Is retaining Culture better than allowing people to suffer?

Understatement.

I never developed writing or technology. It was taught to me. Wouldn't it have been better if I had it all invented myself, by your logic? I don't see why an accident of birth should make a difference.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

There is no need for belligerence.

edited 8th Dec '11 10:27:57 PM by Gabrael

"Psssh. Even if you could catch a miracle on a picture any person would probably delete it to make space for more porn." - Aszur

If you are going to take my words, keep them in context.

All I said is that there is no such thing as absence of culture in regards to something Anne said.

Is that logic clear enough?

"Oh wait. She doesn't have a... Forget what I said, don't catch the preggo. Just wear her hat." - Question Marc

It's irrelevant. Culture itself is just a tool. You may be technically right: They do have their own culture. But that doesn't change a thing about what I've said so far.

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

I'm not sure what the problem was with saying that. Seeing as the point was that somebody said that "that (the moral thing) doesn't seem very practical" I don't see why pointing out the "practical" thing if ignoring the moral isn't particularly good is an endorsement.

Offering them the choice to adapt to other civilization is the moral thing to do, rather than simply trying to override their personal choices. If it so happens that a sufficiently large portion of a civilization decides the pastures are greener elsewhere, then the old civilization does what all less adapted civilizations do: die.

Fight smart, not fair.

Different cultural spheres have different ideas of what is good and what is bad. What is "good" to a Westerner isn't "good" to an Arab. Some cultures look at, for example, a female rights activist the same way as we look at racists. Morals are relative, and governments should refrain from judging moral policies outside of their cultural sphere. Let them live their own way.

The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Because I do not see the point of being disengenuous in order to get your way.

If you say so.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Well, groups don't have feelings, so if you damage them it's not like they're gonna notice; only the individuals involved are actually going to care.

Cultures are built of individuals. Destroying a culture means seriously harming the sentiments of the people involved.

The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

Unless you destroy the culture by convincing the people within it to join different cultures.

Not many people would voluntarily convert. Through history, cultural assimilation was commited by giving privileges to the converted populace that those who wanted to stick to their ways didn't have, not by coming and saying "our way is better, join us if you please", and we can all agree that it's hardly ethical. Except for Deboss, maybe.

The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

That's where advances in communication and transportation technology come in. Cultures as we know them now exist because groups of people are isolated from each other by geography. People's personalities are shaped by their environment, and so people who all share the same environment will tend to develop similar religious beliefs, codes of conduct, and aesthetic sensibilities. But as the world becomes more interconnected, the boundaries between one environment and the rest of the world's environments become increasingly blurred, and the boundaries between cultures eventually follow suit.

It used to be, in very ancient days, that if someone wasn't from the same village or tribe as you, then you'd have barely even considered them human. Flashforward to modern days, and we've got oodles of people who have just as much (if not more) in common with people from thousands of miles away as they do with their next-door neighbors.

Unless hitting peak oil really sets us back, I foresee this trend continuing. Geographic seperation will become increasingly irrelevant, and that will make cultural isolation (and, by extension, cultural preservation) increasingly difficult to maintain. Oh, people will continue to voluntarily segregate themselves long after the physical barriers to integration have disappeared, but in time having such easy access to outsiders will errode away what makes their cultures distinct, until eventually all cultures become one, and culture (as a concept) becomes nothing.

edited 9th Dec '11 5:16:59 AM by RavenWilder

Cultural globalization. And I've always wondered why Americans invested so much in pop culture and spreading it across the world - it appeals to the lowest common denominator. The whole world is turning into the United States through Hollywood, Coke, pop music and the internet. I can't say that I'm too happy about this, but it cannot be stopped.

The sin of silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.

How would it be disingenuous?

Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. Unrelated ME1 Fanfic

And I've always wondered why Americans invested so much in pop culture and spreading it across the world

Not Americans, but the corporations run by a very small % of the country.

If you don't like a single Frank Ocean song, you have no soul.

It's irrelevant. Culture itself is just a tool. You may be technically right: They do have their own culture. But that doesn't change a thing about what I've said so far.

No one is trying to change what you said. Honestly man, relax.

Because such things are relative, they would have to be handled on a case by case basis. For example, mainstream culture leaves the Amish alone for the most part unless there are cases of abuse. They don't pay as many taxes because they live of the land. So unless something dangerous is going on, we pretty much leave them alone and they leave us alone.

Various Amish communities have different degrees of interaction between mainstream culture and their own. However it's the leaders of these communities who make the decisions over how much this interaction will be.

Why not work out a system like that with other tribal peoples we may encounter?

"Oh wait. She doesn't have a... Forget what I said, don't catch the preggo. Just wear her hat." - Question Marc

Seriously I find that culture, as all things, has no value outside the service it does for a person. If the person finds that service inadequate or if that culture is actively harming that person that culture losses it's right to exist.

Let's make a TCG!

I think the real problem is that, in any society, the culture develops out of the social structure, that develops from the economic relationships and that in turn depends on the technology. For the last few hundred years, Europe and the countries that were founded by Europeans have had superior technology - that's just a fact.

Once that technology passes on to the rest of the world that inevitably impacts on their economies, their society and hence their culture. Traditional ways always end up going by the board. And it's not as if any of these countries have ever rejected the technology itself, even if they were colonised and hated the colonisation. In India or China or Africa, they all want cars and mobile phones and T Vs and the governments want the latest military hardware or medical developments. And once you get a mobile phone or internet connection, you're never going to be quite the same nomad or peasant farmer again.

Tl/dr - we're assuming that "we", the West, have control of this process and that the Third World or however you define it isn't actively participating in the transformation of its traditional culture.

"Well, it's a lifestyle"

Pertinent South Park episode to that thesis.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s15e09-the-last-of-the-meheecans

Let's make a TCG!

@Octo,

Because think about it this way:

Say you get your way, and we allow individuals to take us up on offers of this nature.

What are you going to do if somebody really important—like, say, the village healer—decides to leave everybody else?

You've effectively subverted their right to keep their way of life as it is, because without that crucial element their actual ability to conduct themselves as they like is destroyed. You are, after all, the unknown, outside factor; had you not come, the tribe or group would still be all together, and such issues would never arrive.

Thus, it is disingenuous to not tell the leaders of a group that you plan to offer your invitations to everyone in the group individually even if the group itself refuses through its leaders, and worse still to just go ahead and do it anyway if they tell you to butt the fuck out of their lives. They are not stupid; they know that given the chance, we will tear their way of life apart, because we First Worlders think we know everything there is to know about life and that our way is so much better. There's a reason they don't want you interfering, and it's not usually out of simple malice towards white people; they simply understand exactly how bad our lives really are, even if we refuse to admit it.

Technologically, yes, we are better. If you're rich and of the various classes that actually get advantages in life. We simply refuse to admit how horrible our societies really are, compared to the idealized versions we hold in our head. Compared to them, we really aren't hugely better. On a practical level, perhaps, but certainly not morally. And they know it, and know that it may not be better than what they have now.

That is why this "individual sovereignty" shit needs to be seen for what it is: a conceptualization of the problem that is at least partially detached from the reality of life and industrialized culture and society versus non-industrialized culture and society.

edited 9th Dec '11 1:40:07 PM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

If the maximum amount of damage we can do to the culture is the same as the amount of damage that would happen if a certain individual committed suicide, I can't see that it's a big deal. After all, everyone has their own right to self-terminate, so it's necessarily true that everyone has the right to remove themselves from any given group, regardless of what the impact of doing so has on their respective communities.

Or did I miss something in the conversation?

False equivalency.

People have the right to commit suicide, but we do not have the right to interfere with other people's lifestyles merely because we think we're right.

In the suicide case, the person always had the option of suicide. In the case of interference, nothing would have changed had we not kept our noses in our own business and stopped trying to entice others to conform to our own twisted worldview.

I am now known as Flyboy.

I may be arguing the wrong thing because I haven't been paying a HUGE amount of attention to this thread but, isn't that basically saying that we have an obligation to keep people ignorant of better advancements for themselves?

I mean, we come in and say "Hey, awesome society is just around the corner." They, knowing that, then choose to join awesome society-dooming their fellows to abject horror. But, all we really did was introduce information into the system. I have difficulty asserting that withholding information is a good thing.

That's not a proof or even an argument, mind you, just something I'm skeptical of.

The point is, "super-awesome society" is extremely misleading, and we lack the ability to give them good, objective choice.

We destroy and damage simply by virtue of our interference; thus, it is more moral to not interfere and never introduce ourselves to the environment than to do so and exercise the very real risk of creating a hostile environment for people who likely never wanted such.

I am now known as Flyboy.

Sure, we could present our society as a wonderful utopia and Practically Perfect in Every Way (to quote Mary Poppins), but if the idea is to just make them aware of the outside world and that individuals have a choice to go and participate in it if they wish, why would we need to or want to? There's too much information to absorb for them to know everything about modern society before they deign to join us in any way, but that's no reason to not tell them about the downsides of modern society intentionally.

And if that hypothetical healer decides to leave? Hope he has the decency to train a successor first, I suppose. I doubt he'd want to screw over his own society intentionally.

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