It’s said so much nowadays that we must understand other cultures and must not try to convert them to our way of thinking, which might be just as strange and/or revolting for them, as theirs is to us.

This occurred to me today while reading FTW on the train. It’s one thing that in that given culture what is accepted, and it’s pretty much the way of thinking of the parent that decides how the kid is raised. But. For me, it’s one thing to understand, that it’s normal in India (according to the book, correct me if wrong) that parents would beat their kid for disagreeing with them and saying so. It might be normal in certain families that instead of talking with the kid about what’s the problem, you just take them out from their school and send them off to a boarding school where he won’t play games that much… Okay, that’s their way.

And i disagree with that, and i say so.

It’s scary how this thought is similar to how America’s preaching equality and liberty and the spread of the global culture, while it doesn’t even try to understand other cultures. It can go either to war with countries that it doesn’t like (see middle eastern conflicts) or let the multicorporations do the job by slowly infecting the said culture with the “global greatness”.

Oh no. I wouldn’t bother trying to convince a traditionally thinking indian parent that his way of raising the kid is wrong. For the simple reason that the understanding i try to enforce on myself itself is a product of my culture, so i can’t really expect others to think the same. Even if i tried to convince someone their way is wrong, they would be right to ask what makes me think mine’s better.

All these human rights declarations, the countless treaties about human rights are all unnecessary. They are made because of the ambiguity of the phrase “free”. When is someone free? Who can be free? Check, all the declarations of rights limit these rights, to citizens of that given state (like too many constitutions), or more generally, to humans. It’s so interesting that humankind couldn’t yet resolve this problem. The declarations and treaties list all what humans are free to do or what they have right to, but this is not the right way. This way, the rights and freedoms are inverted: it would be more practical to suppose that everyone is free to do whatever he/she/it wants. And then come all the limitations. First limitation: as long as it doesn’t limit someone else’s rights or freedoms. And all the others of what you’re not allowed to do.

Are these the same? Are the human rights actually just the limitations of the rights of the community? For sure, since we’re a race that has to survive, the community has to be put higher than all else (meaning that if one can reproduce, they have to). And an “embodiment” of the community is the state, which would explain why there are so many freedoms from the state.

Are we trying to write our own laws of humanics (after Asimov’s laws of robotics), the same way, just since we’re not born bound by these laws but impose them on ourselves, nor are we good, we have to detail them to minimize the damage possible. What’s the answer? How to deal with the whole of our race, and later, with the whole of lifeforms?