Donald Kimball

Advanced Creative Nonfiction

Dr. Jeremiah Webster
3/3/15
Post-Modernism, Western Values, and Cultural Imperialism
Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.
-Jean-Francois Lyotard

We who live in Western Liberal Democracies find ourselves in a post-modern world, yet
one that is increasingly conflicted and contradictory. In an age that thoroughly rejects Western
imperialism - the notion of replacing lesser societies with our enlightened perspective, common
thought is that we should preserve the cultures and ideas of all areas, regions, and religions.
Citing abuses from history, such as the British East India Company and the Hindus or early
American colonists and Native Americans, people nowadays strongly damn cultural hegemony.
Ironically, these very same accusers will be some of the strongest proponents of
correcting human rights abuses abroad. Running to the Declaration of Human Rights charter
from the U.N., many post-modernists will use this as a justification to adjust a society. Most of
the time it doesnt appear so obvious to them, but rather is done under the guise of individual
corrections: Western medicine, for instance. When outbreaks of various diseases, such as polio,
occur in foreign regions, there is generally a massive movement of aid and mobilizing caretakers
to stop the spread of disease. Yet, this action carries a modicum of Western culture. In A right to
health: medicine as Western cultural imperialism? Donna Matheson details the innate Western
culture apparent when bringing modern medicine to the Angola people. Ultimately she
concludes that post-modernism alone is insufficient, as it by nature necessarily mandates a
rejection of many Western ideals, and helpful elements of Western medicine should be brought
to third world countries:

Ultimately, cultural differences must be addressed on various levels. Clearly, cultural differences
should not be judged consistently in favour of one culture over another, which we call cultural
imperialism. However, cultural relativity where differences are uncritically accepted as valid is
equally unhelpful. Instead, each individual component of culture should be examined carefully
and judged separately. (Matheson 1191-1204)

Although Matheson is a surprisingly refreshing pragmatist, it is striking how many postmodernists will take this position without giving up their high ground of cultural relativity.
Unfortunately, this intellectual dishonesty leads to these individuals picking and choosing what
is a universal good, and dismissing any other realms of morality. Our generation in the West is
raised with the assumption that if the construct of morality does exist, it varies for each person,
or at least by each culture. Yet, even as the modern man cries that morality is defined by a
civilization, he simultaneously chastises the U.S. for their inaction in the Rwandan genocide. By
his own established logic, however, we have no place to impose our morality in a non-U.S.
culture.
This political trend must be corrected whether you view intervention in other cultures
as good or bad, hiding behind cultural relativism is only adequate when one can accept the full
implications of this view. In order to be philosophically consistent, one must understand that if
morality solely comes from culture alone, when leaving your own culture, you have no right to
take any action whatsoever. Whether this means humanitarian aid, technological advances, or
defensive measures, any interference whatsoever constitutes an immoral action. By definition
youve established cultural morality as the sole power to regulate right actions not health,
pleasure, preservation of life, amicability and thus when a societally acceptable practice
involves child sacrifice, stopping it becomes a sin. Even reforming your own culture becomes
technically impossible, as in order to change a norm you must commit an immoral act, which
remains so until 51% agree.

One objection I hear comes thusly What is moral is what is natural, and naturally
cultures evolve to become more humanitarian. While at first a compelling argument in defense
of holding the two opposing values of post-modernism and Western cultural superiority together,
further analysis shows it to fall flat. Under this system, civilizations would necessarily go
through periods of change and gradually find more correct morals. This, however, still provides
no basis by which intervention in any capacity is justified. If one still holds to the idea that
cultures provide their own morality (albeit they travel on a scale toward the same end), then
whatever point of morality a culture is in at any given time is right for them, and any break of
their natural progression is again immoral. Even speeding up the process to the inevitable end
betrays the benign truth the end morality is, in fact, superior.
We must be intellectually honest and philosophically consistent when forming our
epistemologies, and by extension our views of all things moral and political. It is inadequate to
hide behind the faade of multiculturalism without prescribing to complete and total
isolationism. I dont decry differing notions of morality, I decry the attempt to claim the moral
high ground by not stating superior values. Though an emphasis on letting cultures develop and a
damnation of cultural hegemony is fine, one must be willing to grapple with whatever value they
hold as most important life, wealth, pleasure - and weigh it against the imperialistic situation it
may create. Once this false presence of completely equal or differing morals of everyone is
dropped, conversation about what is important or why it is can be fully engaged, creating a
better, more informed decision making process.