When Culture Becomes an Excuse for Harm
Imagine discovering a culture where every 3rd child is killed because people believe doing so makes their fruit grow bigger. It has happened for centuries. Their parents did it. Their grandparents did it. There are ceremonies surrounding it. Special knives. Songs. Festivals. Perhaps entire communities depend on the tradition. Would any of that make killing the children acceptable?
Of course not.
In any remotely moral world, our concern would be for the children being killed. We would want them protected. We certainly wouldn’t stand around watching because intervening might be considered disrespectful to someone’s culture. Because culture can explain why people do something. It cannot, by itself, justify what they are doing. But introduce other animals into the conversation and suddenly “it’s our culture” is presented as though someone has played the ultimate ethical trump card.
Culture and ethics are not the same thing
Culture is incredibly important. It connects generations. It creates community. It gives people shared experiences, celebrations, food, language, art and identity. But none of this means every practice contained within a culture is automatically ethical.
There was a time when slavery was culturally accepted. That did not make slavery ethical. Female genital mutilation remains a traditional practice in some parts of the world. Calling it tradition does not transform what is being done into something morally acceptable.
We understand this perfectly well when humans are the victims. Nobody seriously argues that human rights should disappear whenever violating them becomes traditional enough.
So why would animals lose consideration simply because exploiting them has been normalised for generations?
Tradition is an explanation, not an argument
“We’ve always done it.”
“My family has always eaten this.”
“It’s part of our culture.”
Fine.
Those statements might tell us why somebody behaves a particular way. They still haven’t told us why the behaviour is ethical.
Our ancestors did countless things we no longer consider acceptable. History records what humans have done. It does not hand those behaviours a permanent moral exemption. Otherwise, morality would become little more than a popularity contest conducted across generations. Do something for long enough and apparently nobody is allowed to question it. That is absurd.
If your ancestors travelled everywhere on horseback, nobody thinks buying a car is a betrayal of your heritage. Nobody insists that email is morally questionable because your great-grandparents communicated by letter.
Traditions change constantly.
The question is whether we change them for the better.
Respecting culture doesn’t mean respecting everything a culture does
This is where conversations about cultural relativism often become confused. You can respect people without pretending every practice they inherited deserves preservation. In fact, refusing to criticise harmful practices because the people performing them belong to another culture creates a strange moral double standard.
Return to those children being killed because their community believes their deaths improve the fruit harvest. Would respecting the culture require respecting the killings? No. The children are part of that culture too. They are simply the ones paying for the tradition. And this is something we conveniently forget when talking about other animals.
When someone says killing animals is “part of our culture”, whose culture are we discussing?The humans who enjoy the tradition? Or the animals whose bodies are required to maintain it?
A pig does not experience becoming someone’s traditional dinner as cultural enrichment. A bull does not experience being killed for entertainment as heritage. An animal trapped, bred, used or killed does not suddenly experience less harm because humans have attached rituals, memories or symbolism to what is happening.
Culture belongs in the explanation.
The victim belongs in the ethical calculation.
This isn’t saying every harm is identical
Whenever comparisons like these are made, somebody inevitably pretends the argument is that killing animals, female genital mutilation, slavery and killing children are all exactly the same thing. They aren’t. That isn’t the argument. The comparison tests the principle being used to justify them.
If somebody claims:
“A practice is morally acceptable because it is part of my culture.”
We can test that principle by applying it elsewhere. Would culture justify mutilating someone? Would culture justify enslaving someone? Would culture justify killing a child?
If the answer is no, then culture itself clearly isn’t sufficient justification. You now need another argument. And “but we’ve been doing it for ages” still isn’t one.
Traditions don’t have to disappear
Rejecting a harmful element of a tradition does not necessarily mean abandoning the tradition itself.
Family gatherings can continue.
Festivals can continue.
Recipes can change.
Celebrations can evolve.
Communities can maintain the things that actually bring people together without requiring someone else to suffer for them. The purpose of culture and tradition is to strengthen family and community ties, not necessarily to preserve every specific food or activity forever. That seems a far healthier understanding of tradition.
Preserve the connection.
Lose the victim.
Culture should evolve with our ethics
Tradition can tell us where we came from. It shouldn’t dictate where we are allowed to go. If learning more about another individual’s experience causes us to recognise that an old practice causes unnecessary harm, changing that practice isn’t an attack on culture.
It is moral progress.
Animals should not be excluded from that principle simply because exploiting them happens to be particularly old, profitable, or familiar. We already know tradition alone cannot justify harming humans. We should have the courage to apply the same reasoning consistently.
Tradition should be a bridge to the past, not a barricade against ethical progress.