Does the urge to care come from culture?

The “Cultural Determination of Meaning”

    We might be able to reject the argument that the urge to care comes from our biology.  But, the well-educated materialist might counter that pursuing the Good which is not explainable by biology is explainable by social science, that some caring may be genetic, and the rest is cultural.  Nature and nurture.  By this view, our impulse to do Good is a function of our culture.  The most expansive view of this is what I call “the Cultural Determination of Meaning.”  All values are a function of culture.  Note the italics.  There is no source of meaning outside of what we are taught by our culture, broadly defined to include parents, family, neighbors, teachers, leaders, popular media, etc.  It is all a matter of learning.
    The most extreme adherent to this rule I have run into was a student in a class in which I guest lectured, at a neighboring university in a friend’s class in health policy.  The other guest lecturer, an ethics professor, pulled out the old chestnut about 14 people being in a life boat with only enough water for 10 people to reach shore.  Who would you toss overboard and how would you decide?  (I am not fond of this kind of question, as I believe, as we will see in future blogs, that “all knowledge is experiential.”  Unless I have an experiential referent for such a choice, I actually can’t predict with any certainty what I would do.)  
    As the ethicist was taking the class through the exercise, one of the students was steadfast in her view that there was no external mechanism by which to judge any of the people in the boat.  We are all creatures of our environment, so none of us is less worthy.  There is no ground, under this worldview, from which to judge worthiness.  This caught my interest.  How about saving the pregnant woman?  Nope.  I asked the student if we might want to keep one of the people who was a specialist in treatment of dehydration.  Nope.  How about a sailor who could help navigate.  Nope.  I kept trying to get her to choose, and she steadfastly resisted.  Frustrated, I said, “You mean to tell me that if Hitler and Gandhi were in the boat, you couldn’t judge between them?”  Her response was to launch into an analysis of Hitler’s difficult childhood.  Although it was probably pedagogically inappropriate, I cut her off, saying that I wasn’t interested in defending Hitler as a mistreated youth. 
    Here was a person whose moral judgment had been excised by her unwavering commitment to being cognizant of the impact of culture and upbringing on human behavior.  But she was consistent.  If all values are a function of culture, then bad behavior is merely bad conditioning.  You might rue the horrendous impact of Hitler’s difficult childhood, but you can’t condemn the behavior outright. 

Poppycock

    This, of course, is poppycock.
    There is absolutely no doubt that some amount of our desire to care is instilled in us by our environment, by our culture, by our parents and religious communities, by our school teachers, by our mentors.  If I didn’t believe that you could teach people to be of sound character, I wouldn’t take as much pride as I do in our three children.  Or in the thousands of students I have been privileged to have in my classes. 
    So, it is a truism to say that some values are a function of culture.  But, the Cultural Determination of Meaning poses a much larger hypothesis: if all values are determined by culture, then there is no transcendent ground for moral value.  We teach our moral values to each other.
    The implications of the Cultural Determination of Meaning are significant.  The most commonly understood corollary is that no one culture is any better than any other culture, since all values are merely an expression of the culture in which they arise.  Under this view, my values are and can be no better than yours.  If there are universal human values, then it is because all human cultures have found it useful to produce those values.  If we were to find a culture that did not share an extraordinarily widespread value, it is not appropriate to judge that culture unworthy.  What is Good in all of those other cultures is not necessarily required to be Good in all cultures.  To condemn a culture for its values is to be culturally insensitive.  Under the Cultural Determination of Meaning, moral turpitude does not transcend culture. 

Do we really believe that?

    Unfortunately, this simply doesn’t fit our sensibilities.  You and I know that some things are not Good, no matter how embedded in another culture they might be.  Slavery was endemic to many cultures; that didn’t mean it was morally defensible.  Killing Jews, the Roma and homosexuals in Nazi Germany was not merely a cultural preference.  Female genital mutilation in Africa is not just “their thing.”  Beheadings by fundamental extremists is not solely an expression of a unique culture.  Genocide is wrong wherever and whenever it is committed.  The basic human rights of women don’t change from culture to culture; if a culture denies these rights, this is condemnable behavior.  Discrimination against and persecution of minorities are not acceptable just because the majority in a particular culture teaches these practices to their children. 

Will you shout?

    A thought experiment.  Imagine that you are walking down the street and you see a man about to step off of the curb.  You notice a car coming, and you realize the man hasn’t seen the car.  If he continues off the curb, he will be killed by the on-coming car.  There is time for you to shout and warn him.  Will you shout?
    Well, of course you will!  Wouldn’t everyone? 
    Really – everyone.  I am comfortable condemning a culture that produces people who wouldn’t shout.
    Imagine, this time, that you are with a companion.  The companion senses that you are about to warn the man, and urges you to be quiet.  “I’ve never seen anyone killed before,” your companion explains.  Would you be repulsed by this behavior and this comment?
    Well, of course you would!  Wouldn’t everyone?
    Really – everyone!  My hypothesis is that the moral virtue that attaches to the simple act of warning this man is one that is fundamental to human experience, regardless of culture.  That is to say, anyone who would not warn the man is likely to be condemned by the overwhelming majority of us who feel the call to do so.  And maybe  not all cultures would assign this responsibility, but almost all of us would condemn any culture that didn’t.

Values transcend culture

    Some values are transcendent of time and place and culture.  And to prove false the basic premise of the Cultural Determination of Meaning, that all values are a function of culture, all we had to do was find one value that transcends cultures.  Because, if one value transcends culture, then probably others do, as well.  Then the question is “Which do?”
    If we accept the Cultural Determination of Meaning, we must respect other cultures, even at their worst.  Who are we to judge?  But there are just too many times in human history when cultures ran amok, and the answer to the question, Who are we to judge?, was a simple statement.  “We” are the rest of humanity who has a moral responsibility for “the other.”  Although I want as much as most people to cultivate respect for the values of other cultures, I am not willing to eviscerate my own moral conclusions in the process. 
    So, the urge to care can’t simply be a biological imperative.  And it can’t simply be social training.  There might be a biological component, and there certainly is  a social component, but neither or both together are sufficient.  There must be something more.