A recent article on BuddhaJones said:

"[Daisaku] Ikeda coined the term 'creative criticism' in his dialogue with Gorbachev. Furthermore, he stated that cultural relativism creates an attitude that everything is 'right,' hence nothing matters. This attitude is essentially an irresponsible expression of nihilism, and it destroys the creativity of people."

Now, a definition of cultural relativism from www.PhilosophyofReligion.info dead link:

"Cultural relativism is the view that all ethical truth is relative to a specified culture. According to cultural relativism, it is never true to say simply that a certain kind of behavior is right or wrong; rather, it can only ever be true that a certain kind a behavior is right or wrong relative to a specified society."

Contrary to popular belief, cultural relativism does not create an attitude that “nothing matters.” Cultural relativism creates the attitude that everything matters, that everyone matters. Cultural relativists respect the right (the necessity, actually) of all people to believe their beliefs fully. Cultural relativists understand that the cultures we are born and raised in create important differences in us that are to be respected and valued. Other peoples’ worldviews, while we may not hold them ourselves, are as valid as our own, no more, no less.

Human beings often place what’s called negative attributions onto things they do not understand. In other words, when confronted with something new, something that does not make immediate sense to them, people tend to make the assumption that this new thing does not make sense at all, that it is based in something foolish or meaningless. What human beings often fail to do is to assume that they personally have a limited understanding of any new situation and that they might best be served by approaching new situations with the attitude that they have something to learn, rather than an attitude of judging its goodness or badness.

It bothers me when leaders and pundits equate cultural relativism with nihilism. (As if people don’t have the right to be nihilists.) This sets the stage for these leaders and their followers to claim moral superiority over others. No one can prove categorically that his or her belief is the ultimate reality of the universe. One can only believe and have faith in what they believe. The moment you close off the possibility that others’ viewpoints are just as valid as yours, you begin a process of belittling other human beings. You start to believe that your preferences are moral imperatives rather than simply your own preferences.

Western missionaries who felt that they had the God-given duty to bring Christianity to indigenous North Americans held such beliefs. So does and Buddhist leader who believes he or she can decide for others the meaning of “pertinent dialogue.” Once one begins to think that one’s belief is most “correct” and should be held by all people, then one judges people by the degree to which their beliefs match the “correct” belief. This is a self-centered way of looking at the world, hidden beneath an external shell of morality. A person who thinks this way can launch myriad attacks on others while claiming, “I’m only trying to do what’s best for them.”

People who think this way and who are given any power feel quite justified in behaving in all sorts of ways to make others conform to their beliefs. They also are willing to discard people who do not.

It is in the struggle to deeply understand and respect others’ views that we as human beings can create new syntheses of ideas that are born of deep collaboration with those who are different.

Let’s look more deeply into what a cultural relativistic approach to life looks like and how it creates new understanding between people. Say for example that Betty says, “It’s BLACK,” and Willy says, “It’s WHITE.”

Mark, who is not a cultural relativist, whom we might call a monoculturalist, would say that either Betty or Willy is right. It’s either black or white. Monocultural Mark would make his choice as to the rightness or wrongness of Betty or Willy based on his own cultural values. Of course, Mark doesn’t know that that’s what he’s doing. He thinks he just knows “the way things should be.” Betty Black and Willy White are also choosing their stances based on their cultural preferences.

If Monocultural Mark happens to be a leader or pundit with some power or influence, he may proceed to try and manipulate Betty and Willy into choosing either black or white based on his own preference, all the while thinking he’s doing what’s “right.” In the end, either Betty or Willy loses out. Mark simply throws his weight in with the one he agrees with and the one he doesn’t agree with is outnumbered.

If Monocultural Mark sees himself as some sort of peacemaker, he may try to set up a compromise whereby Betty and Willy both choose a shade of gray that they can live with, and call it a successful compromise. Of course, neither one gets what she or he wants then.

Let’s say that into this stark mix comes Rita. You guessed it; she’s a cultural relativist. Her first question would be to ask, “Why do we have to have one answer for this? If Betty and Willy are content with the way they see the world, what is the argument about?” If Betty and Willy do have to come to an agreement, she might say “Is it possible, when seen through our different worldview lenses, that this thing is both black AND white?”

And here is where cultural relativism really gets creative; Rita might help everyone explore the fact that, on the color spectrum, if you break the shades black and white into their constituent parts, they actually contain every possible color and tone that the human eye can see. Buried within Betty and Willy’s black and white argument, and beneath Mark’s “shade of gray” compromise, lies every single possible color.

As a cultural relativist, Rita would help to make them aware of their vastly greater options. It would then be up to them to decide what choices they may want to make. If they ultimately cannot choose together, that is not some failure; it is simply two people who have different preferences and would be better served finding like-minded people rather than arguing with each other. Still, there would be no reason for each of them to feel disrespectful of the other. In fact, though Betty and Willy may never agree, the process that Rita has shared with them has most likely created understanding and respect between them that will be a powerful bond, even in their differences.

Does this seem unrealistic? It happened between pro-life and right-to-choose activists in Boston a few years ago. There was such a violent clash between the two camps that they sat down to try to work things out. In the end, both sides came out actually more convinced of their own positions on abortion, but they did come to an important understanding; each side held the safety of the young girls caught in the abortion argument as tantamount, and even though they had strong feelings about the issue of abortion, they were able to work together to help insure the girls’ safety.

Discarding cultural relativism is the death knell of humanism. Humanism is the belief that each individual can decide what’s best for him or her. When we begin to be “right” and others “wrong” about important worldview beliefs, humanism ceases to live within our thinking. We can now decide what will make others happy rather than accepting and respecting what they want to make them happy. We have moved from “Value Creation” to “Value Imposition,” where we impose our values upon others.

To assert the “wrongness” of cultural relativism is to deaden the critical thought process and serve to seduce people into believing the moral superiority of a belief, practice or organization.

And, of course, I’m absolutely right about that.