Montaigne

All of this brings me to the question, are all social practices equally valid, good, true, beautiful? Should we never judge other people's culture? Are there no absolutes?

Is everything relative? Some radical postmodern theorists would agree that this is true. And on some level, everything we feel is 'correct' has its root in cultural assumptions and stereotypes. Even the profound American confidence in individualism and freedom is not universal. Some European nations prize the value of socialism and the welfare of the community equally as much as the American ideal of 'don't tread on me.' In other words, even in the so-called developed world, what is considered to be true is actually a cultural product and is nationally contextual. What is beautiful has famously shifted from age to age, as the beauty of a modernist Picasso painting or the spare architecture of a Frank Lloyd Wright design would be hideous in the eyes of a Victorian aesthete.

But taken to its logical conclusion, radical relativism is quite dangerous, and leads to self-destruction of societies. Although standards may be infinitely more flexible than they may appear to be, this does not mean that all standards are equally life-sustaining. A cannibalistic society would literally consume itself, even though Montaigne grapples with the innate disgust of cannibalism in the essay where he muses about the possibilities of relativism as an ideology. A society founded upon genocide or warlike violence must be contained, lest it threaten the existences and equally valid perspectives of neighboring cultures.

And there is the paradox that although cultural tolerance of diverse practices may be a new ideal, and itself a cultural product, such tolerance as a universal value is necessary to create a world of multicultural lands living side-by-side in a state of peace. There may be no unchanging world values, but values that enable the world to function and remain in a state of peace and homeostasis must be judged superior to those that do not allow such peaceful coexistence.