The Centre of the Universe

Our natural perspective, from which we observe our environment, is a self-centered perspective.  Objects nearby appear relatively large, while those far away appear small and insignificant.  The earth itself appears to each of us as a circular area that stretches out all around us, while the heavens form a giant overhead dome. 

While we are still young, we learn that we are not alone.  We belong to a family, a community, and a country.  During our first ten years or so, our horizons expand, and while we are still at the apparent centre, we learn to appreciate and respect the different levels of community in which we live.  If we are to receive the positive attention that we crave for, we need to downplay our personal interests and adopt (the) perspectives and practices of our community.

I think it is interesting to learn that most (isolated) people groups viewed their own tribe as “the people” and their territory as the (obvious) centre of the earth.  When others came to them, they were seen as coming from the fringes of the earth.  To consider one’s own community as “the people”, living at “the centre” usually resulted in the notion that one’s own culture or way of doing things was superior to that of others (ethnocentricity).  Visiting outsiders could not even speak “the” language and did not know what or how to eat (concerning what was locally available).  All of this seemed to prove their inferiority.   Jonathan Swift mocks some of these attitudes in his stories in “Gulliver’s Travels”.

When you first visit China, you think squat toilets are primitive and dirty.  You experience them as uncomfortable, and you think they are popular because they are cheaper.  Yet, after you live there for a while, you begin to accept the possibility that squat toilets might just be more hygienic while they strengthen people’s back muscles if used from childhood.

This perspective has proven fatal for some communities.  During human migrations, explorations, and colonization, many isolated people groups lost their lands, their cultures, and their lives when ‘inferior outsiders’ proved to be superior in power, determination, and/or deceitfulness.  The effective explorers and colonizers were confirmed in their convictions that their civilization was (obviously) superior to that of the savages in the far corners of the earth.  According to Jared Diamond (in “Guns, Germs, and Steel”) this was an important cause for the rapid collapse of the Inca Empire.  European nations used science to provide the 'evidence' to provide a rational and ethical basis to exploit these peoples and their lands.

Slowly people who became familiar with other peoples and other places started to see culture from multiple perspectives.  Gradually they sacrificed the notion that their own culture was in all ways superior to others.  As western cultures began to reject ethnocentricity, however, it was hard to find a new set of criteria for “right” and “wrong”.  If ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are just the local consensus of any culture group, is there still a centre from which we can evaluate anything?  If the universe has lost its (perceived) centre, is there still a moral centre from which we can judge between right and wrong?