If you Differ, You’re a “Deviant”

According to Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and their school of thought, every society, no matter what its level of evolution or civilization, possesses adequate standards of morality and a corresponding set of expressions, attitudes and symbols. If this were true, no criticisms could ever be offered except in terms of the universe of discourse of a given society; for this doctrine sanctions: 1) inter-cultural relativism and 2) domestic conformity. As society (or, as it is called today, the “pattern of culture”) is the supreme reality, collaboration with it is compulsory, for in the name of what value can one oppose it? The nonconforming person is simply considered as the exponent of a different cultural pattern and stamped “deviant.” To claim that he may be right (or wrong) is meaningless, for he can be right (or wrong) only according to the value-system of another pattern.

Now despite assurances by Professor Kluckhohn that anthropologists and sociologists are changing their minds about the pattern-of-culture doctrine, it seems that the up-to-date social scientist thinks more of refurnishing his vocabulary than his conceptual storeroom. In front of me is the latest book of Professor Robert C. Angell, Free Society and Moral Crisis (University of Michigan, $6.00), with a generous preface by Reinhold Niebuhr. Are the latter’s laudatory words due to the term “moral” in the title and throughout the book? This term has not been very popular among social scientists and social engineers, and Mr. Angell, an ex-director of UNESCO’s social science department, admits that he is almost alone in considering “moral integration an important aspect of social order.” But he crushes our hopes when he hastens to add that he intends to remain objective, and will consider the quality of the moral web irrelevant.

TM

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Thomas Molnar

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According to Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead and their school of thought, every society, no matter what its level of evolution or civilization, possesses adequate standards of morality and a corresponding set of expressions, attitudes and symbols. If this were true, no criticisms could ever be offered except in terms of the universe of discourse of a given society; for this doctrine sanctions: 1) inter-cultural relativism and 2) domestic conformity. As society (or, as it is called today, the “pattern of culture”) is the supreme reality, collaboration with it is compulsory, for in the name of what value can one oppose it? The nonconforming person is simply considered as the exponent of a different cultural pattern and stamped “deviant.” To claim that he may be right (or wrong) is meaningless, for he can be right (or wrong) only according to the value-system of another pattern.

Now despite assurances by Professor Kluckhohn that anthropologists and sociologists are changing their minds about the pattern-of-culture doctrine, it seems that the up-to-date social scientist thinks more of refurnishing his vocabulary than his conceptual storeroom. In front of me is the latest book of Professor Robert C. Angell, Free Society and Moral Crisis (University of Michigan, $6.00), with a generous preface by Reinhold Niebuhr. Are the latter’s laudatory words due to the term “moral” in the title and throughout the book? This term has not been very popular among social scientists and social engineers, and Mr. Angell, an ex-director of UNESCO’s social science department, admits that he is almost alone in considering “moral integration an important aspect of social order.” But he crushes our hopes when he hastens to add that he intends to remain objective, and will consider the quality of the moral web irrelevant.