Ethics: Right or Wrong

Throughout history, all around the world, people have been challenging the beliefs and actions of other societies. It has led to wars, religious persecution, slavery, and the inhumane treatment of our fellow man. Because of their ethnicity, gender, religion, or even geographic location, many have been cruelly marked by others. They were set on a path of destiny they could not change. All of it was committed in the name of tradition. The tradition that pushed one to commit such horrible acts and the tradition of another to innocently fall.

The idea that another person or culture is subjected to cruelties, simply due to their beliefs, is sickening to me. We have a moral obligation to our own society and to others in need. An obligation that does not stop at a border, at a shoreline, or on the lines of gender, race, religion, or any other group of people. Being given more than I can use and striving for more, lays the burden on my shoulders to help those in need up. To pick up anyone who falls along the journey, all in the name of morality and humanity.

“A Defense of Moral Relativism” by Ruth Benedict, examines morality. For Benedict, morality is cultural specific and not determined by outside influences. Her study of the Dobuan not sharing their food or yam seeds with their own family members is against everything we believe to be humane. For them however, it is something that is a strong tradition, an anchor for their existence.

How can such a practice be condoned or perceived as an anchor for their existence? Watching your neighbor suffer because you want to see yours thrive, is selfish to the core. It is wrong, immoral and unacceptable to allow such behaviors to continue. We are essentially allowing others to decide who dies all in the name of seeds or food.

William Graham Sumner’s “A Defense of Cultural Relativism” analyzes the folkways, or traditions and practices handed down, in ours and others societies. Sumner summarizes this stance...