Tea and the Slippery Slope

I happen to like tea. I prefer black tea - a blend of orange pekoe and broken orange pekoe that most Americans would call "English Breakfast Tea." I like it piping hot. In fact, the hotter the better otherwise the tea will not infuse properly and the leaves will rise in the cup. Yes, I brew it in the cup, mainly because that's how I like it. I just have to remember not to drain the cup! In my humble opinion tea should have milk in it, and it should not be flavored. Blackcurrant, mango, and mint may be wonderful flavors for soft drinks, but they should not be allowed to contaminate tea. It goes without saying that the words "iced" and "tea" should not be used in the same sentence, sweetened or unsweetened.

Does that make me a tea-snob, or (as someone once called me) a tea-afficianado? No, it just means that I prefer my tea the way I have been drinking it since I was a small boy. I'm not going to judge your preferences, but neither am I going to apologize for mine. I just happen to like my tea good and strong and very hot!

Other people take their tea differently. In China, Gaiwan Tea has full green leaves floating in the cup. In Japan, Sencha is green tea that remains unfermented. Other traditions predominate in other areas. Millions of people enjoy their favorite drink in many different ways. And that's fine. To accept this, we have to have a basic understanding of cultural relativism. Different cultures have different ways of doing things. It's good to know that we are not all the same. Who knows, I might try iced pomegranate tea one day and like it. It's not very probable, but it might happen.

The problem comes when cultural relativism becomes ethical relativism. Let's imagine that, in order to produce their favorite type of tea, the citizens of Pomerania require that all of their left-handed children be taken from their parents, trained to climb to the tops of the trees to gather the youngest, most succulent leaves. Ethical relativism says that, since different cultures have different moral beliefs, we should not judge the Pomeranians. They have their method of producing tea and we have ours. That's just the way it is.

Ethical relativism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical scepticism, which proposes that there are no absolute moral rules. If the citizens of Pomerania decide to kidnap children from our country and to force them into slavery, we still can't judge them, because absolute moral rules are impossible to prove. All that we can do it to prevent their capture, or rescue them. We will do this, not because we judge the Pomeranian tea-manufacturing process to be immoral, but because we value our children. With regard to ethical norms, we remain sceptical.

Ethical scepticism tends to degenerate, over time, into ethical nihilism, in which there are thought to be no moral rules at all. The Pomeranians may not only steal our children, they may also sacrifice them to the tea-gods after the harvest, adding their blood to the brew! As nihilists we will be unable to do anything, other than exert a superior military force. Morally, we could not challenge the Pomeranians. We could not describe them as "evil," since evil does not exist. We could not judge them, since there would be no standard we could bring to bear. No universal principle would guide us. No holy book would determine right from wrong.

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Of course this is all a bad dream. Cultural relativism does not need to become ethical relativism, which does not need to become ethical scepticism, which does not need to become ethical nihilism. And this conversation is not about tea.