A brief observation on the fields of the social sciences and philosophy (particularly ethics).
As of the Fall 2022 semester, I'm currently taking an intro-level sociology class with Dr. Charles Brooks, an expert in Hindu culture and anthropology. When discussing the methods of an ethnographic study, he emphasized the lens of cultural relativism -- the idea that a culture or society is allowed to decide what is best for itself. And this is understandable within the context of studying a culture's descriptive facts. However, Brooks takes cultural relativism further than a simple lens with which we can use to our advantage when studying the world. Rather, he turns the idea into a worldview. No longer are we only interested in staying unbiased when methodically and systematically understanding a foreign culture. Instead, all cultures are free of criticism altogether from outsiders. Dr. Brooks' cultural relativism seems to be a reactionary response to ethnocentricism. Which is understandable, given the history of moral imperialism the west has perpetrated. Now, this ide...