[leohutson]

> For instance, by the standard of the general wellbeing of African Americans, it's manifestly obvious that modern American culture is superior to American culture of the 1850s.

But it might be hard to convince a 1850s white American to adopt that standard.

It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter.

Any culture that isn't similar your culture is by definition inferior when held to your cultural standards, so there is no reason to do so.

All you need to decide is if the other culture is similar enough to tolerate it.

[sullyj3]

> Any culture that isn't similar your culture is by definition inferior when held to your cultural standards, so there is no reason to do so.

Ok, so, suppose we met a culture that thought it was a good thing to burn children alive as sacrifices to Moloch. Would you say, "Hey let them do their thing, all cultural practices are equally valid", or would you say "I'm going to try to prevent this from happening, even though my belief that the practice is wrong is due to my particular cultural upbringing"?

I'm assuming the second one. So doesn't that constitute an act of holding another culture to your own cultural standards? And here, the point is to save lives.

Again, to reiterate, just because different cultures value different things, and the question of which value system is "correct" is not really coherent, does not prevent me from condemning practices from within my own cultural framework, and having good reasons to do so.

[interfixus]

> It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter

Which definition would that be?

[leohutson]

I can't respond to your other question, but the particular value we were discussing was this:

> For instance, by the standard of the general wellbeing of African Americans, it's manifestly obvious that modern American culture is superior to American culture of the 1850s.

Shouldn't really be controversial, but America is going through a regression right now so who knows..

[interfixus]

Being Scandinavian, I do not really partake of whichever American regressions you may be thinking of.

I most certainly admire and find inspirational a lot of the values that built the US from the ground up. Hard work, frugality, dedication, diligence, and self-reliance, to name a few of the qualities that not least Northern Europeans brought to the expanding frontier.

Nor did they particularly hold with the slavery ways of the South.

Also, you may recall, there was a war fought over that issue.

[leohutson]

How is that relevant to what was being discussed earlier in the thread? It was merely an example.

That you share some values with a historical culture is hardly important information, if you look hard enough you can probably find something you like in all cultures, historical and present day.

[interfixus]

> It's tautological to say that as by definition 1850s white Americans culture is extremely distasteful to a modern HN commenter

Weak tautology, then. And a squishy definition. 1850s white Americans' culture by and large is not distasteful to me.

You may of course invoke 'modern' and a No True Scotsman line of argument.

[leohutson]

We'll perhaps there are some HN commenters that have those values, but I hope not!

But 1850's American culture is distasteful to me and also to sullyj3 as they say:

"it's manifestly obvious that modern American culture is superior to American culture of the 1850s"

[interfixus]

What are "those values"?

[khedoros1]

There was an assumption of the inequality of the races and acceptance of slavery on that basis. That's probably what was meant by "those values".

For the regressions, and continuing with my previous assumption: President Trump has been soft on some of the white supremacist groups, for example, being slow to disavow the support of those groups' leaders. This has emboldened some racists to be bolder. Previously, in places like California, racism almost seemed like a thing of a bygone era (at least, it wasn't as overt).