AFA Issues: Culture – Commentary by Matt Friedeman. This is an interesting article. Not so much for its conclusion which I find a bit tenuous, but rather for the reference it makes at the start. There was an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education some years back (here is a link if you happen to have one of their overly-expensive subscriptions) about how students in college studying Shirley Jackson’s classic short story “The Lottery” had moved from sharp criticisms of the fictious culture that held a lottery to choose someone to stone to death eacy year to proclaiming that we have no right to judge other cultures. If this is what that culture does, who are we to say it is wrong. That article struck me as central to some of the major problems in the world today. That people can read Jackson’s wonderful and disturbing story and not feel that a society which kills members annually in a completely arbitrary fashion is in some way inherently wrong is incredible to me. Anyway, it’s on my mind this morning for no particular reason except that I stumbled upon it accidentally.