Upon reading the very first paragraph of "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism", I realized that I was doing exactly the opposite of what James Rachels was telling us to do. His article is about being open minded to other cultures that are different than ours and reading about the Callatians eating the bodies of their dead fathers, I was immediately put off by that thought. Rachels quotes William Graham Sumner saying that there is no measure of right and wrong other than the standards of one's society." Who am I to say that eating your dead father's body is wrong? Just because I or most people in my culture say its wrong, doesn't mean the Callatians are wrong. Just like infanticide with the Eskimos. You have to look at the big picture as to why cultures do certain things different from your own. Under the section "Why There Is Less Disagreement Than It Seems" Rachels talks about why a culture may think its wrong to eat cows. There may be an underlining message of their belief of reincarnation. So I do agree with Darius' belief that one must appreciate different cultures and their differences.
The first section of the article is "How different Cultures Have Different Moral Codes" made me think of our class's Socratic seminar about Things Fall Apart. We talked about our struggle to view Okonkwo as a hero because of the way he treated his family, particularly his wives. Because he had beaten his wives, we couldn't see him as a true man. Although he was high in his society, we agreed he wouldn't be high in our society. He had abused something that in our culture, we hold higher than his. When you physically abuse your wife in today's society, you can be locked up. For Okonkwo, that really wasn't much of the case. We briefly talked about how different our culture is from Okonkwo's overall. We don't view yams as having such great power, our class didn't agree with the idea having more than one wife, and also the idea of killing someone who was like family to you (Ikemefuna). In the novel and by the definition of a modern hero, Okonkwo is a hero. However to us, he didn't do anything wonderful or superior to give him that title. We just saw him as a man worrying more about yams than his wives, but really that's just how we interpreted that culture. So I hope now I can keep a better open mind about other societies and cultures that are different than my own.
