute good to believe in and absolute evil to believe in; people are ultimately lazy, and it's far easier and less work to have a god and a devil and a belief that everything you do is good and everything those you don't like do is evil, then try and see the world from another person's perspective. Relativism--even as YOU define it--holds very little attraction for most people. Which is why most people can say, "Those Jews are evil; take away their rights, imprison them, kill them," rather than, "Those people have a different culture than I do; so long as they're not trying to hurt me and mine, I should try to respect them and live and let live."

Ultimately, all I'm saying and all others are saying is that you're being inherently absurd if you're trying to prove to us that relativism and nihilism should concern us because they and they alone are going to perpetrate evil in our "modern" world. The whole of human history up to and including the present says you're wrong. Totally and completely wrong. If you're worrying about relativism and nihilism making people inactive, you can put your mind at rest. Like evolution, everyone want to ignore relativism (i.e. the fact that morals are relative) and only certain teens (as always) want to be nihilists.

As the last 20 years prove, you're far more in danger of evangelicals and neo-cons and their absolute morals dictating your life than of what you call "relativists" letting someone be mean to you because it would be wrong to interfere with their culture.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

DOC

Actually it was the 16th-18th Centuries when colonialism was everyone's primary foreign policy. But even this is not correct. Colonialism and enslavement goes back as far as anyone can trace the records. It existed in Africa from the time of the pharoahs. Everyone did it.

Colonialism and empire have been with us from the start, but never has a civilization been so narcissistic and so intoxicated with itself, so self-righteous and so enamored of its own cultural and moral superiority as was Western Europe in its colonial salad days. It's hard to imagine the ancient Romans singing "Take Up The Roman's Burden" as they they established their empire, and no other culture had the unmitigated gall to send missionaries out to save the very souls of the people they were enslaving and murdering by the millions as they colonized and exploited them. One gets the feeling that they felt they could enslave their immortal souls as well. Western Europe wore its moral superiority like a crown.

You can't be an oppressor without this feeling of superiority, and you can't have this feeling of superiority without moral absolutism. Whether from the left or the right, your dictators are always certain they're right.

 

[oggbashan]

I think that the triumph of Western Civilisation is that it preaches and practises tolerance of other people and other ideas.

That infuriates the intolerant and repressive because Western Civilisation shows the constrained and oppressed that there is another way, a way that allows individuals to criticise and even change their rulers without bloodshed.

Og

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Colonialism and empire have been with us from the start, but never has a civilization been so narcissistic and so intoxicated with itself, so self-righteous and so enamored of its own cultural and moral superiority as was Western Europe in its colonial salad days. It's hard to imagine the ancient Romans singing "Take Up The Roman's Burden" as they they established their empire, and no other culture had the unmitigated gall to send missionaries out to save the very souls of the people they were enslaving and murdering by the millions as they colonized and exploited them. One gets the feeling that they felt they could enslave their immortal souls as well. Western Europe wore its moral superiority like a crown.

You can't be an oppressor without this feeling of superiority, and you can't have this feeling of superiority without moral absolutism. Whether from the left or the right, your dictators are always certain they're right.

My, my, you certainly respect the ability of Western civ to surpass all others in at least one category, which is hubris and perfidy (I guess that's two categories). I think you are quaintly chauvinistic in your deprecation of the capacity of other societies now and in the past to be "narcissistic and so intoxicated with itself."

With regard to the U.S. role in the world today I've written that many on the left have adopted the flip side of neocon hubris, replacing the view that nothing good can happen in the world without the U.S. with the view that everything bad that happens in the world is the fault of the US. Frankly, this appears to be a version of that "negative-hubris" writ large for all of western civ.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

An excellant post. As so often happens in these discussions of abstracts, we literally don't know what we're talking about. For some of us, moral relativity means what we might call trans-cultural morality, the precious and hard-won ability to see the world through a different culture's value system. For others, it designates negotiable or situational ethics, those areas of morality that can't be solved by simple appeal to authority. For others, including Rox, "moral relativism" connotes a nihilistic system in which values have no value because they're fixed to no absolutes.

Then we take these three (or maybe more) different definitions and start arguing about them as if we're talking about the same thing. And we'll do this for pages and pages. Watch.

On your first sentence, what I said to Charlie: This is a lovely, generous post, because every person who posted prior to it can imagine it applies to them."

As for the rest, I think you are on to something. Thaks for beginning to create a taxonomy.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

My, my, you certainly respect the ability of Western civ to surpass all others in at least one category, which is hubris and perfidy (I guess that's two categories). I think you are quaintly chauvinistic in your deprecation of the capacity of other societies now and in the past to be "narcissistic and so intoxicated with itself."

Aside from some sporadic incidents in Biblical Judaism, I'm aware of only two cultures in the entire history of the world who spread not only their cultural values but their religion by the sword: militant Islam and militant Christianity. No one else presumed to have such a privileged lock on the Truth that they felt morally compelled to kill or convert those they conquered. I don't know how many other empires saw themselves as doing God's Work on earth like the Spaniards in the New World did, but that's hubris to me.

Yes, I'd say those cultures were pretty damned full of themselves then and they're pretty damned full of themselves to this very day.

 

[Roxanne Appleby]

Aside from some sporadic incidents in Biblical Judaism, I'm aware of only two cultures in the entire history of the world who spread not only their cultural values but their religion by the sword: militant Islam and militant Christianity. No one else presumed to have such a privileged lock on the Truth that they felt morally compelled to kill or convert those they conquered. I don't know how many other empires saw themselves as doing God's Work on earth like the Spaniards in the New World did, but that's hubris to me.

Yes, I'd say those cultures were pretty damned full of themselves then and they're pretty damned full of themselves to this very day.

Alexander the Great and Ceasar are two that come to mind that were pretty self confident about the rightness of spreading their culture by the sword; Darius and other Persians too, and their predecessors the Medes. I don't imagine the Romano-Celts of Gaul, Britain or the Iberians were hugely consoled by the fact that their Germanic invaders had just plain old armed robbery on their minds vs. "cultural imperialism," and the same would apply to all those subjected to the terror of warriors from the steppes, from the Hyksos through the Scythians, Huns, Magyars, Mongols and Turks.

I believe India's history is filled with similar tales; I don't know far eastern history well enough to cite similar examples, but I'd be shocked if it didn't also demonstrate my previous suggestion, that your assertion reveals a curious brand of ethnocentrism. Are you sure that your view is not based on the possibility that, like me, you just know a lot more about the history that's occured on this side of the steppes and Himalayas?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

ROXANNE

DOC misses the boat, period. All he has to do is drag out a few history books to get his mind right.

 

[3113]

Alexander the Great and Ceasar are two that come to mind that were pretty self confident about the rightness of spreading their culture by the sword; Darius and other Persians too, and their predecessors the Medes. I don't imagine the Romano-Celts of Gaul, Britain or the Iberians were hugely consoled by the fact that their Germanic invaders had just plain old armed robbery on their minds vs. "cultural imperialism," and the same would apply to all those subjected to the terror of warriors from the steppes, from the Hyksos through the Scythians, Huns, Magyars, Mongols and Turks.

I think you make a good point that it's rather absurd to have a pissing contest about who slaughtered, invaded, enslaved, etc. more people in the name of an empire or a religion. But then, I suspect Dr. M's primary point is that Western Civilization can't and shouldn't be held up by anyone as somehow superior or "more civilized" if it's done and/or is still committing the same atrocities (immoralities) as those in other, presumably less civilized civilizations.

Meaning, Rox. that the wrongs of others--in the past or currently--don't excuse ours. Two wrongs don't make a right. Your point, however, is equally valid. That there can't be a double standard--you can't hold Western Civ to a higher standard than other Civilizations. That goes in both directions, however. Dr. M. can't hold us to higher standards than he does others, but then you can't claim that we are (or ever were) more moral than others if we're doing (have done) the same thing as others.

Which mean, I think, that you've nicely proved yourself a moral and cultural relativist. No culture, as you yourself have shown, no matter their moral values, has avoided doing mean things to others