Last quarter, I took Cultural Anthropology and I learned a nifty new term: Ethnocentrism.
Ethnocentrism essentially the belief that one's culture is better than all others. Obviously this isn't a desirable quality to have. There really is no best culture. Yes, I know, America is pretty kick ass, but we're not the best at everything.
For the last few months, I've really started to get annoyed at the condemnation of current cultures and societies for what happened hundreds or thousands of years ago. For example...
The Crusades? Well that's proof right there that Christianity is evil and anybody who practices it is evil as well and must be stopped!
Slavery? Any person or family who owned slaves at any time at all is a horrible person and must be regarded as unethical trash. Which was almost all of the "civilized" world until a couple hundred years ago, by the way.
Now, there is no question that the Crusades and slavery were horribly wrong. Trying to "retake" land that wasn't stolen in the first place, and reducing people to property is evil. We know that now. Back then however, it was just the way things were.
This is where the smart comes in. I've been trying to think of a word, like ethnocentrism, that means believing that humanity at a certain time is superior to all other times. It wasn't until tonight that I came up with the word Chronocentrism that means just that. I was pretty happy with myself to be honest.
Just to make sure I was being original, I started typing it into google when seven letters in, the word popped up. Apparently I wasn't being original, as American sociologist and criminologist Dr. Richard C. Monk (thanks Wikipedia) coined and used the term already.
Even so, I stand by my smartness in that I came up with it on my own and without a fancy PhD.
One Happy Bunch
5 years ago
1 comment:
That was very clever of you Kelly. I agree with you to a point. There are cultures today that I consider evil, and not at all for what they had done hundreds of years ago. There are cultures where women are still treated as worthless chattle. Where young girls are sickiningly mutilated through "female circumscision" and others where women have no rights at all. Entire countries, where the general population have no rights to anything. China comes to mind. So I can't agree that all cultures are valid. I think the problem with these evil cultures is that they still DO follow the same beliefs that were in place hundreds of years ago.
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