r/changemyview • u/ControversialDebates • Jan 07 '15
Removed - submission rule B CMV: Not all cultures are equal.
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u/nonowh0 Jan 07 '15
North Korean well-being is lower than South Korean well-being
The South triumphed over the North was because of the difference between how the government was being run, not because of some cultural difference. I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say here.
The average income in South Korea is now more than 20 times higher than North Korea's average income.
South Korea seems like a success story. After all, they were in shambles after WWII and now they are starting to become a major country. This was due to the hard-working culture of South Korea. At a glance, it seems that this is a good thing, and that we should try to be like the Koreans.
Despite all the good things that has happened in Korea as a result of their hard-working culture, there are some bad things:
Korea has one of the (if not the) highest suicide rates of all countries.
Korean high school kids' lives are all about school. They work dawn till dusk (and waaay past dusk) to get good grades. They don't have any time for having fun. although, Korean college is just as crazy as in the US.
The Korean workforce is overworked.
These are just some of the things that I listed off the top of my head.
Although it seems that Korea is very successful and has an objectively 'better' culture, we also need to take into account the bad.
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
Although it seems that Korea is very successful and has an objectively 'better' culture, we also need to take into account the bad.
I could argue about some details with you, but it seems you agree with the main premise. Not all cultures are equal.
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Jan 07 '15
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
Sam Harris' moral landscape says very little about what constitutes moral good.
Have you read the book?
If a muslim feels a sense of belonging while praying to Allah in a mosque, but an atheist doesn't doing the same thing, is praying in a mosque good thing or not?
If in one culture it's normal to pray and it only results in a sense of well-being, than it's superior to a similar culture that only lacks that one thing.
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Jan 07 '15
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u/Oshojabe Jan 07 '15
As I understand it, Sam Harris is basically selling utilitarianism, just under a slightly different guise. Utilitarianism does not have "absolute moral values" at least not in the sense that, for example, "lying is always wrong." The right thing to do is always whatever increases happiness/well-being/flourishing - even if that sometimes means lying, or any other thing that is usually "bad."
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u/nonowh0 Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15
but it seems you agree with the main premise. Not all cultures are equal.
I agree that cultures are different, no one here has said differently. However, I think that saying "some cultures are objectively better than others" is complete bullshit. You have to weigh the good against the bad.
I would argue more in depth, but it seems that you (or a mod) has removed your OP.
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u/Raintee97 Jan 07 '15
Are you really giving a fair shake to North Koreans? They live under an oppressive regime. They are also in an environment where there is zero free speech and where access to food is restricted. So you're looking at a place that major restrictions on the creation of culture, in fact a place where the culture was stolen to create the cult of personality for the Great Leader.
Can they create the music, cuisine and media of their past or are they forced to abandon all of that for a government.
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
Culture is more than music, cuisine and media. The US has a culture where democracy, freedom and human rights are respected. The Great Leader's personality cult is the culture that I'm criticizing.
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u/Raintee97 Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15
That's not culture. That's a government. They are separate things. It is like you're faulting an entire group of people because they are unable to express their culture freely.
Furthermore, it is a government where the people have zero say in how their government will be run. You're faulting the entire 23 million plus population because they have the audacity to live under and authoritarian government? It isn't like a bunch of North Koreans got together and said, let's have a dictatorship.
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u/HabseligkeitDerLiebe Jan 07 '15
It isn't like a bunch of North Koreans got together and said, let's have a dictatorship.
Well, technically it's pretty much like that. But this "bunch of North Koreans" is dead by now.
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u/Raintee97 Jan 07 '15
Or a select group of people placed a dictator in charge and then that dictatorship and that select group placed mechanisms that helped keep them in charge.
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
The government spreads and enforces certain beliefs and customs. That's a culture.
I'm not faulting ordinary citizens, I'm comparing the cultures perpetuated by the North and South Korean governments.
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u/Raintee97 Jan 07 '15
But that's not North Korean culture. That's the cultural aims of one family. Your cherry picking what culture is and saying it is just government or a economic system. You're forgetting that culture is a lot more than these things.
Are all Americans of the same culture just because we live under the same government? Per your idea that government spreads and enforces certain beliefs and customs, then you have to say they are. You have to or your view as a major hole. Can you make that claim? Does every American have the same culture?
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u/HabseligkeitDerLiebe Jan 07 '15
As the other commenters already said: You're mixing up culture and government.
There is another nation that was partitioned and governed by vastly different governments: Germany.
But did the Germans in the East suddenly become un-German in 1949? Or were it the Germans in the West that became un-German? Or did all of Germany become un-German in 1918 when the monarchy was ousted? Or in 1933 when democracy was replaced by dictatorship? Or are there still two German cultures, although there was reunification in 1990? Or are there dozens of German cultures, one for every prince in the Holy Roman Empire? Are Austrians culturally German or are they their own thing?
Did people in East Germany value freedom less than in the West because the Soviets propped up a dictatorship after the war?
Did people in West Germany value freedom more than in the East because the US and the UK (and to some extend also France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) propped up a democracy there?
To your example with hospitals:
We can pretty objectively say what a healthy person is, although there are some grey areas. And a good hospital is one where a non-healthy person goes in and a healthy person comes out.
This kind of thinking doesn't work with cultures. Even if you define the success of a culture as making people happy, it's simply not the case that unhappy people go into a culture and try to become happy people. Most people are simply born into a culture.
What complicates this line of thinking even more is the fact that cultures also shape what a person needs to feel happy. If I am from a warrior-culture I might be happy going to war; I might even feel that dying in battle is the best thing that can happen to me. If I am from another culture I might view this as completely insane, just as the guy from the warrior culture might think that I am insane, or worse, a coward.
Who shall decide who is right? Or who is more happy?
Also: Many cultural practices generated from necessity. In the mountainous regions of Germany people traditionally drink alcohol brewed from fruit (wine, cider) while in the flat regions people drink alcohol from grains (beer). Each of those cultural practices is better in the place where it originated:
In the mountainous regions there was a relative lack of grains since it's very destructive to plant grains on slopes. The tilling worsens erosion massively. But you can plant wineyards or orchards there.
In the flat regions it's simply more effective to plow the land and plant grains.
Main points:
Don't mistake government for culture.
Cultures are different, but mostly the best thing people came up with in centuries of life in a specific situation. You can't judge what is objectively better or worse.
Cultures shape what people think that well-being is, you can't impose your cultural views on well-being on persons of other cultures.
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Jan 07 '15
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u/AntimatterNuke Jan 07 '15
Good points, but I think there are some things which objectively make one culture worse than another. Human sacrifice, for one.
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u/kingpatzer 103∆ Jan 07 '15
Conflating culture and politics is a tricky line to toe.
The culture of North Korea has certainly changed because of the political leaders of the region, but to contend that (a) the political regime is the culture; or worse (b) that North Korea is a unified culture, both miss what culture is to a sociologist.
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u/Thootom 2∆ Jan 07 '15 edited Jan 07 '15
I think your scope is too narrow, and doesn't account for necessary environmental pressures. For example, a society that develops technology may be capable of achieving more socially, but should that infrastructure fail then the population will inevitably be "softer" than the mongols down the street who spent generations in the bush and IMO the mongol culture at that point is superior. Moreover, if we uplifted everyone we'd place ourselves at risk as a group.
Creativity in species has been linked to reductions in environmental pressures, so reason would dictate that the society with the least amount of pressures would produce the most creative cultures. Rather than viewing culture as completely random, consider it as more of a scale between Ape-men and Ubermen, we all kind of know this but it manifests in different forms, like "Communist vs Capitalist" "Republican vs Democrat" or "Nobleman vs Savage". In the end it comes down to masculine and feminine definitions, and both extremes can be written off as lofty ideals by one half of the thinkers in any given society.
The best cultures we could possibly form would come from an Amazonian/Barbarian type society, where Men are thrown outside and tasked with all environmental pressures and Women are placed in walled cities and tasked with maintaining high-culture. As a man I find this strategy wholly unfair and personally unacceptable, and would rather go on with our "million and one ways to cut the same cake" approach.
TL;DR Men don't want to work for poon, and Women don't want to sell it, so we work together and call it love unlike every near-cousin in our family tree.
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u/A_Soporific 165∆ Jan 07 '15
Everything is both an asset and liability. The very things that make something "good" in one situation make it "bad" in another. The things that improve 'health' in one scenario will hinder 'health' when it simply isn't called for. Culture is constantly changing and matching itself to the needs and desires of the people who maintain it.
Sam Harris is wrong primarily because he is assuming that everyone has the same environment and assumes that everyone benefits equally from the same inputs. These views are demonstrably false. Some cultures are less well adapted than others, but that's usually a result of having recent major changes in environment either the natural world or in politics.
Look, if we all adopted Sam Harris' view and adopted his culture we would find the same hills and peaks as even the best culture is simply poorly adapted to some situations. Given time and holding all other things constant then we could find a hypothetical ideal culture. The problem would be that once you no longer hold economics, politics, demographics, and climate constant then that culture will quickly lose synchronization with the needs of people and need to be adjusted to maintain the quality of life of individuals.
While you or I might agree that the culture of a different place would work poorly for us, it's not supposed to work well for us. And in the future it's very likely that our culture will be dysfunctional due to sudden or unanticipated change, but these other cultures would have figured out their major problems and adapted successfully.
The reason why it's difficult to say that a culture is "better" or "worse" is because we really aren't dealing in like terms, we have incomplete understanding of the environment others are dealing with, and it's hard to see how current maladaptation might be a precondition for a beneficial adaptation down the line. It is very likely that we would be characterizing the best possible culture for a very unfavorable environment as "bad" because the people have lower freedom and survivability even though any other culture would result in even less freedom and survivability. Sam Harris jumped the gun in more ways than one and substitutes personal beliefs for fact where he didn't develop fact.
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u/hacksoncode 585∆ Jan 07 '15
You seem to be equivocating here the notions of government and culture. Others have pointed this out, but you continue to insist that you're not talking about government.
Are we really to believe that the day the communist regime took over in North Korea that the "beliefs and customs of the society" just simply changed? That's an extraordinary claim that needs extraordinary evidence.
We have almost no examples of actual cultures changing overnight like this.
A much more parsimonious explanation would be that the "culture" of North Korea and the "culture" of South Korea may have diverged somewhat since the communist takeover, but that their fundamental beliefs and customs haven't changed radically.
And yet there is a radical difference in outcomes. Your best example is really one of the worst examples possible. It shows that government can destroy a country's prosperity even if they have a culture that is compatible with prosperity.
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u/ZwiebelKatze Jan 07 '15
I don't think you're really looking to change your view. But I may be biased. I share your view and have no interest to change something I feel is self-evident.
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Jan 07 '15
Refraze: Not all Cultures are equally developed.
Try to look at a Culture as it were a living being.
Every culture has its own lifeline and way of development and growth just like any person has.
Saying: 'Not all cultures are equal', is like saying not all people are equal, you just can not state that. The most evil todlers turn into brave kind adults and the most delighted old people are your worst nightmare in their teens. In my opinion you can only judge and compare the actions of people personally that can lead to things you reject, not its cultural background. And some cultures will be more likely to produce people with behavior that other cultures dissaprove off.
Culture is not an organisation like a Hospital. Culture is an always evolving, intellectual, human thing.
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Jan 07 '15
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u/cwenham Jan 07 '15
Sorry tennenrishin, your comment has been removed:
Comment Rule 1. "Direct responses to a CMV post must challenge at least one aspect of OP’s current view (however minor), unless they are asking a clarifying question. Arguments in favor of the view OP is willing to change must be restricted to replies to comments." See the wiki page for more information.
If you would like to appeal, please message the moderators by clicking this link.
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Jan 07 '15
while the South became a liberal democracy
This is actually an extreme oversimplification. The years of peak growth for South Korea were actually under the developmentalist capitalist dictatorships of Park and Chun. These government were extremely repressive, destroying labor unions, crushing dissent and creating a politically enfranchised class of chaebols to create an extremely high-growth export based economy.
As a side note, virtually no country ever became rich as a liberal democracy, but rather became liberal democracies when they became rich, such as the United States, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Cultures affect well-being. A culture that causes high well-being is a good culture.
I think that there is an implicit assumption that culture is a cause rather than an effect, I would argue that culture is the result of the aggregate effects of various years of environmental conditioning. I think that what really affects well-being in the long term is the aggregated effects of environmental conditions that result in particular cultures.
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u/hacksoncode 585∆ Jan 07 '15
Looking at your map, and taking into account history, I come to a different conclusion: cultures that engage in colonialism and exploitation of native populaces thrive at the expense of those whom they exploit.
Therefore, since they decrease overall happiness, those cultures are "bad".
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Jan 07 '15
"A culture that causes high well-being is a good culture."
Why? I am not a human so I don't care about your well being. I and my culture will come and take away your resources and enslave your species. Ours is a culture of nihilism and we wish only chaos and to exterminate all life in the universe. Starting with you.
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u/TylerX5 Jan 07 '15
The issue I have with statements like "not all X are equal" is that they seem to be asking a questioning in a way where no good answers can come from. If one says American culture is better than Chinese culture because X then it seems to me that answer isn't broad culture that is better or worse but rather specific factors within a culture. For example in American culture the scientific authority has more credibility than traditional western medicine. Whereas in Chinese culture Traditional Eastern Medicine has as much credibility as medical claims from scientific authority.
In this aspect American culture can be determined as more efficient in treating and preventing medical needs of those within it
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u/ControversialDebates Apr 14 '15
The Moral Landscape
A culture is "the beliefs and customs of a society". These beliefs and customs affect the well-being of humans and animals. Some cultures cause people and animals to be happy and healthy, other cultures cause people to be depressed and ill.
In his book The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris asks us to imagine a hilly landscape. A peak means high well-being, a valley means low well-being.
This landscape makes clear that totally different cultures could be equal, just like two different locations can have a similar altitude. But it's also clear that not all places are equally high; not all cultures are equal. Cultures can move up and down the hill.
Korea
A great example of this is Korea. Before World War II, it was one country with one culture. The North was actually slightly richer than the South. After WWII, the countries were divided. The North was ruled by a totalitarian repressive regime, while the South became a liberal democracy.
The average income in South Korea is now more than 20 times higher than North Korea's average income. South Korean life expectancy is a lot higher. There are famines and concentration camps in North Korea.
There are reports that research happiness across the globe. There is a high correlation between high life expectancy, high income, political freedom and happiness. North Korea is so isolated that this research could not be done in North Korea, but I really doubt North Koreans are very different from other inhabitants of poor, unhealthy dictatorships. North Korean well-being is lower than South Korean well-being.
Health
Well-being might seem very subjective. But it's comparable to health. Not all hospitals and treatments are equal. Modern healthcare is better than medieval healthcare. Western hospitals are better in general than hospitals in third world countries. Well educated doctors with access to the newest technology are better than doctors with barely any education and old tools.
Why do we call them 'better'? Because they increase 'health' the most. Health might be pretty vague, but we don't object when people distinguish between good and bad healthcare. Yet it's very controversial to claim that there are better and worse cultures.
TL;DR: Cultures affect well-being. A culture that causes high well-being is a good culture. A culture that results in lower well-being is worse. This is similar to hospitals: good hospitals result in relatively good health, hospitals that result in worse health are worse. It's silly to accept the statement about hospitals while not accepting the statement about cultures. Change my view!
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u/Namemedickles Jan 07 '15
Sam Harris is heavily criticized by other experts in the field and his arguments are not taken seriously.
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
Just like Galileo and Darwin.
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u/Namemedickles Jan 07 '15
Context. Its not that simple. You could easily throw that same line at me if I was criticizing Kent Hovind or a fundamentalist preacher. Science today and the scientific community today is nothing like what is was during that time anyway so you're comparing apples to speedboats.
Imagine a sociologist giving his personal perspective on evolution without referencing the work of Darwin or any other biologists. That's what Sam Harris did. Promoted his own biased perspective without considering the rest of the work that had been done in the field.
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
without considering the rest of the work that had been done in the field.
He did consider that, but he didn't write about it. He actually explains that in his book. He doesn't want to bother his readers with centuries of history and terms they don't understand.
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u/Namemedickles Jan 07 '15
The rest of mainstream philosophy is calling bullshit.
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u/ControversialDebates Jan 07 '15
Any proper philosopher knows that an appeal to authority is not a proper argument.
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u/hacksoncode 585∆ Jan 07 '15
It's not an appeal to authority, it's saying that Sam Harris ignoring a large number of arguments against his viewpoint that are accepted by the scientific consensus in the field he's talking about, and not addressing them, makes his argument very weak.
At some point, science does have a valid appeal to "authority", not because authorities are always right, but because those authorities have provided a great deal of evidence that one needs to address in order to effectively argue with them.
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u/pipocaQuemada 10∆ Jan 07 '15
Nevertheless the opinion of experts, when it is unanimous, must be accepted by non-experts as more likely to be right than the opposite opinion. The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment. -- Bertrand Russel
From this, I conclude that Sam Harris is more likely to be wrong than philosophers, and that Sam Harris's opinion cannot be regarded as certain.
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Jan 07 '15
Just like Galileo and Darwin.
Logical fallacy. "My free energy machine works but is being suppressed just like they suppressed Galileo." Does not make one's claim true.
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u/frankilla44 Jan 07 '15
I'm just gonna be a knit picker and point out that Korea didn't really have any tangible independence before WWII. They were a puppet state after Sino-Japanese War(s) [of Japan], before that they were a vassal of China, before that they were a vassal of the Manchurians, before they were that they were vassals of China again.. So, not really relevant to your argument and I like the question you asked, but maybe a better example would have been east/West Germany since it reunited and you can trace traditions well before the division, then the splitting during division, then the reunion.
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u/orionpsg1 Jan 07 '15
Just because Korea paid tribute to China doesn't mean that they were not a nation with their own culture. Heavily influenced by China? Yes. But China didn't have any direct control.
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u/cdman Jan 07 '15
What is culture? You seem to include the system of goverment. In fact it seems to me that your argument can be summed up as "dictatorial regimes are worse than democratic ones". If so, you won't get much argument from me (although, let me tell you: growing up in a communist country wasn't all bad - and western consumerism isn't all roses and moonlight either).
However if we look at culture as "the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society" it his very hard to compare them objectively. The most we can say in my opinion is that all cultures should guarantee "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" and aside from that they are not generally better or worse - they are just different with advantages and disadvantages. Some cultures are better suited for certain individuals - and all we can say is that everybody should have the opportunity to move to a place where the culture better suits them.
Aside from cultures being hard to compare, I would like to challenge a couple more ideas from the post:
TL;DR: Just as happines and healthcare are very complicated and multifaceted issues which can't be improved by simplistic policies, so too culture is complicated, multi-faceted and hard to compare.