Much of the discussion of the controversy over drawing images of the Islamic prophet Muhammad is framed in terms of rights, such as the right to free expression of one’s religion and the right to free speech. As I understand it, Islam prohibits drawings of the prophet for similar reasons that Judaism and Christianity prohibit idolatry: a physical image of a divine figure is at odds with the fundamentally spiritual nature of the divine in the Abrahamic tradition. So, any image depicting Muhammad is blasphemous to some Muslims; practicing their religion entails objecting to such images. Americans (and many other Westerners) hold free speech as a sacred right; for them, any prohibition on, say, drawing an image of the Islamic prophet is an infringement on their sacred rights and is objectionable.

I’m not sure this conflict can be resolved when approached in this way. Sure, plenty of non-Islamic Americans will say there’s an easy solution, namely: “Muslims don’t have to look at these images.” But in fact that’s not really a solution, because Islam defines the images themselves as morally offensive. Suppose Joe enjoys looking a child pornography, and when we object Joe says, “if you don’t like it, don’t look at it.” The problem with Joe’s response is that our society regards child pornography as morally offensive in and of itself. If you find something deeply morally offensive, you want to eliminate it, not just look the other way. The fact is, there is a direct conflict here between religious and free speech rights, and this conflict is not going to go away.

That is why I suggest approaching this as a matter of politeness rather than rights. Yes, Americans and Danes have the political right to draw pictures of Muhammad, but doing so is insensitive, inflammatory and rude, and those are perfectly good reasons not to do it. Another analogy: Suppose you have a friend who has recently lost a child to cancer. You have every right to make cancer jokes to your friend, to rib him about his tears, to tell him to just get over it. But you don’t choose to exercise these rights (I hope) because to do so would be insensitive, inflammatory, and rude. In short, even if you have the right to do so, there are plenty of other reasons not to say or do certain things.

When people have strong feelings about something, it is simple human decency to try and respect those feelings. Of course, it could happen that one person’s strong feelings seriously impinge upon the rights of others, and in that case politeness is not the most important consideration. These matters have to be considered on a case by case basis. But for my money, exercising the right to draw somebody else’s prophet is not worth being rude to them.

I’m not sure what “modern” means. I’m not sure anyone knows what it means, because the term is so broad that it gets used in a lot of different ways. But that is not to say that the term is meaningless. There are some consistencies in the way the word is used. One of those consistencies has to do with secularity: modernity entails a viewpoint that understands basic questions about the universe from a secular perspective. What causes the events in a person’s life? What is the origin of the universe? Where do human beings come from? If your understanding of these issues does not assign primary significance to divine beings or forces, then in this respect you have a modern world view. This does not mean that people with a modern world view don’t believe in God, but it does mean that they accommodate that belief to what they understand to be scientific and secular explanations.

Lots of people, even in the contemporary West, do not have a modern world view. In most of the world, this is not because they have not heard about modernity, it is rather because they know about it and they reject it. I am probably not the person to explain their objections, since I do not share them, but it is not difficult to see that indeed one could argue there are some downsides to secular modernity (For example: the collapse of communal values, a pervasive sense of anxiety and meaninglessness, loosening of restraints on consumption and sexual behavior, and so on).

What we call “fundamentalism”—whether based in Christianity, Islam, or some other religion– is a system of thought that rejects the modern world view. But at the same time, fundamentalism could not exist without the modern world, because it is a reaction against the modern world. There were no fundamentalists in the 12th century.

Fundamentalism is not going to go away, and the clash between fundamentalists (of different sorts) and the modern world view is undeniably one of the most important political conflicts of our time. But for the most part people on the different sides of this conflict don’t talk to one another. As a result misunderstandings and suspicions grow, and so does the level of conflict. It is up to people on both sides to try and change this. But it won’t be easy. For example, those who consider themselves scientists—who are probably also modernists—typically consider discussion with fundamentalists futile, because the scientists know they are right and their opponents are wrong. Funny thing is, typically the fundamentalists feel the same way.

Photo by Global X.

Photo provided by Tara Hunt

The novelist Virginia Woolf once said, “on or about December 1910, human character changed.” (see Jackson Lears). She was kidding about the specificity of the date but in earnest about the change. Roughly speaking, the change in human character to which she referred had to do with the shift from an emphasis on duty, respectability, and moral uprightness to a concern with enjoyment, popularity, and personal fulfillment.

Lately I’ve been writing about how, along with this change, modern institutions such as entertainment, advertising, and psychotherapy started to develop. These things all fit together in some uncanny way. The new ideas about the importance of personal enjoyment and fulfillment encouraged consumption because they made people especially interested in the steady supply of consumer goods being turned out on assembly lines. Advertising stepped in to help enhance the message that consumer goods and services could bring fulfillment and address one’s personal ills. Psychotherapy came from another direction, of course, but it too was based on the new idea that personal happiness and self-realization should be an expected right for everyone.

A society that emphasizes the right of everyone to pursue their own desires and inclinations is going to have to be willing to tolerate a wide range of beliefs, values, and behaviors. Thus it is not surprising that this period was also characterized by a growing flexibility about values.

The good news about this flexibility—often called cultural relativism–is first of all that it is adaptive in an economy based on high levels of consumption. In a climate of cultural relativism, people are willing to try new things; they are on a quest to discover themselves and are receptive to arguments that this or that is just what they need.

Second, cultural relativism tends to encourage tolerance of different ways of life and beliefs, and is an important part of the foundation for the diverse society that began to take shape. But cultural relativism also creates some significant problems. For example, what are its limits? Are there no final standards of right and wrong?

This may all seem somewhat philosophical and academic, but in fact it is one of the most important questions of our time. The political climate in America today is becoming increasingly polarized, and one of the reasons for this is that people have different moral standards and are losing their faith that these differences can be reconciled. In recent decades the strongest backlash against cultural relativism has taken the form of religious fundamentalism. This battle over cultural relativism has been and will continue to be one of the defining conflicts of our time.

I have argued, in earlier posts, that there is a strange connection between entertainment and our ideas about knowledge. Specifically, people who grow up immersed in the imaginary worlds of entertainment seem to have a tendency to accept relativism, the idea that there can be different versions of the truth. It would be too much to claim that entertainment causes relativism, but there are some historical connections that suggest that relativism has developed hand-in-hand with the culture of entertainment.

Speaking of strange connections, here’s another one. For some people strong faith in science contributes to the acceptance of relativism. That is, officially, in our society, we believe the most certain source of knowledge is science (I say officially because privately many people, perhaps most people, in our society continue to believe that the most certain knowledge comes from sacred texts such as the Bible).

Although I agree enthusiastically with the official view—the most certain knowledge comes from rigorous application of the scientific method–I also take it as obvious that there are lots of questions that science cannot address. For example, science cannot tell us why the universe exists, the purpose of human life, or which color of Pez is the best.

However, some people are so enthusiastic about science that they extend their conviction that the scientific method is the most reliable source of knowledge to the conclusion that it is the only source of knowledge. According to this reasoning, in areas where we cannot establish scientific truth, there is no truth. Voila, extreme cultural relativism.

An example: Many people (intelligent and well educated though they may be) assert that the value of artistic endeavors is simply a matter of opinion, that (for example) one cannot pronounce one painting or piece of music better than another. According to this line of thought, no one can say that a portrait of a sad clown on black velvet is any better or worse than a Rembrandt, or that a Beethoven symphony is better than a Lady Gaga song. Since there is no scientific way of proving that the Rembrandt is better than the clown, it isn’t.

But in fact, there is plenty of evidence that the Rembrandt is a better painting than the clown: it is more complex, creative, original, skilled in its execution, etc. Now, of course, people can deny that, just as a majority of the American population denies the evidence that supports the theory of evolution. But, in both cases, the fact that people deny something has no bearing on the question of whether it is true. We call something true when the best evidence we have supports it, whether or not that evidence has been derived scientifically.

Another example: It is wrong to murder people and keep them in your freezer so that later you can eat them. However, this fact was not established by scientific investigation. Do you believe that because there is no scientific evidence that murder is wrong, then maybe it is OK? If so, you are confused and potentially dangerous. Extreme relativism starts off sounding liberal and tolerant, it ends up being morally incoherent.

One of the first posts I read at Psychology Today when I started blogging there was written by a young man who argued strenuously that psychologists should endorse only “testable ideas and theories,” and cast out the rest. I applaud the notion that we should support our ideas and theories with evidence. But at the same time I’m kind of concerned about this contention that only psychometric tests provide valid evidence, because I know that no matter how absurd a statement is, if it begins to circulate (as this idea does in some graduate programs of education and psychology) more and more people will start to believe it.

The obvious fact is that most of what anybody knows is not based on testable propositions, if by “testable” we mean a rigorous process of devising methods for isolating certain independent variables and seeing how they react to controlled variations. You know the driver ahead of you is not paying attention, that your child is stretching the truth, that this tie won’t go with that jacket, etc. All of this knowledge is based on evidence, but not upon evaluating testable propositions. In the last fifty years or so, there has been a tendency in some quarters to claim that the only real knowledge is that which can be backed up by testable, preferably quantitative evidence. That idea is so obviously stupid that I don’t really know where to begin in disputing it.

Now, in saying that this is a stupid idea, I do not mean for a moment to say that those who express it are themselves lacking in intelligence. Rather, they are repeating what they have been told, which is something that all human beings are very likely to do. And that’s the very reason that it is best to be vigilant about stupid ideas.

By all means, let’s use scientific methods whenever possible to figure out the sorts of things that can be tested through controlled experiments or the quantitative assessment of careful observations. But it does not follow from this commitment that controlled tests provide the only sort of valid evidence. If a psychotherapist with decades of clinical experience is able to offer insight into a patient’s behavior based on subtle factors such as facial expression and what the patient said two weeks ago, that insight may be based on evidence as well, even though it’s not “testable.” Can you provide a testable explanation for why the Axis powers were defeated in the Second World War? Does that mean that some explanations for the course of the war aren’t supported by better evidence than others?

There may be seemingly sensible people around you who say that the only real knowledge is that which can be supported with quantitative evidence, but that doesn’t make it true. This is an affront to common sense, and if you accept this statement, your intellect will be thereby impoverished.

One of the concerns voiced by conservative critics who are uncomfortable with the idea of Sonia Sotomayor on the Supreme Court is that she has made comments that suggest that her capacity to empathize with oppressed groups is something that might inform her judgments on the bench. Psychologists understand that empathy is an important quality that healthy individuals bring to their relations with others. So why be worried if Judge Sotomayor has a capacity for empathy?

The reasoning is as follows: Sotomayor’s critics see her comments as betraying an underlying conviction that persons from different cultural backgrounds see the world in fundamentally different ways. The critics fear that this conviction is part of a culturally relativist approach to truth: if one’s cultural background strongly influences how one sees the world, doesn’t it follow that when different groups see an issue differently, there is no solid basis for deciding which view is the correct one? In other words, “empathy” seems to suggest “relativism” which seems to suggest “there are only different opinions, no final truths,”

Conservatives tend to not like relativism, but they especially despise it in judges who are charged with understanding what the Constitution has to say about legal issues. The fear is that rather than respecting the integrity of the Constitution, relativists will construe that document as meaning whatever they–based on their own cultural background–want it to mean.

This dispute can be illuminated by a brief history lesson, so bear with me for a moment. Historian Warren Susman pointed out that until the late 19th century, the most common term used for evaluating individuals was “character.” To have character meant (and still means today) to measure up to certain fixed standards of virtue: honesty, diligence, honor, etc. Susman points out that the turn of the century saw an explosion of interest in a new evaluative term: personality. Although psychologists later adopted the word as a scientific term, in its original popular usage “personality” referred to an individual’s capacity to be charming and likable (again, this persists: “she has a lot of personality.”) The distinction between character and personality can be compressed into the observation that a serial killer can have a great personality—evidently this was true of Ted Bundy.

The distinction between character and personality is one index of much broader cultural shifts that occurred in American society around the turn of the 20th century. At bottom, these shifts had to do with the birth of what we now call the consumer economy—remember this was the period of Henry Ford’s first assembly line. Basically, people with character were not particularly well adapted to work in large bureaucracies, and above all they weren’t very reliable consumers. People with personality are just what you are looking for if you want to move a lot of product, because they want to dress well, drive the newest model, listen to the right music, etc.

My point? Today we are still fighting the battle between fixed standards and flexibility, although now the debate is likely to take shape around identity politics and relativism. Conservative newspaper columnists are fond of asserting that cultural relativism is foisted upon innocent college students by liberal professors, but I’m a college professor, and I can tell you that students walk into my classroom as dyed in the wool relativists. What makes them that way is our whole society, but the biggest promoters of relativism are business interests who benefit enormously from young people’s lack of fixed standards and their constant pursuit of the latest thing. So, conservative critics, if you really want to tackle cultural relativism, leave Sonia Sotomayor alone and go after the giant corporations who are paying for your campaigns.