A bit of professional pride

“We [anthropologists] have been the first to insist on a number of things: that the world does not divide into the pious and the superstitious; that there are sculptures in jungles and paintings in deserts; that political order is possible without centralized power and principled justice without codified rules; that the norms of reason were not fixed in Greece, the evolution of morality not consummated in England. Most important, we were the first to insist that we see the lives of others through lenses of our own grinding and that they look back on ours through ones of their own.” (Clifford Geertz)

I would only add one thing to that: I dislike it when cultural relativism (initiated by anthropology) is pushed into moral relativism. I will not argue for the "dangers" or poor content of this "postmodern chaos" or anything like that, I will merely say that I, as an almost conservative-oriented anthropologist, simply dislike it.