Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
Cultural Relativism
"Cost of Living"
TNG: Episode 120
Stardate: 45733.6
Original Air Date: Week of April 20, 1992
Ship psychologist Deanna Troi's efforts to help Lieutenant Worf teach his young son, Alexander, the value of responsibility are immediately undermined by her irrepressible mother, Lwaxana, who spirits the young impressionable boy off to a holodeck community"where there are no rules.'" Deanna barely recovers from the havoc her mother wreaked when Lwaxana drops a bombshell: she's marrying Minister Campio of Kostolain -- a man she's never actually met. Lwaxana also announces that she will be going against her own Betazoid wedding customs by wearing a traditional Kostolain wedding gown at the ceremony. That shocks Deanna even more. After all, in an orthodox Betazoid wedding ceremony, the bride appears completely nude.
If you were Lwaxana Troi, what would you have done? Should you "go the full monty," just because that's what your family expects you to do? What if you knew it would make your husband-to-be feel uncomfortable? What if it made you feel uncomfortable? What's more important, honoring a wedding tradition or laying the groundwork for a happy marriage?
We all know that from ancient times right on through to the 24th-century world of Star Trek, ideas of love, marriage, and right and wrong in general have differed from culture to culture. Many people happen to believe that the customs of diverse cultures are what forms the basis of morality for those cultures. This is known among ethicists as "cultural relativism." No one culture's customs can everbe evaluated as right or wrong, the theory goes, as that would suggest the existence of some universal standard of morality independent of people's opinions. Because ethical judgments do not have a standard of morality, any belief about right or wrong is entirely arbitrary and therefore relative.
Cultural relativism has its good points. For one, it warns us against the danger of ethnocentrism, an attitude that assumes the values of our own particular society are also best for everyone else. There's a lot of ethnocentric thinking going on in "Cost of Living," mostly on the part of the Kostolains. It's not enough that Lwaxana is abandoning ancient Betazoid tradition for her upcoming nuptials -- they expect her to adopt all of their customs without giving any consideration to her own.
Cultural relativism also tells us that a custom that we personally find offensive is not necessarily immoral. Perhaps some of you who are parents were momentarily put off by the erotic dancer who entertains Lwaxana, Alexander, and the other "free spirits" at the end of the "mud bath" scene in "Cost of Living." Not that you have anything against erotic dancers or communal mud baths. It's just that the idea of an impressionable young boy lounging buck-naked with several equally nude adults might strike you as odd. Fair enough. But just because it's odd to you, a cultural relativist would say, doesn't necessarily make it wrong for everyone.
Which, in a sense, is basically what Star Trek is all about. Gene Roddenberry a man who was very open-minded about the customs of different cultures, said so himself: "[By the 23rd century, we] will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. [We] will learn that differences and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety not something to fear."
Facts Versus Values
Now, you might say, "Sure, some aspects of cultural relativism are a recurring theme on Star Trek. But does that make cultural relativism the basis of the ethics of Star Trek?" It would certainly appear to be. Perhaps the best way to find out for sure is to look at what cultural relativism really is, so that we can easily identify it when we see it.
According to James Rachels, a contemporary American ethicist, cultural relativism is a theory that makes six basic claims:
- Different societies have different moral codes.
- There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another.
- The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many.
- There is no "universal truth' in ethics-that is, there are no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times.
- The moral code of a society determines what is right within that society; that is, if the moral code of a society says that a certain action is right, then that action is right, at least within that society.
- It is mere arrogance for us to try to judge the conduct of other peoples. We should adopt an attitude of tolerance toward the practices of other cultures.
According to Rachels, these six propositions are independent of one another, in that some of them might be true even if others are false. Using "Cost of Living" as our model, let's see how each claim is important in not just understanding but also evaluating cultural relativism.
1.Different societies have different moral codes. We see at least three examples in this story alone: the Betazoids, with their unique wedding custom in which the bride appears nude; the Kostolains, with their rigid adherence to protocol, procedure, and ceremony; and the colony of free spirits, where no rules apply (other than the pursuit of happiness).It's important to note that the claim itself ("Different societies have different moral codes") is a descriptive statement -- that is, a statement that addresses the facts without making any value judgments. When Lwaxana tells Deanna she's adapting to Kostolain custom because she knows Campio would not approve of a traditional Betazoid wedding, she's merely stating a fact about Campio to Deanna. Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and others trained in the social sciences rely on descriptive statements because they provide important clues in learning how different people behave in a given society...
The Ethics of Star Trek. Copyright © by Judith Barad. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
