 So one wonders, what's the appeal of culture relativism? Why is this such a popular view? Because frankly it is. I hear a lot of people today talking about other people's behavior and say, well, you know, that's a part of their culture, so it's okay. Or, you know, say, well, you know, we do things, are we here? And they do things differently over there, but that's okay because the culture determines what's moral, right? It's their culture. That's what they do. So what's the appeal of culture relativism? Well, for Sumner, it's that, you know, there's actually now some truth or error to morality, right? That's one of the appeals for him. And this isn't contrast to him. He was saying there's no truth or error to any moral claims at all. Sumner says, well, guess what? I've got truth and error to morality. And so for him, that's one of the big appeals. But for the rest of us, we really don't care about that much. We don't care about whether moral theory gives us truth or error. No, for us, right, the real big appeal to culture relativism is tolerance, tolerance. So this idea is that, well, I now can be tolerant of others because what they're doing is right for them. What I'm doing is right for me. What they're doing is right for them. And the reason why it's right for them is because morality is determined by the culture. And so we do this a lot. We think that or one of the reasons why we really like culture relativism is because it allows for tolerance and actually justifies tolerance because now people aren't doing anything wrong. And this is kind of easy to understand. So, you know, typically what we think about, you know, these sorts of debates about morality, especially between people of different cultures, is you have one person that says one thing, you have somebody that says something different through this process of maybe even trying to explain the point, right, very quickly there comes to this disagreement and all of a sudden one side is very angry at the other than everybody's just plain angry. And it's easy to think that the reason why this happens is because there's disagreement. But with culture relativism we say, hey, we have tolerance now because everybody is right. Everybody is doing what's right for them. Okay. Well, so here's a question. If you're tolerant of somebody else, must you agree with other cultures? I mean, this is kind of the crux of cultural relativism. When you say what's moral is moral, what's moral is determined by the culture and you point to somebody else's cultural practices, you're saying, yes, that's right. I agree with what they're doing because that's right for them. And then because I'm agreeing with them, I am not tolerant. Well, here's a question. If you are tolerant, does that require agreement? Now, again, it's easy to think about. Think this is true because we have our cliche sort of scenario where people disagree and this leads very quickly to a fight. And we said, well, the big problem with all this is the disagreement. If there was no disagreement, there wouldn't be the fight. And when we think about the typical sort of bigoted person online, one of the big things that we notice about them is that they really disagree with somebody else. And yeah, even in more peaceful instances of intolerance, of bigotry, maybe there isn't something like violence, but there's definitely shunning. I'm going to leave those people aside. I don't want to deal with them anymore. Well, here's the thing. These cultures, they don't agree with each other. Cultural relativism says what's right is right depending upon where you are. Okay, but most cultures don't adopt cultural relativism. In fact, the ones that do adopt tolerance don't therefore say, but the other people are right. All these cultures in fact disagree with each other. Well, I think that tolerance requires agreement. I mean, think of this scenario. Suppose one person of one political party comes up and meets another person of the same political party and says, you know what? We agree with each other. I agree with everything that you say about what life is like. Isn't that great? Now, I can tolerate you. Well, that's just bizarre. If that sort of scenario happened, you wouldn't say, well, that's not tolerance. You just agree with each other. Tolerance is something more like this. One person of one political party meets somebody of another political party says, wow, you know, we have severe and deep disagreements about the nature of politics, about the nature of power, about the nature of economic distribution. Wow. Well, you know what? We have a lot to talk about and we have to figure out not how to agree with each other, but how to live and respect each other, live with each other and respect each other in our society. That's tolerance. I mean, the opposite is, you know, intolerance is, wow, I find your ideas different than mine. So, I hate you. You ugly and stupid. You've got no founding. I am going to do everything I can to bash you down and keep you down and disrupt all your plans. That's intolerance. Not disagreement, but what you do in the face of disagreement. Tolerance requires disagreement and respecting one another. So, here's the thing. If you must agree with other cultures to be tolerant, if from where you are, you're agreeing with other cultures to be tolerant, well, every culture is intolerant because there's always going to be some difference between cultures. That's kind of what makes a culture a culture, is the differences. If every culture, if you must agree with every culture, every culture is now intolerant. But that doesn't happen. There's plenty of respect between cultures. I mean, not always. And I'm not saying you have to respect everything that another culture does. But if you require agreement, every culture is intolerant. And by the way, so are you because you don't agree with everyone else. You find deep disagreements with others. And if you require agreement in order to be tolerant, you're intolerant. I don't know, maybe, I mean, the only way you're actually tolerant is that you're right and everybody else is wrong and they ought to agree with you. No. I mean, I suppose you could try that, but you don't really have any grounds to justify that claim. Tolerance doesn't require agreement. Tolerance, in fact, requires disagreement. You must disagree with somebody to be tolerant. But after you discover the disagreement, you treat the other person with respect. Not agree with them necessarily, but you learn how to live and respect that other person. Here's a question. Should all people be tolerant of other cultures? So when you think about it, we've got differences across the globe about question, how do you should live your life? Okay. Do you must all cultures be tolerant? Is it a good thing for all cultures to treat other people with respect, even though there's differences? I mean, if you say no, then it's perfectly legitimate to, you know, cause somebody a name because you disagree with what their culture does. I'm not going to go into any examples here because that would at best be rude, but you can start thinking of some of these examples. It's not hard. If you say that no, you don't know all cultures, you know, all cultures don't need to be tolerant, then it's perfectly legitimate to start throwing around these slurs. But if you say, yes, if you say all cultures should be tolerant, that's a moral standard that exists regardless of what culture you're in. I'm not saying you have to tolerate everything, but there's at least some tolerance that has to be in place. If you say that, then that's a moral standard that exists across all cultures. Well, if there's a moral standard that exists across all cultures, something is mistaken because now there's at least one absolute moral rule.