Cultural Relativism Response

The world is comprised of thousands of cultures, which are all special in their own unique way. Centuries of endless molding and changing of a culture by ancestors has contributed to the pride that people have in them and reluctance to change. Similar to King Darius I, when comparing the customs of a personal culture to another, components of the other may be thought of as taboo. Considering that people grow and are being trained to condition culturally to the customs of a culture since birth, it is expected that foreign customs may be thought of as immoral or unethical. However, the importance of the relativity of one culture to another is discovering that one cannot factually be considered better than the other. People most develop more open minds and the only way to do so is to understand that our beliefs are the result of cultural conditioning and these conditions vary across the world. People's feelings towards a culture are not actually perceptions of the truth because of their cultural conditioning.
This issue can be related to the novel Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, and Okonkwo's secure reluctance to accept the Christian culture that was "invading" his native land. If Okonkwo would understand that his native culture is not necessarily better than that of the Christians, his feelings of misunderstanding would not have led to his suicidal downfall.
Altogether, I believe that the discovery of this from many prejudice people in the world would diminish any hardships that are caused because one group of people is different than the other. If Hitler would have only discovered that the German people are not better than the Jewish, the killing of millions of innocent individuals would have been avoided. Currently, misunderstandings of other cultures continues to be an issue in our society, and people must learn to accept the customs of different people in order for a more unified world.


Darius I, King of Persia was fascinated with the cultural differences around the world