It Is All About Perspective

In class this month we have argued over whether the characters we have been reading about are heroes or not.  There was a great deal of disagreement when it came to Oknokwo; he is defined as a modern hero but can we view him as a hero?  People brought up the point that he beat his wife and he never helped others.  Though if you look at the definition of a modern hero he fits.  He is a character that has weakness.  In the article "The Challenge of Cultural Relativism" two of the arguments stuck out to me.  The first is the one right in the first paragraph about the differences in societies.  One believes that you should eat your dead and another is disgusted by the idea.  It does not make one belief wrong and the other belief right.  This is the way people grew up it is their culture. In Psychology class we studied the difference between sensation and perception.  Sensation is the same for every person it is what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste.  Perception on the other hand is how you process this sensation.  Is what you see pleasant or is it revolting or something in between.  The second argument in the article that provoked my interest was in "The Consequences of Taking Cultural Relativism Seriously."  The first consequence it listed was about not judging others customs to be morally inferior to our own.  When I first read this I agreed completely; people may be different but they have their own morals and it is not our right to interfere.  Once I read their explanation I had a change of heart.  Their example was about the Holocaust according to this rule it would have been morally wrong of us to interfere with what the Nazi's were doing to the Jews. This made me contemplate what is the line for when you can judge another's culture.  I think this is why humans judge others instinctively; it is the choice to not act upon these judgements or to act upon them that matters.  This brought me back to Thing Fall Apart.  The class judged Oknokwo as not being a hero because he hurt others although we did grudgingly beseech him the fact that he was a hero to his own society.  We took own judgements and each of us individually decided if we could pass up our moral judgements to allow him to be a hero.