Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Non-assignment thoughts: Ethnocentrism

Thoughts about ideas brought up during school have been piling up in my head.

HS101's topic about ethnocentrism got me thinking. Ethnocentrism is defined as 'the tendency to use our own cultural values, ideas, and rules as a starting point for thinking about and judging other people.' It can often lead to the condemnation and punishment of others who have differing values. It tends to lead to the dehumanizing of outsiders within our own perception; this attitude makes it hard for us to see other people's points of view.

Ethnocentrism is admitted to be a natural tendency of human beings, but at the same time it is unambiguously characterized as a lack of awareness, a negative trait... I think that it's important to objectively question our beliefs and ideals, but assuming that we find resolutions to these questions, there comes a point when you either cease to question or you simply doubt for the sake of ritual.

To avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism, we should actively discern between matters of preference and matters that require complete adherence to, so that irrational conflict does not occur over pointless matters. As much as is feasible, the boundaries of our shared values should extend to include as many people as possible, recognizing whatever may be universally common between human beings. Shared values can theoretically fall into two categories:

- Values that are discovered to be shared in some form or another by the vast majority of civilizations in the world.
- Values that we choose to agree upon, regardless of whether a 'universal mandate' has been proven to exist or not.

After we've thought hard about these questions and come to conclusions, there ought to come a time when we embrace these ideas in a most ethnocentric manner. Ethnocentrism has often encouraged the rationalization of inhumanity and oppression, but leading a life in constant doubt of the concreteness of values is only going to encourage debased humanity and reckless freedom. There is a fine line between sincere searching for answers and rationalization, not by value judgments but by the lack of them.

Ethnocentric thought and relativistic thought should each have their seasons in our lives. The value of ethnocentrism is not just social cohesion/sense of belonging, nor is it simply a way for us to feel anchored or make sense of things; ethnocentrism provides a sort of moral energy that propels us to action. The Charon readings emphasize the relations between ethnocentrism and destructive conflict. However, it should be accepted that ethnocentric expectations of oneself can be beneficial to others. If one's ethnocentrism demands charity and personal sacrifice, the results can be food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, and encouragement for the destitute.

My personal view is that successively better-educated generations are becoming more interested in questioning the basic assumptions of their social lives and ideologies. However, if you take a look at the key ideas in Charon's text, one of them is, "Values are matters of preference, and it is impossible to prove that certain ones are the true ones for all to follow." This statement is being pronounced as an intellectual, enlightened, and objective viewpoint; the trouble is that statements like this discursively shape the idea that real, universally held values are not substantial, and they can be easily be misinterpreted as, "There isn't really such a thing as right or wrong."

I believe that the assumption should always be held that, somewhere within collective mess of this world's clashing values, there are values that are innate (waiting to be discovered). Objective observation and questioning is the way that we can work towards discovering these values, and ethnocentric adherence to what values we have on hand should be what takes place when it becomes unreasonable to question further.

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