Good news about female circumcision

[The Dharma Bum]

[Pebble]

[The Dharma Bum]

OK if my reasoning is faulty, then you can explain how there is a rational basis for moral absolutism.

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[The Dharma Bum]

It says a lot about the value of those pronouncements though.

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[The Dharma Bum]

Your judgement is not "fairly reasonable" in an objective sense, though. It is just as based on arbitrary cultural ideas as theirs is. It only seems "fairly reasonable" to you because of the cultural expectations you have been conditioned to accept. Your reasoning probably sounds equally ridiculous to the old grandmother that insists this ritual be observed on the next generation as hers does to you.

There is just as much superstition and ignorance for you to fight among those who live within the confines of Western Civilization so you don't need to become a missionary for western cultural customs and push them on every culture we encounter. The old "white man's burden" schtick is merely a justification for imperialism, colonialism, and at it's most extreme genocide. Look at the results of that thinking around the world, clearly this philosophical outlook did more harm than good.

See you are really opening up a can of works with this moral imperative stuff. Do you have an moral imperative to remove every child from their family simply because they belong to a traditional culture that offends western cultural sensibilities? Do you have a moral imperative to go to every primitive tribe on the planet and inject them with substances that your culture believes are necessary?

Are these people our property that we have to maintain and care for them? Or are they free to pursue their own lives according to their own culture? Are other cultures besides mainstream western culture acceptable or do we have a mandate to force khaki pants and polo shirts on the rest of the world?

We need some kind of prime directive to guide our cultural expansion.

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[The Dharma Bum]

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