Quite possibly the only ethical subject I don't utterly detest, so naturally, I'll be putting a lot of stuff about it up here.
When two cultures do not agree about the same subject, an ethical issue arises called cultural relativism. It is something that is the cause of many conflicts, war, and debates, though people do not know it.
Lets say that you live in Spain, where going home to take a nap in the afternoon is perfectly fine- in fact, it's the norm- but in the United States, it is considered very poor form. Americans live a much faster-paced life than Spaniards, so the afternoon siesta is not good for you if you work. This is cultural relativism: where one culture says something is morally permissible, but another does not.
This example seems pretty low-key, and can be cleared up with a short conversation. But imagine that one culture accepts the death penalty, but another finds it ethically wrong. Someone comes from the country with no death penalty and goes to the other one, and does something that warrants this sort of punishment. What then? The country he comes from does not allow the death penalty, but this one does.
The ethics of this are, of course, which one is right. Neither and both, by a cultural relativist point of view. Which is why it is so hard to use this one in a case... it doesn't have an answer.
The point is that ethics can change from place to place, and cultural relativism shows how flimsy ethics are, and how there is no ethically right answer to any problem. There are no universally held moral values.
I don't know why I included this actually. I just liked the picture.
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