Are all societies and cultures morally equal?

[marct]

Interesting, and unanswerable, question since morality itself is culturally constructed (at least in the definition I use). Trying to step outside of a culture defined morality leads us to statements like:

Saying that all cultures are morally equivalent is to not think about the underlying question at all. There are God-given rights that, if violated, make a culture less worthy than others that respect human rights. There can be different but equivalent cultures or societies, but to get there, they have to have respect for rights as their base.

Coltures are not morally equal. To survive and not be vanquished is the goal.

The first argument, from "religion", makes a totally invalid assumption about the universal existence of a) a "God" (which one?), and b) the existence of human rights as something other than a social construct. It argues that two non-empirical, non-perceptually existent, non-things can act as the scale upon which to grade cultures.

The second argument is more empirical, being based in a form of survival, but it suffers from one flaw: the assumption of pristine cultures. This is a typical example of Spencerian "Survival of the Fittest" rhetoric that assumes that survival in a specific form is the goal. Why? What is "fittest" changes with the environment and, therefore, any culture or society that does not change with the environment - where such changes lead to survival of individual bloodlines - is a failure. Survival cannot be measured in any absolute by using such artificial constructs as culture or society, only by looking at bloodlines.

Both of these arguments are in the same oeuvre as the extreme cultural relativist position. I agree with Ken.... Time for a drink !