Scientific Method

While it may be the best method we have of coming closer to figuring out what is going on, it is pretty useless when it comes to values. Values aren't usually arrived at by cogitating until smoke pours out of our ears, but are handed down from parents, teachers, peers, society at large. What seems like rational thoughts to explain our values are usually just rationalizations which we make up after the fact - long after these values have become totally ingrained into us. (And that facts change, while societies cling to their old values and taboos is yet another story.) These values are the lenses through which we see the world and because we all have a different set, we all see things differently.

Even when we all grew up in roughly the same conditions, we still see things differently because of the weighting we attach to the different values. Different priorities, different lenses, different view of the world.

The question I ask myself is this: How do I go about trying to be as objective as possible? How do I avoid cultural bias while at the same time trying to give people the cultural space that they need?

Maybe an example will illustrate what I mean. In 1980 in Afghanistan there were only about two out of a thousand Afghanis who didn't either actively or passively support the fight against the Russians. In the end the Russians had to leave Afghanistan (although resistance may not have been the only reason). It looks like the situation in Iraq is rapidly heading into the same direction.

So, forcing either the Afghanis or the Iraqis into a western-style democracy is probably not going to work. But what *is* the right, long-term good thing to pursue? Just leaving them cutting each others throats as has been happening in Afghanistan for countless decades somehow doesn't seem the right way either. Kick out the bad guys again and again to let "the people" find their own way? That gets to be a pretty big job as well after a while - never mind that no voting public will support that course of action for long.

When I examine the problem, I realize that I am still looking through my own cultural lenses. I know very little of what the people over there think about the situation. And even if I do, I may have to strongly disagree with them - the treatment of women by the Taliban comes to mind. Can't very well say, it is their way, it is their right to do things like that and leave it at that, can I? So, again, I impose my cultural values.

And since these values are simply handed to me, I am where I started. I can't spend ten or twenty years in each place to understand what is really going on and I can't always moan "I don't understand" and refrain from forming an opinion. But of course, mostly the opposite happens, and people form a very strong opinion - the stronger the less they know about the situation.

Take South Africa during "Apart-Hate". Almost anywhere in the west there was only one opinion and it was uniformly against the then government. Boycotts were organized, boycotts that may have done more harm than good, but that was not really the point. The point was, they *felt* good.

People who actually took the trouble of going there and checking out what was going on there, were far more careful when judging what was going on there. All of a sudden, no more blanket statements or hot-headed calls for action. Instead confusion, a questioning of why things looked so different from afar and right there and then. (No way can you properly understand another culture vicariously through only books, films, music, and so on. There is always a big piece missing - just look at the America-haters for confirmation.)

So, then, what is left?

"Ours is an age of criticism, to which everything must be subjected. The sacredness of religion, and the authority of legislation, are by many regarded as grounds for exemption from the examination by this tribunal. But, if they are exempted, and cannot lay claim to sincere respect, which reason accords only to that which has stood the test of a free and public examination."

I haven't come across any shortcut or method in which to evaluate things so far. The only thing that I resort to time and again is to go there and see for myself and then let good old common sense be my guide.