Ethnocentric Schmethnocentric

Posted on May 13, 2011 by Tito

Or, why I don’t care about ethnocentrism.

When pronouncing judgement on the practices of another country, it isn’t uncommon to be accused of “ethnocentrism”. I believe this term is worse than useless: it is a package deal attempt to surpress debate and cripple judgement.

The real problem with this word is that it starts with “ethno”, as in “ethnicity”. Ethnicity is a muddy concept that I tend to avoid, but is generally understood to mean some sort of social grouping based on tradition.

  • an ethnic quality or affiliation resulting from racial or cultural ties; “ethnicity has a strong influence on community status relations”
    -Princeton

The problem with the concept “ethnicity” is that it packages together the ideas of culture and race. As such, it tends to leave out the crucial distinction that culture is something chosen by individuals, and race is not. This is a pretty important distinction to make, because when we don’t make it we are able to label those who judge other cultures as racist.

“Ethnocentric” certainly implies this: it implies that a particular judgement is simply the product of your ethnicity, a different ethnicity might reach a totally different judgement. To be unwilling to tolerate such differences in “ethnicity” is to be intolerant of other people, it is to be racist.

This is egalitarian nonsense that I have several objections to:

  1. It is, ironically, racist. Not racist in the “judging another culture” way, but in the “black people are stupid” way. The implication is: “Who are Group X to hold these ideas? They have their own X ideas, we couldn’t possibly attempt to persuade them of our Y ideas, that would be denying them the right to carry on doing X things”.
  2. Ideas are wrong or right. Judaism is worthless nonsense (there is no god) that drives people to mutilate their children’s penises. Islam is a justification and motivation for intolerable barbarism. Christianity is an irrational book of fairy tales supported by psychologically crippling institutions that cover up the sexual assault of children. Nazism and communism are disgusting dispensations of the individual which lead to a bloodbath.
    Other ways of life aren’t just “different” – they are either better, or worse, for human beings. To suggest that other people ought to live in inhuman conditions (such as Shari’ah law or Maoism) in order to preserve some tradition is not being humane: it is to suggest that humans are not individual actors, but pieces in a cultural museum for us to gawk at. Humanity is not a zoo – individuals must be respected, to hell with tradition!
  3. Groups can’t choose ideas. Somebody doesn’t think and act a certain way because they belong to a certain group, they do it because they choose to. Either one chooses to critically evaluate and select his philosophy (which may well involve rejecting the culture he was born into) – or he chooses to passively absorb the ideas around him. Either way, he has made a decision for himself.
  4. It is profoundly arrogant. “One cannot judge other cultures” means: “One cannot judge other ideas”. This amounts to saying “No cultural sentiment can be called true or false, except this very proposition which is always true”.

This is accepted because “ethnicity” is a package deal. It encompasses race (which is no basis for judging other human beings, since they do not choose it and it has no external or internal relevance) and culture (which is the primary basis for justing others, since it is volitional and has massive external and internal relevance.)

We should judge other cultures critically, and we should not judge other races. I am proudly “culture-centric”: the western way of life is better. I am also emphatically anti-racist: race has zero bearing on the merits, virtues or vices of an individual. These views are not incompatible, they are direct corollaries of one another that follow from one observation: individuals matter.

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  • booortz

    The author says that culture is chosen by individuals, which is a shaky proposition to begin with given everything we know about psychology and anthropology. Then, he says that individuals choose between critical evaluation or passive absorption. He thinks Western civilization is the best.

    So, by his logic, the vast majority of the world who isn’t Western has an inferior culture, by the choosing of its individuals. Thus, they must either as ethnic groups be inclined towards passivity, or have inferior critical evaluation skills in the case that they choose to use them.

    If individuals choose their culture, all that’s left to influence their passivity or critical evaluation skills and choosing between them is genetics. So the author is essentially saying that the West is genetically, racially superior in terms of non-passivity and critical evaluation skills.

    Ironically, he thinks the anti-ethnocentrists are the racist ones, this is what happens when you don’t interconnect and extrapolate your logic to its conclusions. It isn’t hard in this case, he just needs to ask himself “Okay, if Western Culture is the best, and people choose their own culture, then why did everyone outside of Europeans make inferior choices?”

    As an added bonus, he cites as terrible individual choices Communism and Nazism, two creations of the West, as well as Christianity, the West’s defining religion. If he’s really a fan of Western culture, he’s only speaking of a cherrypicked subset. So right here we see that he really is acknowledging good and bad elements of his own culture. So either he finds no value in other cultures at all, or he acknowledges that there are good and bad in all ones. If the latter, then he is in fact multiculturalist.

    Maybe he’s trying to say “Well, there’s good and bad in all, but Western is on average the most good.” in such case he’s advocating a very loose, weak ethnocentric cheerleading, his entitlement to say “We’re number one! *” which is so pointless I’m not sure why he bothered to write this.

    His very core belief, that individuals must critically evaluate their surroundings and individually choose their personal “culture”, amounts to a rejection of ethnocentrism, which is a bias towards assuming your native cultural models are superior, a definitively NON-critical evaluation. So either

    A) He has been passively absorbing Western Culture and is an ethnocentric who false believes he’s been critically evaluating it with an even hand

    B) He has critically evaluated Western Culture and found it to be the best, believes that all people choose their culture, and so implicitly concludes that non-European peoples have poor critical thinking skills or are prone to passivity.

    • http://www.sarrionandia.com Tito

      Reproduced from Reddit:

      Actually, I’m not a fan of much of western culture: it is superior, but imperfect. Western was, indeed, a cherry picked subset to mean the type of rights respecting cultures found in the USA and Europe (but also in Japan, Australia, etc.)
      With regards to statistics: it is clear that the vast majority of people give little thought to ethics and epistemology, as such they become passive absorbers of philosophy. The kind of ideas one passively receives (through family, peers, media, literature, etc.) is obviously heavily influenced by the people around you. That is, if you choose to be uncritical and you live with Scientologists, you are going to absorb some pretty strange ideas. If you live a normal life in a rights respecting country, you will probably absorb some form of philosophy that respects rights to some degree. If you live in Iran, however, you are likely to absorb a hatred of women, amongst other things. Given that the vast majority of people do not critically analyse personal philosophy, the philosophy of their peers is the most statistically relevant factor. It isn’t, however, the most potent factor – as the potential to evaluate always remains open.