The American Infallibility Complex

I'm getting a little fed up with having to remind people (long term members, not just newbies), that masked profanities are against the rules. Please remember this as bans can be handed out for breaches of this rule.
 
Why are there still Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt? Shouldn't they be welcome in the homelands of their host countries living lives like normal citizens?

These camps were set up between 1948 and 1968. Many of the people who fled to these camps are no longer alive. So why are they still being segregated?

If the cause of the Palestinians was so important to the Arab and Muslim people of the world you would think the living conditions would be much better 45 to 65 years later.

Makes you wonder doesn't it?

It's all politics on both sides. Just a shame the Palestinian people happen to be caught in the middle.
 
Sorry I take my aversion to cultural relativism back.
All cultures and societies are equally moral and no better or worse than any other.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21595814
 
It's hard to talk about the bad things in your own country (when it's a "1st world" country) in the correct context when the rest of the world is added in the equation. We're debating opportunity and welfare when opportunity and welfare is often much greater in our areas we say are poverty compared to some countries where that is almost living like an upper class citizen.

I'm a firm believer in "better or worse" and not so much in direct "right or wrong." Living in America is far better then living in a lot of other countries I've been to. Same as living in a European country. I can't say much about places like Russia or Asian and South American countries because I haven't been there.

I've lived in a mud hut for a year in Afghanistan, a security circle for months in Haiti, and had to "rough it" more days then I can count. I've ran out of food and water in situations you can die from that too. Having ample access to just the basics and not having to worry about anyone trying to kill you is certainly preferable. I know people would tell me, "you were an American in those countries, which is why you experienced that" but at the same time a lot of people get killed/beat just for simple civil rights issues, trying to better themselves, or because of their gender or ethnicity in those countries. If you want to PM me I can send you a website where you can watch "witches" in some third world countries in Africa be burned alive (slowly), or people being beat to death on the streets in other nations for something as simple as stealing a loaf of bread. When a nation has issues like that as a norm, I definitely have the opinion that they are backwards and could use some progress. In that sense I would definitely say America or any other country that has significantly moved past those issues are in fact, "better" and that countries who allow things like this to go on should not be held up on a pedestal as "well it's their culture."
 
The only way to counter these beliefs is with education. If you are genuinely outraged by the way these cultures behave, then there is nothing stopping you from donating to one of the many educational charities that operate in these countries.

Educated people tend not to burn witches.
 
That could be true. Yet we would suppose there to be court records, and communication between local courts and the DOJ or however it is called. Any civilized country has statistics about the sentences that are being applied.

It is imo more logical that this is one of those things that everybody knew and was happy enough to let it go on until there was public outrage. After all, if that had been an isolated event, you'd expect the people surrounding the case (the LEOs, the lawyers, the DA, etc) to respond with something like 'Whoaaa! Dude! WTF!'. The fact that that didn't happen makes it look like business as usual.
 
True. I do just that via SOS Child Villages.
Only problem is there are more problems than I can throw money at.
If I were as rich as Bill Gates, that is where I would spend my money on, and happily die as a poor man.
 
Ah, those poor stupid third world heathens that have had civilizations for thousands of years longer than ours! We must show them the light of the First World!
 
Cynical or not, it's a valid concern and one that could spur them into legislative action.

I don't care how positive change comes about, so long as it comes about.
 
Sure, but that doesn't mean the way they did it was better for the majority of people within their civilization does it? You wouldn't agree that humanity would be a lot better off going about things a different way then what these people are doing or have done in the past?

I'm sure if all the super powers in the world decided to join up and enslave all the other countries, force them into doing all the laboring, farming, and manual jobs while they just worked on technological advances, education for themselves, and living the life . . . that it would probably last for hundreds of years too. Is that the way we want to go about things though?
 
It's all too easy to feel superior in hindsight. There are still people alive today that remember racial segregation in the US, or prison terms for homosexual sex in the UK.

Back to the OP, while it's natural for humans to feel their culture is normal and others are strange, the impression I get is when a culture is based heavily on a competitive philosophy, you can end up with very polarized views. The most alarming for me is when US politicians, press or military use the terms "good guys" and "bad guys". Once you have such a polarized view of what will inevitably be a complex
situation, you have just thrown rational thought out of the window. The competitive mindset exacerbates tribalism, and exploiting tribalism is how you get people to support evil.

PASmith, I agree that not all cultures are equal. I agree that the UK is a better place to be a woman than
Saudi Arabia, because here she can choose to wear a burka or a bikini in the street, without fear of corporal punishment. But, you are misrepresenting cultural relativism by stating it means we must view all cultures as being ethically equal. We all view the world through a cultural lense, and we shouldn't
forget what atrocities and evil deeds have been committed, and justified through the European cultural lense (in which I include the US).

It's also easy to forget that we have not always been at the vanguard of human rights, and in fact many of the countries being criticised here were more civilised than us in the past. So I don't think anyone's in a position to claim moral superiority, if you take the long view.
 
As far as I'm concerned that's like saying you can't claim you are further up some stairs than someone else because, like they are now, you used to be at the bottom of the stairs.
Recognising moral advances (and there have been many) doesn't negate or excuse the past or, indeed, decree that no further moral advances can be made.
As far as I'm concerned moral advancement across the globe is like an upward sawtooth. There are setbacks, short term downward trends and local anomalies but overall we are getting morally better than previous generations.
It's not all plain sailing for sure but the trend is there.
It's not just random swinging from better morality to worse on a whim.
It's a slow exploration and discovery.
In fact it's only by acknowledging the past that you can see moral advancment happening at all.

I can claim moral superiority because, while not faultless or immune to my own cultural moral failings I'll never...

Kill an innocent relative of someone that has dishonoured or harmed one of my family.
Kill one of my relatives because they have brought dishonour on my family.
Force my daughter to marry someone she doesn't want to marry.
Mutilate my daughters genitals in order to control her sexuality.
Kill an albino to cure myself if I contract aids.
Set some dogs on a bear for entertainment (a practice that continues in the OP's example of Pakistan).
Throw acid in tha face of a woman that has spurned me.
Kill a woman for wanting an education.
Maintain that someone is off limits just because they are born into certain circumstances.

And what's more the vast majority of my fellow inhabitants wouldn't do those things either.
Now I'm not suggesting that those things are totally cultural in nature. Some individuals in other cultures would never do those things either.
But they are certainly acts that were tolerated (encouraged even) in western society, have largely been outlawed, but that are still happening in other cultures.

I don't see how you can see that as anything but moral advancement?
We aren't suddenly going to decide, as a collective, that it's OK to torture animals for fun again and bring back bear baiting.
Bear baiting is on the decline globally. Other people just need to catch up and realise what they are doing is wrong.
 
First off, I have a bit of a problem with the way you are lumping all aspects of foreign society you find abhorrent into a "them" to your "us".

I agree that Western civilization has made progress in assuring human rights for its citizens (though we are prone to turning a blind eye when assuring foreigner's human rights might reduce our profits).

But it has been a long, hard and at times bloody road for us to get where we are today. It is the culmination of centuries of revolt, rebellion, civil war, protest, legal battles, campaigning and lobbying.

I just don't think it's as simple as saying "come on, look where we are, catch up you barbarians.". A lot of our rights have been borne from reacting to conditions and circumstance, and some of the attitudes in this thread come across as feeling it is some innate superiority that got us here. Well, it's not, and if our culture's circumstances had worked out differently we could easily be the ones doing all these "unthinkable" acts.
 
Absolutely. But I'd hope I'd still be honest enough to admit that when I became aware of how others act and say "Yeah...those people are doing things better than we are...we should probably learn from that".

Moral progress was slow in the past because communication, awareness of others and the desire to actually be morally better was poor.
Moral advances are speeding up as the advances taken in one direction inform in another (equal rights for women and ethnic minorities became a move for equal rights for gay people for example).
How other people live in the world is much more knowable. People can see how others do things and evaluate if they could change their ways.
 
Well that attitudes not coming from me.
People are people. Some are good, some are crap.
I'm not innately superior to anyone (except in wit and martial arts talent of course).
 
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