Stigma in the Cultural Revolution

Stigma, according to the World English Dictionary, is a "distinguishing mark of social disgrace" but it can also refer to a blemish, mark of disease, or a brand on the skin. Looking at those definitions, it's hard to believe that such a negative thing still exists today. In my psychology class, we learned about this word and about how many psychological disorders have stigmas associated with them in America today. Most people will hear "mentally disabled" and automatically jump to conclusions about a person without even thinking about him or her as a human being. Humans are ignorant and egotistic. If a culture is different from our own we usually discredit it and rationalize it as wrong, believing our own culture to be superior. For example, (from the reading) the Callatians used to eat the bodies of their dead fathers. This, to an American, seems absurd, disgusting, disrespectful, and meaningless. I know that I, in reading about the Callatians, immediately jump to conclusions about their culture, comparing it to the culture I have been raised in, where we bury the dead in respect. The story told in the article, though, says that the Callatians were told by King Darius of the Greek way of burning their deceased fathers' bodies and they were outraged at the dreadfulness of that idea. "Burying the dead could be seen as an act of rejection and burning the corpse as positively scornful."To them, their culture was respectful of the dead and they saw nothing wrong with it. "It could be taken as a symbolic act that says: We wish this person's spirit to dwell within us."They weren't practicing those traditions because they didn't know better or anything like that, but rather because that was the right thing in their culture.

In reading the article, I noticed that the same question kept returning in my head: How do we know what culture is right? I know what I believe is right and wrong and I personally know this from the Bible and how I was raised, but in other cultures, people believe just as firmly in other things. This is the question of Cultural Relativism. "To determine whether the conclusion [of the other culture] is true, we need arguments in its support. Cultural Relativism proposes this argument, but unfortunately the argument turns out to be fallacious. So it proves nothing." Again, how can any one culture prove that it is better and more valid than the many others in the world? "There is no measure of right and wrong other than the standards of one's society: 'The notion of right is in the folkways. It is not outside of them, or independent origin, and brought to test them. In the folkways, whatever is, is right.'" After I got to this point, I started to connect this article more directly to Things Fall Apart. In America, I think I can safely say that most people would disagree with killing baby twins just because they are twins. The Christians that came to Okonkwo's village also disagreed because it is against their beliefs. To Okonkwo, though, it was just right and it always had been. How dare someone come into his village and tell him that he and all of his ancestors and gods were wrong? I think that if everyone would read the section titled "Why There Is Less Disagreement Than It Seems", there would actually be less stigma. "We agree that we shouldn't eat grandma; we simply disagree about whether the cow is (or could be) Grandma." I personally had never thought about it that way before. Okonkwo's people weren't killing the twins because it was inconvenient to raise two babies or because they love killing babies, but because they thought twins were evil omens sent from the gods and that killing them was the right thing to do. It seems absurd to other cultures because other cultures don't think twins are evil omens sent by the gods.

On a final note, the "second lesson" to be learned from Cultural Relativism "has to do with keeping an open mind."We hear something that doesn't seem right to us or that seems different and we assume that it is wrong and we are right. Cultural Relativism points out our use of stigma and prejudice, because we cannot keep open minds. That is man's downfall; ignorance.