Liberating Human Rights from Group Narcissism

ABSTRACT: Many people are forced to contend with the disjunction between (1) human rights as a universal concept applying to everyone despite time and location and (2) human rights as a primarily Western invention that does not necessarily apply to every cultural group. This disjunction can be especially troubling to Westerners, who may fear they are imposing their cultural norms on other nations in an act of group narcissism. This article addresses this disjunction by explaining culture in the context of human rights. Furthermore, it proposes adaptive ethnocentrism (in contrast to tribal ethnocentrism) as a means of liberating people to promote human rights while also enabling them to avoid group narcissism. Adaptive ethnocentrism is distinct from tribal ethnocentrism in that people are not expected to automatically accept the customs of the group they happen to belong to. Instead, people are expected to critically examine their customs, as well as the customs of other people they encounter, and adapt their way of life according to the customs they judge to be the best.