They believe that it could lead to false assumptions about cultural differences. In turn, ethnocentrism can distort communication between the human populations. In ethnocentric societies, they believe that they are superior amongst the rest of the world. They show an unnecessary amount of pride of their culture and contempt of outsiders. Ethnocentric societies can get too extreme and start harassing other societies that they feel is inferior to them.
Now it is considered offensive and unusual, therefore deviant. It can be difficult to give a clear definition of deviance as a lot of it depends on people’s values and opinions. What one person views as deviant behaviour another may view as normal. Also deviant behaviour is not always bad; there is good and odd deviant behaviour. This makes it harder to define as classifying behaviour requires taking a moral standpoint and judging.
Culture is shared norms and values and ways of interacting that bind together members of society or some other collection of people together. Across cultures, the classification systems differ, e.g. in west, it is abnormal to hear voices but in some religions hearing voices can be desirable. A lot of diagnosing is to do with social norms, however these can easily change over time or space. The DSM and similar books are often made in western society so they can’t be used correctly in eastern societies making them culturally biased.
If a person was to be seen violating the cultural norms, they would be described as acting abnormally. There are different Standards which are used to determine if a person’s behaviour is abnormal. They include: Deviance from the statistical standard is often used to judge if an individual’s behaviour is abnormal. This is because it involves comparing an individual’s behaviour with how other people behave within the same culture. Normal behaviour may differ from one culture to another, as each culture has their own norms and values which they adhere to.
Drabble is correct to argue that people tend to ignore truth in order to follow societal standards. In today's world it is often difficult to adjust to one type of lifestyle or another. The constant bombardments of outside opinions hamper our ability to choose and be comfortable with a certain way of living. Therefore, blind conformity is actually a molding of what is said to be normal in society instead of using differences to enhance humans. The malicious acts committed by Malcolm X reflect the idea that people ignore truth to conform to society.
The rejecting of a change of perspective is most likely because the person is afraid of the unknown, afraid to step out of their comfort zone and change the way they have been living and perceiving things around them; however, just because something has been the way it is, doesn’t make it acceptable. Sometimes it’s the realisation that the first perspective was wrong in a way, one that was influencing and clouding one’s judgement in a bad way, for example, precedence against certain races or cultures. Changing perspective is defined as the change of how an individual sees something or someone, an altering of their preconceived beliefs, thoughts or opinions. Sometimes this change in perspective might only be something minor such as what they want for lunch or if they like the plant outside in the garden, on the other hand, it can be something more significant for example, their opinion on a different races and cultures. The effect that a change of perspective can have on someone depends on who experiences it; these changes affect everyone in all sorts of different ways.
Another weakness is the consequences, in some situations when consequences are too severe that many think it is better to break a rule than allow awful thing to happen. The theory is too rigid, sometimes the consequences can change the rightness or a wrongness of an action, but in this theory the person is judged on the action which can be unfair. It’s inflexible as you should be able to break a rule if the individual’s circumstances warrant it. There is no consideration to human emotion, there are situation where individuals break rules because of emotions, for example if a person is scared they may lie to protect themselves which in Kant’s eyes this would be morally wrong. The theory is a priori, some claim we out our duty a priori but it is also argued we need to refer to experience to work out what is right.
Within the meaning of ethical relativism we can derive two theses: cultural relativism and the dependency thesis. Ethical relativism is a problematic theory because there are so many differences within cultures, and individual choices might not always be morally right choices. Because of this, what is culturally acceptable is not always morally right. Ethical relativism also has some objections towards the more specific theories of subjectivism and conventionalism. Ethical relativism is supported due to the narrowing view of ethnocentrism, which is causing great “prejudice tantamount to racism and sexism” (Pojman, 25).
For instance, while relativism does not assert that there are universal ethical principles, we can reason that each individual culture has its own norms or fixed standards that the group ought to adhere to. This has problems in and of itself. For one thing, how do we define culture? Should we concern ourselves with our nation-state, our race, or perhaps our religion in identifying our culture? What if we consider ourselves to belong to more than one culture?
Towards the end of the chapter he provides strategies and exercises that we can practice and use in order to change our Perfectionism ways. The Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar Are you constantly trying to keep up with your busy and sometimes stressful life while at the same time striving for happiness? We all want a perfect life but in reality and as most of us know, there is no such thing. We work so hard on something and we sometimes get let down and we often feel like a failure. In the Pursuit of Perfect by Tal Ben-Shahar, he sheds some light into the possibility of obtaining a happy life even with the struggles and challenges that may come our way.