Morals and Culture

"Morality differs in every society, and it is a convenient term of socially approved habits." Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (1934)

Human ethics and morality have been pondering for hundreds of years, some of the most enlightened people in human existence. Morality is determined by the culture in which you were born. Way of life, their cultural traditions and social norms vary greatly across the earth. Morality of the people is different in every society, because culture is something that evolved over time, changing with each new generation of society. After thousands of years of existence and evolved hundreds of languages, cultures have developed different systems of values and moral codes for living and growing, all of which is called morality.

As a human, we strive for perfection for something better, something that we have at present. Funny how we humans tend to something does not exist, is unknown and utterly alien to us. To achieve this, a foreign request, we must compare and contrast the differences. When we look at different societies developed around the world we look at the value system of peoples, their cultures and means of sustaining life. We believe their values against our own set of moral values and to judge whether or not it is right to do so. Standards, as well as standards of behavior that the inventions of mankind, and therefore all subjective and "culture-bound." (Geertz, pp. 249), as described in the theory of cultural relativism, different societies have different moral codes and there is no objective standard by which to judge the code of one society to morally superior to another "(Geertz, pp. 237). Person's opinion on this issue or not an act morally right or wrong is completely subjective and cannot be objective.

We as a people can distinguish between violent acts and good deeds, useful and harmful, but we cannot objectively distinguish whether such actions and right or wrong. Views of society and, consequently, their values are unique and part of their culture code. It's like a cultural relativism asserts that "there is no such thing as universal truth in ethics, there are only various cultural codes and nothing more." This leaves us, the people in dangerous situations, the values of each are subjective, and no one has objective value. Moral codes of the two societies can thus be full of contradictions and still be "acceptable habit," according to the society. The Greeks and Callatians varied differently means of disposing of the dead. The Greeks believed that a proper burying the dead and Callatians believes that it is eaten dead. No society, rightly or wrongly, they just follow different cultural codes. So our existence on earth not as a society of people, as well as a unique group of morally developed people who have raised the cultural and others (Hemingway, pp. 18).

Immanuel Kant said on the themes of morality, that people have the final price and intrinsically valuable. Not just because we live in, but rather because we are people ...