Scoop wrote a ways back:
As if mistreating animals is somehow OK so long as you can try to claim that it’s part of someone’s “culture.”
Before I went to sleep last night I read an article on opium production in Afghanistan and the U.S. role in trying to stop it. It got me to thinking about “culture” and what we deem as acceptable and unacceptable. I mean, growing poppies is part of the Afghan culture. (Modern day Afghanistan was part of the Persian Empire, and opium and Persia go way back. Way back ….) Poppies are harvested for opium, the raw material for heroin. Illegal (and even legal) drugs are a big problem in America. Does this give us the right to quash poppy cultivation in Afghanistan?
(I always wonder what poppy and coca farmers think when American government officials swoop down into their countries and try to get them to grow alternative crops. What? Green beans and rutabagas? Those will give them a better life than growing opium poppies or coca for cocaine? I wonder how you say You cannot be serious! in Pashto.)
But I digress. As I always do.
I made a list of cultural practices that I think most Americans would find unacceptable. Not all are on the same level of dogfighting, but it would be hard for the average American to accept any of these in the interest of respecting another culture or subculture.
- Arranged marriages
- Bullfighting — I saw bullfighting on tv when I was a kid. (In that day and age the FCC wasn’t worried about exposing viewers to gore and violence.) I was appalled. Since then I always root for the bull. I suppose this loses me points in the “Love Thy Neighbor” category of religious tenets, but it should earn me points in the Compassion for all Sentient Beings category. If I go to hell or accumulate bad karma and doom myself to a future rebirth for wanting the matador to die, then that’s the way it is and I accept my fate. Six or seven men versus one animal just isn’t fair. If it was one-on-one I’d feel differently.
- Cockfighting
- Displaying the confederate flag
- Drug use for religious purposes (e.g., ganja, peyote)
- Footbinding — If you have a weak stomach I recommend against reading the linked article.
- Genital mutilation — If you have a weak stomach don’t read this one, either.
- Honor killing
- Polygamy
- Slavery
- Suttee
Thus I find it pretty screwy when people use the word “culture” to defend one practice or another. Just because something is “part of my culture” or “traditional” doesn’t make it good.
Bingo. Let’s not forget things like the consumption of dogs and cats as food. Or cannbalizing one’s enemies after conquering them in battle. Or using Native Americans as sports-team mascots. Did some people grow up with these things in their culture? Yes. Does that make them right? No. The list goes on and on…
Tobacco, in fact, is an excellent example, because it puts our bad American conscience on display for all the world to see. The Western tobacco industry has gone through every convolution and permutation possible in the name of protecting its right to exist, and for farmers to make a living off planting, harvesting and curing the stuff. Now, the situation is such that it is no longer possible to deny the harm it does to the human body, whether smoking or chewing it, and in which the vast majority of Westerners know this is true, and millions of them have stopped using it as a result. But have we closed down the culture that still depends on it to make a living? No, we have not. We have simply found a new market for tobacco, in other countries where the people either don’t know about its dangers or don’t yet care. From what I have read, it is common in some of these countries to see children smoking on the street–especially children who essentially live there. (Yet another “cultural norm” we would not accept here; even if we allow children to de facto grow up on the street in some places, it is something from which we simply avert our eyes.)
“But it’s part of their culture” is not a defense we accept unless, somehow or another, we can relate to that culture. Therefore, it makes a weak justification for any practice.
However, that having been said, it explains why such practices are so difficult to eliminate. There is a natural defensiveness and hostility in any group toward those perceived as “outsider do-gooders” trying to get them to change their ways. What the solution is, I don’t know. What I do know is that in situations in which people’s livelihood or personal identity or other highly valuable things are somehow bound up in cultural practices that others find morally abhorrent, it doesn’t usually do to just say “Can’t you see how awful/bad this is?” Something else is required…from gentle, persuasive education to outright replacing one source of livelihood with another that is equally or more profitable. Unless and until that happens, completely quashing a cultural practice some find revolting is unlikely to ever take place.
Comment by Scoop — 26 August 2007, Sunday @ 09:54:32
My feeling about “culture” is it is fine if people have the abiltiy to make a serious, informed choice, as an adult, and if it would not greatly disrupt other poeple. So…arranged marriages of consenting adults in the US? Fine. Honor killing? Not in a million years. Polygamy? Sorry, it disrupts society too much. Bullfighting? Only if the bull signs the paperwork after speaking to his lawyer (and then I too am rooting for the bull). Of course Americans are very hypocritical with animals. We will stick a newborn calf in a box for 6 months and then eat it, yet scream about cockfighting. If it was up to me, only animals raised on big sunny, open-spaced farms could be used as food. Eveything else is a pet.
And to sweitch subjects on a dime - I used to adore Tim McCarver back in my NY area living, Met wortshipping years. Is he no longer any good?
And one more topic switch. I miss DP. Just saying.
Comment by Hawaii — 26 August 2007, Sunday @ 22:49:20