WEEK15 Cultural relativism in IT - useless?

The question of wrong or right always depends on perspective. Whether it is an individual’s age, gender, cultural background, or profession, we all follow a somewhat different ethical code. The digital age has created a platform for everybody around the world to interact with ease, thus creating a worldwide ethical battlefield.

              Originally, cultural differences where experienced during travels or conquests, often resulting in wars between kingdoms, nations, and states, thus limited, as they were confined to a certain space. However, with the increased societal mobility starting in the late nineteenth century, cultural clashes became more imbedded in daily lives and with the internet most geographical barriers were overcome. People from around the world can read Elon Musk’s provocative posts, watch the Christian ceremonies performed by the pope or read news about the war in Ukraine. Depending on each individual, their reaction is going to be different to somebody’s on the other side of the globe. The ethical theory of cultural relativism is being thoroughly challenged, as the barriers that used to exist have now faded away, thus in increasing situations disagreements are based on cultural differences. The disagreements do not need to be of political or religious matter, they can as banal as a different interpretation of a photo posted on Facebook.

              With a  few friends we were part of a sauna event in Finland, naturally this got posted and my friends, my dad and I were tagged on one picture, which we then shared on our Facebook pages. For some context, the picture showed a sauna in a night setting and us in the background, running into icy water with a bare bottom, barely visible due to the lack of lighting. The next day our accounts were blocked. A Finnish friend had uploaded the same picture, tagging the event and was not blocked, so we investigated what the reason was. After inquiring we received a note from Facebook, that one of our friends had reported the picture based on the sexuality of its content. It was not for another few weeks until we figured out, that my Argentinian grandmother, who followed us on Facebook had reported the post, thinking it would be lewd to upload those pictures and wanted to protect us. It was not until we explained the normality of Finnish sauna culture and associated social media posts, that she promised not to report more posts without asking. My grandmother was justified in reporting the post, as she considered it lewd, however the people who posted it were allowed to do so as it is appropriate from a Finnish perspective.

        This was an innocent situation, which does however show how quickly things can escalate. If the topic was related to religion, politics or another culturally sensitive topics, the extent of disagreement could be a lot more harmful and polar. Especially with international contacts situations can quickly become a heated debate, as the views of people can be drastically different. This puts a greater strain on the users that post content as they have to be careful whether they offend somebody, or might spark the vegetarianism debate, which might not be the goal of the holiday grill-evening post.

        The theory of cultural relativism has become more relevant in the digital age, however, will require additional clauses to adapt to the current situation. As one cannot state that one culture has more weight in the argument than the other culture, possibly cultural relativism cannot be used to distinguish right or wrong anymore in a larger context. It can justify the actions from both perspectives, thus creating a contradiction. The idea of the theory of course, to justify right and wrong based on culture, thus maybe helping both parties understand the other culture, or the other actions, by knowing the culture. Although that is an idealist’s view, since if we would have a mutual understanding and acceptance of each other’s cultures, there would be less conflict. The theory provides a justification for both parties to be right themselves, and for the opposing to be wrong, thus only further incentivizing the conflict. As cultural clashes are so common, possibly another theory is more appropriate a new theory based on an emerging global culture.