The scourge of cultural relativism

Conservative leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has received a lot of grief over the past week after issuing a modern-day heresy. She said that not all cultures are equal.

Writing for the Sunday Telegraph, she explained: ‘We cannot be naïve and assume immigrants will automatically abandon ancestral ethnic hostilities at the border, or that all cultures are equally valid. They are not.’

When asked on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg which cultures she thought were less valid, Badenoch elaborated: ‘Lots. Cultures that believe in child marriage or don’t give women equal rights… I don’t think that a culture in which gay people can be stoned is as valid as ours.’

Naturally, this challenge to an axiom of our times sent the bovine liberal-left into meltdown. Chief among the outraged was radio pundit James O’Brien. Given his intolerant, abrasive presenting manner, plus the fact his second book is entitled How to Be Right, O’Brien certainly seems to think his own worldview is more valid than other people’s.

The irony goes much deeper, of course. Throughout much of human history, people have been aware of cultural differences. They have learnt through experience that other societies do things differently, have different beliefs and generally see the world slightly differently. As the Ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, argued in Book III of The Histories, people follow the different customs of the different cultures into which they are born. And they tend to assume that their own culture is the norm.

It was only with the counter-Enlightenment Romantic movement, spearheaded by German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder, that the idea that all cultures are equal started to emerge. Writing towards the end of the 18th century, Herder argued that different groups of human beings are determined entirely by their own culture and language – their Volksgeist. He concluded that there was no universal standard by which to judge human morality.

Herder’s belief that human cultures constituted almost different species formed the basis of the doctrine of cultural relativism. This idea was subsequently developed by European intellectuals, from Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century to Michel Foucault in the 20th century.

This belief that all cultures are equally valid is therefore a specifically Western concept. It’s been a constant throughout history for societies to be ethnocentric, and to think their way of life is the norm. It’s only in the West that we developed and nurtured cultural relativism, this aberrational way of thinking, this profound scepticism that often veers into self-loathing. Just as it was Europeans who devised the opposing terms ‘civilised’ and ‘savage’, so it was Westerners who started putting these words into those snide inverted commas.

No other culture has come up with the idea that ‘no cultures are better than others’. To parrot this mantra is, paradoxically, the height of Eurocentric arrogance.

Zoomers are not as radical as they think

A survey in the news last Friday reported that Gen Zers, commonly perceived as members of the most eco-conscious of all generations, are the demographic most likely to ignore appeals not to discard plastics and cardboard. According to the paper and packaging company, DS Smith, under-27s are the worst at recycling, while Baby Boomers – those now aged between 60 and 78 – are the most diligent.

It’s hardly surprising to read that Generation Z is the most right-on yet most shallow in its politics. That’s what most people are like at that age. In your teens and twenties, your politics are most likely determined by a desire to conform to the crowd – which is why women in their twenties today are the most wedded to a herd-friendly ‘compassionate’ woke ideology – or why men’s politics at an early age are tied to the mating game. Hence, young beta males are prone, with much insincerity, to declare themselves ‘feminists’ when around young women. Anybody who has passed through university will remember these patterns. Those who are doing so today will remember likewise in a decade or two.

This combination of ardent passion and lack of seriousness would also explain the showy fanaticism displayed by Just Stop Oil, the trans movement and the support for the SNP and Palestine found among the under-thirties. Many young people are desperate to conform, to be seen as caring, daring and revolutionary. It’s a stance as vacuous as it is vociferous.

Cancel culture is no laughing matter

Some of you in the UK and Ireland may have seen on BBC2 on Monday evening a repeat of the very first episode of The Fast Show, which celebrates its 30th anniversary next month. Among the old favourites on display were the socially maladroit Brummie, ‘I’ll get me coat’ man (Mark Williams), and Ted and Ralph (Paul Whitehouse and Charlie Higson), a pair forlornly trying to transcend a vast class division.

It was a reminder what a great decade the 1990s were for TV comedy, and a reminder, too, of how themes of social anxiety and friction have traditionally been central to the genre. Back then, we also had the insufferably suburban and crass Alan Partridge, forever making one social faux pas after another. There was also David Brent in The Office making us cringe in the very early 2000s.

From America, we had Frasier, featuring the eponymous Dr Frasier Crane and his father Martin, also separated by class. The latter was a down-to-earth, plain-speaking ex-cop, the former a pompous aesthete. Dr Crane was forever getting himself embroiled in socially compromising, farcical imbroglios, invariably involving women. And while Cheers may have featured a bar where everybody knew your name, it was populated by misfits and failures, embodied most tragically in Cliff and Norm.

It has always been thus with the best comedies, from Steptoe and Son to Fawlty Towers to Blackadder – the latter featuring a protagonist frustrated by a working-class moron and an upper-class oaf.

Yet themes of social embarrassment, failure or unfortunately breaking taboos have since largely vanished from TV comedy. This, I suspect, owes much to social media. Years ago we could laugh blithely at Basil Fawlty for fondling an Australian female guest or doing his Hitler impersonation. We could even laugh with profound unease at David Brent making quips about ‘spastics’. But now, such real-life characters wouldn’t be merely shamed. They would get cancelled, fired or both.

We also live in generally more censorious, cautious times, which is why commissioners are too fearful to touch anything that might land them in trouble. Even an innocuous show such as Diff’rent Strokes, in which two black orphans from Harlem are adopted by a wealthy white family, might today face accusations of ableism and white saviourism.

As late as the 1990s, social transgressions only led to embarrassment. Now they result in one’s life being ruined. They’re no longer a laughing matter.

Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.