Cultural Relativism Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Cultural Relativism - Essay Example the word itself in layman’s dialect means all cultures are equal and no culture is above another, and we should tolerate the differences that make up our cultures. Today’s cultures are engaging in closer interactions that results in ethnocentrism, which is the negative attitude towards a different culture and cultural relativism, which is attributed to bringing about positive association with different cultures. As a way of acclimatizing to the rapidly changing societal world, cultural relativism has proved to be the rather a proficient doctrine. However, it was brought to the public limelight as a solution to the Nazi holocaust aftermath where therapy proved unreliable. Nazism took form as another cultural practice and the victims had to practice cultural relativism (Nkeonye, 1994). That approach among many others has proved that cultural relativism fails in moral theory scrutiny. Cultural practices like slavery and genocide have no moral theory grounds to be accepted among the ideals and ideas of cultural relativism. The major problems of cultural relativism are between two cultures; modern and western culture. The modern cultures, be it in religion or government, is abusing the notions of cultural relativism to use social unrest for their benefit simply because it will be understood as a cultural practice when it is clearly immorality. This is a problem of cultural relativism in many ways according to whichever perspective you may prefer. Societal moral standards are being violated and are excused under the notion of cultural relativism. Nkeonye (1994) points out clearly cases such as the media, using the cultural acceptance notion to make pornography acceptable to our children. For instance, today every production obviously violates moral standards. This is a problem simply for the reason that the western cultures are misusing cultural relativism notions to advance the beneficial agenda of a few; thus utterly violating everything. Research indicates