Of Course Some Cultures Are Better Than Others
How moral relativism harms the people it claims to protect.
“Let’s be honest – saying some cultures are better than others is just racism smuggled in through the back door”.
You’ve probably stumbled upon a comment like this before, perhaps on the BBC or in the pages of the New York Times. It’s the kind of thinking that flows through the progressive bloodstream, bypassing the prefrontal cortex and heading straight for the emotional centre of the brain – especially the part responsible for virtue-signalling. It’s abject nonsense, of course, but we need to deal with the problem of moral and cultural relativism – that’s what we’re talking about here – because it pops up all the time.
Let’s begin with a simple test that takes five seconds. Would you rather raise your daughter in Norway or Afghanistan? You already know the answer – everyone does. Some cultures are simply better for human flourishing. We know instinctively that South Korea produces happier, healthier people than North Korea. We can measure it empirically, too.
Migration patterns illustrate the point beyond doubt. When people risk drowning in the Mediterranean to reach Europe, they are risking their lives on the promise of a better life in countries like Italy than in places like Somalia. Migration flows one way. Nobody at the North London dinner party is planning on moving to Mogadishu for a better life.
None of this should be controversial because all of this is observable reality. So why does saying as much seem gauche at that same dinner party? “But colonialism”, they’ll say. “Who are we to judge?” intones another. “That’s bigotry!” exclaims Tarquin as he tops up his organic natural wine.
But these are not counterarguments. They’re evasions designed to protect progressive orthodoxy and move the conversation along without further scrutiny. But scrutinise we must.
The Malala test
In 2012, Malala Yousafzai was on her way to school when she was shot in the head by the Taliban for the crime of wanting an education. The fifteen-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl survived, and we know her story today because she went on to advocate for girls’ schooling. Her courage earned her the Nobel Peace Prize two years later.
Her cause was simple: girls deserve to learn.
Cultural relativism has no coherent response to this because it claims that all cultures are equal. For the relativist, education means different things in different contexts; we can’t judge one form by the standards of another.
Here’s where that reasoning falls apart. Because if we can’t measure a traditional Afghan society by Western values, then what exactly was wrong with what the Taliban did? Weren’t they simply enforcing their cultural norms about women’s roles? Protecting their traditions? Who are we, sitting comfortably in Oxford or Boston, to judge?
The relativist has three moves, all of which are fatal to their own position.
First move: “That’s not real Afghan culture”.
But of course it is. A conservative interpretation of Islam has dominated parts of Afghanistan for centuries. To say “that’s not real Afghan culture” is to suggest there’s a better version of it. You’ve already abandoned neutrality. You’re doing exactly what you claim is impermissible: judging between different cultural visions and declaring one superior.
Second move: “We support Afghan women’s own choices”.
Good. Malala and millions like her want education. But now you’ve conceded everything because you agree that Afghan women’s desire for education should override conservative cultural norms. You accept that individual autonomy should take precedence over traditional authority. You’ve admitted that some values – women’s rights, education, choice, autonomy – are superior to others. You’ve abandoned relativism entirely.
Third move: “Violence is the line”.
On what grounds? If no external standard exists, then honour killings and religious violence must count as valid, a legitimate part of the culture. When the Taliban shot Malala, they were enforcing their cultural rules. If you condemn them, you’re appealing to some universal principle that transcends culture. Once you’ve sided with Malala against the Taliban, you’ve granted that some cultures are better than others.
What we’re really measuring
Let’s get the obvious out of the way. We’re not talking about race or ethnicity. No thoughtful and intelligent person is claiming one race is better than another. Let’s leave that idea to genuine fascists. We’re talking about observable, measurable outcomes produced by some cultures in comparison with others – women’s rights, literacy rates, life expectancy, the rule of law, and freedom of religion.
True, history, geography and economics are important variables, but outcomes are largely shaped by how norms and institutions respond to the hand they’re dealt. When we think of cultures as competing solutions to the universal human problems of hunger, disease, violence, and injustice, it’s clear that some cultures produce solutions that help humans flourish; others produce the Taliban.
Literacy rates in the Philippines for males and females are 98% and 97% respectively. In Afghanistan, it’s 52% and 27%. The statistics reflect how cultures think about half their population. It’s not about ethnicity but how societies respond to the challenges they face. We don’t need to compare different countries or ethnicities to see this; we can compare one people divided between two systems. North and South Korea offer a striking contrast – ethnically identical people with one half thriving and the other imprisoned by its own leaders.
Saudi Arabia denies women equal legal status with men. Women need male permission to marry, travel, or leave prison. They’re treated as permanent legal minors. Pakistan criminalises blasphemy; people sit in prison for years, sometimes lynched by mobs, for insulting religion. Iran hangs gay men from construction cranes. The Taliban bans women from public life altogether.
If you condemned what happened to Malala, you must condemn this too. The principle is identical: women’s autonomy matters more than traditional male authority. The only difference is that one involved a bullet and the other involves a legal code. Both are evil.
Relativism’s intellectual bankruptcy
Let’s deal with the central claim of moral and cultural relativism: no culture can judge another. More precisely, judgments about what is right and wrong are not universal but are determined by the norms, beliefs, and practices of each culture.
Read that again. It’s making a particular kind of claim, one that is itself universal, requiring acceptance across different cultures if it’s to make any sense. In other words, it’s self-refuting. If all moral claims are relative to culture then so is that very claim. Why should a non-relativist accept a relativist’s injunction not to judge? They won’t, because it’s nonsense. As Roger Scruton noted:
“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is ‘merely relative,’ is asking you not to believe him. So don’t.”
Relativism, he argued, is a convenient way for people to avoid taking a moral stand – a kind of intellectual and moral cowardice and “the first refuge of the scoundrel.”
Daniel Dennett made a similar point about postmodernism:
“Postmodernism, the school of ‘thought’ that proclaimed ‘There are no truths, only interpretations’ has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for ‘conversations’ in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster.”
“Ah...” says the relativist, switching gears. “But what about slavery and colonialism? The West did terrible things”.
Yes, of course colonial powers did terrible things. We know they did because we spend a great deal of energy documenting and condemning the sins of our past. It’s also why we introduced reforms. Britain abolished slavery in its empire in 1833 and then spent the next several decades using the Royal Navy to suppress the Atlantic slave trade – at considerable cost in lives and money. This doesn’t erase Britain’s earlier participation in that trade, but it does demonstrate what holding ourselves accountable to universal standards looks like: the defence of human rights, equality and the rule of law.
When the relativist says we must judge Western societies by strict moral principles but not extend the same to other cultures out of “respect for diversity”, they’re obviously invoking a double standard. Moreover, it’s not respectful, it’s deeply patronising. Why fail to apply the same standards to Pakistan as we apply to ourselves, unless you think the former is somehow incapable of meeting those standards? Female genital mutilation (FGM), honour killings, child marriage, death sentences for apostasy – if these things were prominent features of life in Toronto, we’d condemn them immediately. Why do we exempt those practices when they occur in Helmand Province?
The relativist has no answer except to switch the subject back to colonialism. But you can’t have it both ways: either some practices are objectively wrong, or none are. If relativism is true, then condemning anything is impossible because there’s no objective standard.
In any case, this simple moral logic is beside the point for relativists because they don’t actually believe their own doctrine. You wore a sombrero to a Halloween party? That’s cultural appropriation, says Jemima, draped in a keffiyeh on her way to a hate march. A white person in dreadlocks? The Oxford Union will treat it as a hate crime, yet when girls are forced into burqas, it’s a “cultural difference deserving respect”. The incoherence is spectacular; the bigotry of low expectations is contemptible.
Who pays the price
The tenured sociology professor will airily dismiss these arguments from the comfort of his office because relativism comes at no cost to him. But for ex-Muslims facing death threats for apostasy or women fighting for fundamental rights in patriarchal societies, the cost is life itself.
The people who pay for this cowardice are never the academics theorising about decolonisation. They’re the reformers trapped inside these systems.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali endured genital mutilation, forced marriage, and beatings before fleeing Somalia. She later became a Dutch MP and advocated for Muslim women’s rights. Her collaborator Theo van Gogh was murdered in the street – his assailant pinning a letter to his chest with a knife, promising her the same fate. Western feminists should have rallied. Instead, many dismissed her as an Islamophobe.
When Mahsa Amini died in the custody of Iran’s morality police, Iranian women burned their hijabs in the streets. They were beaten, imprisoned, and some were killed. Did the Western progressives who’d spent years defending the hijab as empowerment march in solidarity? Did they don their pussy hats and start a movement supporting the oppressed girls and women of Iran? Of course not. Many went quiet or looked the other way as Iranian clerics beat women and girls whose only “crime” was to want the same freedoms their sisters enjoy in the West – and once enjoyed in Iran before the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
What moral seriousness requires
Let’s put it plainly. A culture that lets you leave your religion is better than one that kills you for it. A culture that allows women to choose their husbands is better than one that marries them off at twelve. A culture that protects gay people is better than one that hangs them from cranes. A culture that investigates its own failures – slavery, exploitation – is better than one that admits to no flaws because God said so.
None of this should be controversial to say. It merely requires making two distinctions that relativists dismiss.
First: people and practices are not the same thing. Muslims deserve equal protection under the law and freedom from bigotry. But no group gets to smuggle illiberal practices under that cover. You can wear a veil; you cannot beat your daughter for refusing. You can preach your religion; you cannot demand blasphemy laws in a secular democracy. Defending Muslims while criticising conservative Islamic practices isn’t “Islamophobia”. It’s a basic liberal principle.
Second: universalism is non-negotiable. Those who drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had just watched what happens when governments insist their “culture” permits treating humans as sub-human. States from every continent signed the declaration. So when Pakistan jails blasphemers or Saudi Arabia executes homosexuals, the correct response isn’t Who are we to judge? It’s You signed. Now keep your word.
A game of pretend
Why do intelligent people maintain this obvious fiction? Because admitting that some cultures produce higher levels of human flourishing means defending their own, and this has become strangely anathema to many in the Western cultural establishment. Saying that our culture is better than illiberal ones is seen as unsophisticated, unrefined, low status – the sort of thing a plumber might say.
Because ultimately this is really about snobbery, a display of moral and intellectual superiority that begins in the academy and percolates through our institutions until it becomes orthodoxy. The irony, of course, is that it claims the culture of progressivism is better than the liberalism it replaced.
It would all be academic except that the posturing and moral evasions have real consequences. The progressive class abandons the vulnerable, emboldens theocrats, and prevents honest discussions about integration and social cohesion. It’s how we end up with the absurd contortions around multiculturalism. It’s how we end up with grooming gangs.
The choice is simple
Either you believe women’s autonomy, freedom of conscience, and protection from violence are universal goods, or you believe they’re culturally relative. If universal, then some cultures are better than others. If relative, then you have no grounds to condemn what happened to Malala.
There’s no third option. The attempt to split the difference – condemning individual acts while refusing to judge the cultures that produce them – is intellectual cowardice. It lets you feel moral while abandoning the people who need moral clarity most.
Some ways of organising society create more human flourishing than others. It’s measurable, observable, and obvious. We know it from seeing the direction people flee when they can.
Some cultures are better than others. It’s not bigoted to say as much, and we’re allowed to notice.
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Superb piece. Should be compulsory reading for every Guardianista and ‘progressive’ Tarquin/ Tarquina. To quote the professor from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe- ‘how I wish they’d teach logic at these schools’. Not only do progressives ignore evidence which is staring them in the face, they deliberately disparage western culture and sanctify all non western culture regardless of that evidence. It’s time we challenged their world view more robustly instead of fearing the abuse that inevitably ensues.