Culture & Morality

Obviously culture is a big part of my experience here in Cambodia.  Seeing the way that my culture is different than the culture of the people here as well as seeing how they are similar, are important parts of what I’m learning.  Culture has a profound effect on who you become and what you see to be “normal” or how you might particularly go about your life.  It’s affected by so many things.  Your country, your home, your family, language, traditions and so on have a profound effect on everyone, and I’m realizing everyday how vastly different cultures can be and therefore make such an impact.

The issue that I have come to find hard to grasp is the idea of morality and what role culture has in our moral values.  Does culture have an effect on morality?  Should culture have an effect on morality?  Is culture always right, just because it’s what we know?

An example of this is the way that children are raised and more what they are exposed to here in Cambodia at a very young age.  I won’t go into much detail as to some of the things I’m speaking of.  One thing I will bring up is the unintentional exposure to pornography at an early age.  I say unintentional because children are not forced to watch pornography but more are not guarded from it.  A common excuse is, “they don’t understand what it is.”  On the contrary, research has shown that exposure to such graphic images at a young age can have great effect on the child in early adolescence, leading to problems like rape and causing more of a demand for “paid sex”.  So even though culture suggests that it’s not a big deal for children to be exposed to that, how do you go about changing it?  It’s what they’ve come to know is “acceptable” and perfectly “normal”.

Many of us would say that this is wrong and needs to be stopped.  But how do we tell someone that what they have found to be “okay” and “acceptable” is wrong?  It has become part of their culture.  Even some actions that we would find are completely offensive and detrimental to their children, are seen as perfectly normal and have been shown to create unhealthy life cycles.  So how do we stop them from practicing something that has been taught from generation to generation?  The big question is where do our morals come from & as a matter of fact, where should they come from?  I have my own suggestions as to where they should come from but I’ll let you mull it over before I lay it all out there.

So in the end, where is the balance between culture & morality?  Sometimes we often look at things and accept them because it’s all we know.  But isn’t there a point where you have to look at the bigger picture and maybe make some changes, even though the culture may say otherwise.