Without putting words in the guy's mouth I think in this case you're both actually hanging arguments on Rube that he isn't making.
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Originally Posted by Cappy
I think a lot of people do not get into a tizzy because they think, well it's their culture.
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I agree that many people do this and that it is one source of lack of the lack of moral outrage over practices in, for example Saudi Arabia. But we were talking about another source, which is a choice of prioritization. There are others still. So you're probably talking past him.
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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
As much as the Western tradition includes some pretty monstrous systems, it also birthed the reforms of those systems. The culture that gave the world colonialism also gave it the Enlightenment, democracy, the scientific revolution, and the rights revolution. As for patriarchy, it's more or less the universal human norm in every settled society in history, so hanging that on the West is just obtuse.
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Seems to me his point is that even if we accept this rather optimistic viewpoint about the great things that have happened in Western culture over the past 200ish years, there are still flaws with how our society has developed. So, rooting out those flaws rather than ignoring them while congratulating ourselves for all the good stuff we've got going for us is still important.