Knowledge And Decisions

Cultural cues are more effective, either as warnings or as guides to more positive relationships, when the individuals involved are part of the same culture. While rationalism tends to investigate cultural characteristics in terms of their specific minutiae — which may be quaint or “irrational” — the real function of these cultural cues is to convey information in a code readily understood by those using it, so that consistency and dependability are more important than the particular devices themselves. Someone who approaches a woman in a deferential manner or addresses a man with, “Excuse me, sir ...” is setting a particular framework of intentions as a sort of implicit contract as to the relationship sought — a contract which can then be monitored by the other party to determine how much of what follows in fact fits within the framework of the implied declaration of intentions. A breezy “Hi ya, babe” or “Hey, Mac” implies a different set of intentions, and is also subject to subsequent monitoring within a different framework, or to rejection at the outset. The specific meaning or merits of the explicit words themselves are not at issue. It is the given cultural context that conveys a particular constellation of intentions, regardless of the explicit, grammatical meanings of the words. Where different cultures or subcultures coexist side by side or in an overlapping pattern, the same words or other cultural cues carry different meanings to different people. This means both more misunderstandings and higher levels of defenses or “insurance” behavior to minimize the dangers of misunderstandings. Moreover, the least careful or most bigoted members of the different cultures acquire a disproportionate ability to create intergroup conflict, since one of the cultural interpretation problems is determining to what extent a given individual or set of individuals represent the general sentiments (especially hostility) of another group.

The values of individualism are recognized not only in laws and the Constitutional rights regarding privacy, freedom of conscience etc., but in social doctrines of toleration, pluralism, and a general live-and-let-live attitude. The limits of individualism cannot be sharply defined and set in concrete for posterity. The nature and implications of the trade-off need to be recognized, however. In particular, the demands of unbounded individualism need to be weighed in the light of inherent social constraints which can only change their form but cannot be eliminated without eliminating civilization. Moreover, the claim for individual toleration cannot extend to cancelling other people’s right to judge as they will what a given individual does. Much of the modern demand for individualism — including John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty — is a plea for exemption from social feedback from those negatively judging individual behavior. Such an exemption is especially inconsistent when it emanates from those actively criticizing the rest of society. However democratic the language in which it is phrased, it is not a demand for equal rights or a general freedom, but for a nonreciprocal special privilege.