No, you're postmodern!

Saturday, cigarette #1
On the porch in the freezing cold, 10:40am

"Mister Argyle" from the seminar "ENGL 721: Edmund Burke: Empire and Revolution" reacts with skepticism when Burke plays fast and loose with the differences between English, Irish, French, American and Indian cultures. "By deeply studying the histories of our moral positions, we can come to understand common threads with reference to which we can have a conversation," he says, and with diction like that it should be clear why he is called Mister Argyle.

I'm with him in regarding the cultures-have-so-little-in-common-that-they-can't-even-talk-to-one-another position with suspicion, but neither do I think that sufficient study will make it clear that cultures are just different lamps for the same light. Can I get some middle ground?

Put this in your metaphor pipe and smoke it: the Church talks about manly virtue versus womanly virtue, and the virtues of youth versus the virtues of age. All of these are virtuous, but a patriarch who has the innocence of a child is committing some sin, as is a woman who behaves like a man. There is some overlap between opposites, and sometimes an exceptional child can be wise and an exceptional man can be meek, but the vocations of age and gender can't be completely disregarded or transcended.

Perhaps the differences between cultures are like the differences between these ideals of virtue? All ethical systems are describing the same thing (virtue), but not necessarily in a way that makes them have anything much in common? If so, then dialogue becomes complicated again, because, in age/youth as well as male/female, Christianity prescribes certain rituals of interaction that don't require mutual understanding or an ability to "speak the other's language," but only require "knowing your role." ("Honor your mother and father," "the husband is head of the household," etc.)