Otherness by David Brin Page B

culturally chauvinistic statement!" There are agreeing nods all around the room. "I mean, what's so special about our culture? We're no better than, say, Asian civili—"

    "You're doing it again!" I cry; I can hardly sit still. (Perhaps from being too impressed with my own cleverness?) Several members of the audience blink for a moment, then smile faintly.

    "I don't see—" he tries to continue, but I'm too excited and hurry on.

    "Look, it may be true that there's something to be learned from all points of view. But it might also be true that that's just the bias our heterogeneous, melting-pot culture has imposed on us !

    "Answer truthfully. You all believe that widely diverse points of view have merit, right?"

    "Right," the young man answers firmly, his jaw set.

    "And your insistence could be called a declaration of faith in a 'Doctrine of Otherness,' right?"

    "I suppose so. But—"

    "And you'll agree that as a truly pervasive set of assumptions, it's pretty much a liberal Western, even American, tradition, won't you? Think how strange this Doctrine of Otherness would seem to an ancient Roman, or to the dynastic Chinese who thought the world revolved around Beijing, or to Tudor England, or to most of the peoples of the world today."

    "Well . . ." He doesn't want to admit it, but after a moment's thought the fellow finally nods. "All right, so that's just our way of looking at things. But you can't say it's actually better than any other way. We have this so-called Doctrine of Otherness. Other peoples have their own cultural assumptions, of equal value."

    "Aha!" I smile. "But by saying that, by stating that those other points of view have merit, you are insisting that your cultural dogma—this Doctrine of Otherness— is the best! You're a cultural chauvinist!"

    He frowns and scratches his head. A woman on the left raises her hand, then slowly lowers it again.

    From the back a voice calls. "That's a tautology . . . or a paradox . . . I forget which. It's like when I say—'This sentence is a lie.' You've got him trapped either way he goes!"

    I shrug. "So? Since when are deep-seated cultural assumptions ever fair? They're adaptations a society makes in order to survive . . . in our case, dictated by being a nation of immigrants who had to learn to get along together. Dogmas don't have to be entirely logical, as long as they work.

    "Still, perhaps we ought to be proud of America as the prime promoter of a dogma of difference and choice—"

    Ooh. They react quickly to that!

    "Why proud?" an elderly lady remarks vehemently. "That doesn't make us better than anybody else! It's no great shakes to measure our own culture by our culture's standards and come out with the answer that we're okay! We worship diversity, so by that token we see our worship of diversity as virtuous—"

    " That is a tautology," I point out. Fortunately, she ignores the rude interruption.

    "—But that doesn't mean that our culture doesn't come up lacking by some other set of standards," she insists. "Other cultural dogmas could be just as valid."

    I sigh. "You're doing it again."

    This time a few in the audience laugh. The woman glares for a moment. "Okay. So I'm a product of my culture. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm right. I mean it doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong. I mean . . ."

    When the laughter spreads, she breaks down and smiles. "I—I think I see what you're getting at now."

    "I only wish I did," I reply. But we're starting to get into the spirit of this now. More hands rise, and we're off.

    Perhaps it began with Copernicus, who exiled Earth permanently from the center of the universe.

    If this was so, then no one could claim Europe (or China, or Arabia) was the navel of creation, either. The hidden implications were profound. People who accepted the new astronomy also had to adjust to the idea that what their senses told them every day was untrue—that the world did not revolve around them alone.

    As the centuries