My Morals vs. Your Morals

When I first starting reading the article “The Challenge of Cultural Relativism” I thought I really agreed with everything it was saying. Now, I was only on the first page, but I liked the idea of having an open mind, not judging others, and that “if we assume that our ideas of right and wrong will be shared by all peoples at all times, we are merely naive.” But, as I continued reading, I realized that Cultural Relativism was not what I truly believed. The article introduced me to things I have never really thought about before. I really liked how the article asked why people did the things they do, and how it showed how everyone’s morals actually are similar in a way. I thought it was extremely interesting when the author explained the reasons for actions, like the infanticide and the society that does not eat cows. I would have never thought of that as in depth as this did.
This article can connect to Things Fall Apart, since it is a strange tribe to us that does not follow our society’s morals. In our society, we would view some of the things they do as strange, and some people will judge them on it. For example, having multiple wives and leaving twins in the forest to die are not exactly good things in the U.S. But, there is more of a reason on why they have these beliefs that not everyone outside of the tribe understands. This is explained through the article in “How All Cultures Have Some Values in Common.”
I think it could be easy to find the challenges of cultural relativism throughout our society today. “We fear what we don’t understand.” This quote popped in my head while reading the article. And it’s true. People will see a society different from their own, say, the Muslim religion, and since they have different morals, some people judge them on it. They think what they do is strange, when in fact, it’s quite similar to a lot of other religions. They worship a god. They just do it differently than, say, Christians. I also was intrigued by the quote “there are some moral rules that all societies will have in common, because those rules are necessary for society to exist.” If we agreed to the rules of cultural relativism, then we would not be able to survive. I doubt there would be any laws because if someone did something illegal, then they could just say it was part of their beliefs, so it was ok. Like with WWII, if people just let all those Jews get killed because they didn't want to judge that society for their beliefs, then it would not have ended well.
I still do agree with some parts of Cultural Relativism, just not every aspect of it, which is why I enjoyed how the article ended with the quote, “There are important points, not to be taken lightly. But we can accept these points without going on to accept the whole theory.”