Relativism Blog

Relativism according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativism "is the idea that some element or aspect of experience or culture is relative to dependent on, some other element or aspect." In other words, if you believe in relativism, you would believe that in another culture, no matter what they are doing, we don't have the right to stop them or tell them it's wrong. If you don't believe in relativism then its the opposite. If some other culture is doing something you think is wrong, you would think that no matter what culture they are from its wrong no matter what, and other people have the right to stop them or tell them so.
For example, in class, Mr. Viles told us that in Borneo, they have a ritual ceremony where they kill babies, which wasn't true but we all believed it. The first thing that came to my mind was that that was disgusting and horrible. Of course somebody else has the right to go over there and tell them that killing living breathing human beings is wrong. I think that if it involves killing live things then we have the right to tell them it's wrong. But if it was something they were doing that wasn't harming anything in any way we wouldn't have ANY right to tell them what to do.
I think Relativism is a really good approach to ethics because that's what it's all about, deciding whats right and what's wrong, and deciding what you personally think is right and wrong.