Even if that were true, weren't we in the Random thread just going over how a person shouldn't feel pressured by what's considered normalcy only for their particular culture?
Emphasis mine. There's a difference between "how I feel my culture should be structured" and "how to behave in another culture". I think it's silly that Christians take
off their hat in church, while (practising orthodox) Jews
cover their head for the exact same reason, that Muslims take off their shoes in a mosque and so on adn so forth. That doesn't mean that, when I go to visit a mosque, or a church, or a synagogue, I don't try to conform to their cultural values adn their habits/uses/traditions.
Questioning your own culture is one thing. Questioning another culture as an outsider is another thing. Breaking traditions of other cultures and thereby insulting/offending people is yet another. This, as well, can be a perfectly rational and acceptable personal choice (say, a woman refusing to cover her head on vacation in Iran because she sees this as suppression of women as an inferior group of people,...), but it's one that has consequences you have to be aware of (in given example, probably either incarceration or deportation, or, at the very least, being shunned/insulted/considered impolite).
Anyway, my point wasn't necessarily "YOU HORRIBLE PERSON HOW COULD YOU", it was a question. Badly phrased, perhaps. It was me being curious about the differnce between cultures and so on.
Lastly, I'm afraid my stance over there wasn't clear, once again, apprently. I didn't say you "shouldn't be pressured by what is considered normalcy". Firstly, I don't think "not breastfeeding" is "normal". Secondly, I only stated that cultural r easons are
less important than more general reasons (cfr the difference between the Universal Human Rights, and individual rights granted by specific states/countries. The US government could conceivably vote to abolish your Right to Bear Arms; if it was done by the right channels and so on, it would be perfectly legal. The US government could
not vote to reinstate slavery; no matter what House, Congress and president would like to do, even if they wrote it into the First Amendment, it would still be against international law and go against your universal rights to be free and not be sold into slavery.
To me, there are several layers of needs/wants/... ; one trumps another. I'm perfectly within my rights to say that, within my house, nobody is allowed to smoke. I can also say that everyone is free to smoke as much as they want. However, if my state suddenly makes a law forbidding all smoking indoors, I
don't have the right to decide anymore whether or not someone smokes in my house. If the national government decides this sort of law is oppressive and makes a law stating states can't decide, hey, back to me. And so on.
Similar for cultural values. Whether or not I like people to behave a certain way is one thing. Whether or not that behaviour is accepted in my culture* is another. Whether or not this behaviour is generally considered acceptable is again another.
A person may think it's perfectly OK to have 3 wives. In some cultures this would be accepted, in others, not so much. Conforming to the culture around you is an unfortunate necessity for the organisation of a society. Mind that "a working society" isn't necessarily a personal or cultural value; some people just want to watch the world burn
.
*This can be broken down further. There are general Western values, there's typically Belgian things, there's typically European things, there's typically Brussels things,....
And I'm once again rambling at 6am, why oh why do I do this.....