Bookpacking’s Blog

Are some countries better than others? Or are some countries merely further along the path of linear development? What is development? Is it the rule of law, a welfare state? Is it a low tolerance of corruption?

Alternatively, is it manners? Is it the observance of queues, or are these cultural red herrings distracting us from the real meat of the matter? Has relativism robbed us of the right to judge?

Nazi Eugenicism was an elaborate way of using science to justify the categorisation, denigration and dehumanisation of their enemies; so we must be careful not to allow a thin veneer of unreasonable reasoning to disguise innate animal prejudice and distrust of the different.

But taken to its extreme, a refusal to judge leaves us morally paralysed. Female circumcision is a ‘cultural’ difference; ethnic cleansing becomes just the latest swing of history’s pendulum – state A’s response to the last atrocity of state B. 90 years ago the Weimar Republic was born, but its destruction is attributed to its feeble plutocracy; the church was too broad, the tent too big, and it was easily pulled down from the inside.

The prompt for this philosophical meander was this post on the Kiev Post, which generated pages and pages of comment. “Self-hating” is a term US right-wingers love to throw at domestic critics of the government. Do these protestors, for reasons of personal psychology, see only the bad? Or are they justified making these criticisms from such position of inside knowledge? Labelling someone ‘anti-patriotic’ is a tried and trusted shotgun scatter of mud that sticks. It ignores subtleties or detail to take out anything in its path, regardless of who’s right.

‘Self-hating’ is one way of pulling the rug from under this writer, without considering the validity of anything she’s said. But we can also ask ourselves, what function does this article serve? Especially when it won’t be read by the people who supposedly need to change their behaviour.

The debate echoes that on race. And it’s hard one, because science and convention demand that if you discover something fundamentally different about a particular strain of society, you publish it. Yet, even if others are different, is it always helpful to point this out? In the same way we wouldn’t dream of staring at a handicapped person, labeling a whole race or country is a dangerous game. Give a dog a bad name…

Neutrality is easy to explain, harder to practice. Does relativism offer answers, or just a little extra leeway?