Norms

The sand in the hourglass of my time here in India is running out—just 10 more days—and so I can’t help being reflective about the experience, even if that’s a bit premature.

And what I couldn’t stop reflecting upon today is that even though lots of practices that would be considered ethically inappropriate in the US are seen as perfectly acceptable here in India, this still doesn’t necessarily support the claim of ethical relativism: essentially, that culture defines morality such that no overarching objective moral norms exist.

I keep thinking about how people drive differently here; basically, the rule seems to be that the bigger your vehicle, the more people have to get out of your way. The yield signs say “Give way,” but the only giving way I ever see is like when a subcompact car lets a giant truck go ahead of it mainly in order not to be run over.

In the US, plenty of what passes for daily practice here would be reckless driving if not attempted manslaughter, but does this mean that there aren’t any objective moral norms related to conduct on the road?

I don’t think so. It seems to me that both societies concur on some foundational principle, maybe something like, “It is wrong to violate the rules and practices of the road.” It’s just that the two countries have different conventions, sort of like how people drive on the right in the US and (mainly) on the left here.

Or consider the morality of queuing up. At the train station yesterday, people just sort of surged to the ticket window, even if you’re already standing in front of them; only pushy assholes would do that in America, and they’d be unlikely to get away with it, at least if the person in front of them were bigger.

Again, I think both societies share a common value in this case; call it efficiency. The shared moral norm would then be, “One should always queue up in a manner that maximizes line-moving speed.” Here, that means getting ahead of whomever you can; in Seattle, by contrast, that means somewhat passive-aggressively ensuring that everyone behind you knows who was here first.

So in the end, it’s all the same thing, only different. Or, as is so often the case in India, totally different, but somehow the same.