Are Some Ways of Life Better Than Others?

Debunking Romantic Notions

Brandon Tumblin
3 min readFeb 11, 2023
Photo by Mayur Keni on Unsplash

It should go without saying, but we absolutely need to have some values. This is important to stress in today’s world because there are some who think that we can all simply accept each other’s philosophies and ways of life, or that one way of life can’t possibly be better than another’s.

I think this is a very naïve way of looking at the world. What if, for example, your philosophy was one of peace and mine was one of violence? There have, after all, been many groups in history that have lived with the imperialism ethos. World War 1 was all about conquest, and World War 2 was partially so. Prior to that, Genghis Khan raped and pillaged most of the world for conquest.

Are All Ways of Life As Good?

It’s simply not the case that we should accept all ways of life as being equally as good. When people say that, what they mean is that we deem each other as having a fundamental value and respect each other’s ways of life. In other words, in order for us to accept and let each other live our lives we first must agree on that premise.

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