Bioethics In The Small Would Summary

The author began his article by defining both culture and morality. Culture is the lifestyle of group of people who have a combination several factors that contributed to shape their culture. These factors include common environment, similar thoughts, believes, and behaviors. As diverse as the ecological systems, human cultures and subcultures are distinct from each other and may flourish or demolish over time due to different reasons. On the other hand, morality is based on the human rationality, fundamental human needs, and the same biological nature despite of belonging to various cultures. Due to human limitations – shortage in experiencing variety of human situation, human egocentrism, and human fallibility - moral thoughts and action may differ from one individual to another even from the same culture.
In the second part of the article, the author wanted to clarify an important concept which is that there is no perfect culture. Each culture has its own strengths and weakness in different aspects of life. That does not mean that a certain culture is superior to other cultures since humans are morally equal. Human beings may consider viewing various human cultures as trying on different colored eyeglasses or lenses in order to perceive and understand these culture from their perspectives not one’s own
perspective. Depending on one’s own cultural lens only, would have more distractive than beneficial results to recognize any moral or cultural development of the other cultures.
In the third and the forth parts of the article, differences between morality and culture were stated and then two examples (dancing masquerades and a tale from African folklore) were given to emphasize on the significance of knowledge and requiring all the wisdom for one’s own self. The author suggested that the western culture should promote the idea of standing up and moving around to distinct directions in order to fully identify the dancing masquerades (diverse cultures). Otherwise, it may lead to the loss of significant portions of human wisdom which is scattered in tiny little morsels throughout the world as the author mentioned in the article.
In conclusion, humans should be very careful when they want to transform their dreams into reality. The author gave a personal example of this concept. He had a dream regarding the war on Iraq. He said it was a harmless dream from a pacifist. But if his personal dream became reality, it would be dangerous dream to accomplish. There are no moral justifications for any war despite its consequences (positive or negative) in the author opinion.
# Analysis of the article:
“Wisdom is a faithful one's wish and wherever you find it, have it and never abandon it.” - Arabic Proverb - The author began his article with an African adage that reflect his own culture to discuss the concepts of culture and morality. I thought that I should do the same to show my cultural background about the discussed matters. The Arabic proverb cited above indicates that every believer in God (as Muslims we believe in Allah) should seeks wisdom wherever he/she find it and inquire it to become a better human being. This implies that wisdom is given to other individuals in other cultures. I agree with the author definitions of both culture and morality. Humans should be open minded regarding various cultures and their differences. Again, there is no perfect culture since the creators of these cultures themselves (humans) are not perfect. It is essential to understand and admit that all cultures complete each other. As for morality, I believe that Islamic morals are based on the basic humans needs and rights regardless of their cultures, religions, or even material states. Since the Islamic morals promote all the positive and beneficial traits of human being and refuse all the negative and vicious traits of humans, one may say that it is the global morals for all culture, but one has to respect the other cultures detailed differences. Morals are universal for all cultures but individuals may have other point of view of the same morals depending on their personalities, needs, and experiences. From my personal perspective, I think that one essential reason for big portion of human’s problems and dilemmas through all time is human neglection of the universal morals. Problems varying from personal to familial, to social, to even global would be solved much easier and earlier if all parties of the problem had morals in their priorities. Wars would not start easily without thinking of the consequences of it on the innocent people. This article was written by a bioethical scientist and it was part of the book entitled by: “Bioethics in the Small Would”.
Despite of that, one can notice that all the examples in the article are either related to the author’s own culture or not even related to the scientific ethics. Before initiating to read this article, I imagined that the article would include examples, practices, and situations related to the scientific research ethics but it was discussing the matters of cultures and morality in general point of view. It would be more appropriate if he included examples from the scientific situations instead of giving example of war in the
conclusion. One critical notice regarding the article, the author asked a question in the title which is: are ethics culture-dependent? Going through the article carefully, you would notice that he did not answer the question explicitly but he preferred that the reader would decide after finishing reading the article for several times. Again, ethics was not mentioned directly in the article. The reason for that maybe because the concepts of morality and ethics are combined in the same interpretation for the author. Answering the author’s question is not a simple or easy task for any scientist. Ethics in my opinion is culture dependent to some extend but it is not completely culture dependent. An example for that is group of scientists in specific specialty would have common morals and ethics for their own field although they are from different cultural backgrounds. This group by themselves form a culture community. Ethics is dependent on other aspects such as political aspects, economical aspects and other factors. One cannot separate these factors while contracting certain rules or ethical law for specific scientific field. Every scientist should keep up his\her moral believe and ethics throughout his\her research career.