From: yoichi@carson.u.washington.edu (Yoichi Ii)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.japan
Subject: Re: Brainwashed
Date: 30 Dec 1992 23:42:39 GMT
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
NNTP-Posting-Host: carson.u.washington.edu

In article <34534@twics.co.jp> dcroz@twics.co.jp writes:
>
>Tetsuya Nishimura writes:
>=}No culture is any better than any other culture. . .
>=}How can you say the culture of 1600 AD Japan is inferior to that of modern
>=}day Japan, or vise versa?  How can you say Italian culture is better than
>=}that of Spain, or vice versa?
> 
>It took Alan Bloom, a professor of political philosophy, an entire book to 
>deal with that subject.  But deal with it he did.  

So what did he have to say? Summarize in 200 words or less :-) 

>=}But these differences are not what you can say "bad" or "good" in nature.
> 
>It seems pretty radical to categorically deny that there can be any 
>principles or guidelines for human society other than the arbitrary, 
>culturally relative ones.
> 
>Seems to me that human nature (however you may define that term) would
>dictate that some forms of society would work better than others.

IMHO there's at least 3 problems with this. First is the definition of human
nature.  Even if we agree that human nature should dictate culture, the
argument will merely be shifted from culture to that on nature of human being. 

Second, how do you define "work better"?  Is being efficient and competitive 
the only factor?  Or are there some factors (eg individual rights) which 
cannot be transgressed even at a cost of greater "good" for the society?  

Third, individual rights, for example, might be something that cannot be 
addressed from just human nature.

If we can answer all these questions, then we can start to rank order
cultures. But this is academic. At present, wWhatever criteria people
might have to rate cultures, I think, is mosty biased toward their own.

[miso soup]

>But that's neither here nor there.  The main point is that the existence of
>culturally determined preferences and biases does not, in and of itself, rule
>out the possibility of the existence of "bad" or "good" with reference to 
>human nature or society.

I agree, it doesn't rule out the possibility.  But it doesn't mean what 
people purport to be "the rule" has progressed beyound cultural bias, either.

>=}If, as you might think, one culture can be inferior to another, why not
>=}abandoning it and adopting or adapting what you might call a "superior" and
>=}"better" culture?  Where in this world and in the past is a people who
>=}abandoned their culture and adopted a new culture?
> 
>     Well, unless we're all living in mousterian hunter-gatherer societies,
>*every* culture has repeatedly abandoned what they had for a better life.

According to your "rule" above, what works best in each society is the best.
This would mean what's best for hunter-gatherer is different from, say,
an industrialized society.  So which culture is better?

[deleted]

>  I don't agree with this proposition that it's "impossible" or "prejudiced"
>to make judgements about what might be good or bad in culture.  If we're
>deciding what kind of culture we want to live in, as we all are, every day,
>then *who* has a better right to make these judgements than we do?

The point, I believe, was how can one culture judge another?  No one was
questioning the right for one to choose ones own culture.

>  And who has the standing to tell us that we have no right to decide what
>kind of culture we want to live in?

Precisely.  At this point, I'd say no one (at least without biases).