cultural relativism, brightens any day

dude, i'm black and i can't stand american blacks

I only see the point of historical relativism

Dont judge the past on todays standards

Absolutley, jusdging the past on current morals is the reason the church defamed all the statues in Rome and now has a bag of Dicks in its basement somewhere

Something I have never forgiven them for

And the statue genocide in US

yep

so long as we don't start arguing that it's impossible to judge other currently existing cultures for their terrible ideas, I don't think we have much of a problem

not that I'd expect something like that here, really

yeha, basically my idea is that cultures should be held to the highest ideal of their time

but of course they would have to have relativley close proximity, Rome and China for instance, didn't have much contact, so we couldn't really judge them together.

Because they were basically two different worlds

You can judge current cultures

Otherwise they will never better themself

yes, but we judge them based on the current highest ideal, I wouldn't want our cultures to be judged in 200 years based on the ideals 200 years from now

cause of course it will be considered defficient

from the perspective of an imagined culture that has had longer time to mature and develop, I'm certain we'd still be considered drooling barbarians.

Well, if they were ignorant

Not putting us in our historical context

perhaps, but I wouldn't immediately fault them for thinking so

If we know better, then they should

Yes we are connected

That is why we live a better life

We do know better. If we're struggling with the same issues in 50 years, which I certainly don't hope, there's a case to be made against at least part of us.

That's fair

Nobody is perfect

Yes, but we still have people who believe in judging the past on the present, which is very worrying

considering they have had sucess

whoa whoa

Colonialism was a net bennefit for Africa

>
You can judge current cultures
Otherwise they will never better themself

cultural relativism detected

I think it's fair to be able to point out the terrible ideas of the past, so we can learn from them.

no, like using current morals to judge the past

that's what I'm against

tell me again how the saudis culture of hanging gay men with a crane en masse is in any way comparable to liberal western democracy

because the past will always be defficient

The morals have evolved

It's Iran who does that

Well one can judge the cultures, but the actions of individuals should be considered relative to their environment