The foreign gaze
Each calls barbaric what is not of his own custom.
Reflecting on the so-called "savages" of the New World, noticed that "each man calls barbarism whatever is not his own custom" (Of Cannibals). Before you let your reflex of disgust pass for a moral verdict, turn the gaze around: ask how your own would look to that other eye. The point is to tell a real wrong from mere unfamiliarity, so that "it's not how we do it" stops counting as "it's wrong".
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- Status of norms (metaethics) · Relativism
Source: Montaigne