What is valid?

 What is valid?

I was asked a very interesting question this week and it made me think about the difference between what is valid, what is good, how it applies to culture, and how it applies to relationships. Are all cultures equally valid; do they all meet the same purposes with the same effectiveness? I think what was meant to be asked was “Are all cultures perfect?” The answer to this would be an obvious no for me, but the question itself does not address perfection or even general goodness or wellbeing. The question asks about validity and equality in effectiveness, but effectiveness does not determine validity when comparing cultures and validity does not determine effectiveness. 

Validity does not determine effectiveness. Validity is defined as “well-grounded or justifiable : being at once relevant and meaningful.” This means that for a culture to be valid all it has to do is use its current knowledge and accepted facts to be “well-grounded or justifiable.” This means that all a group of people have to do is pool together their understanding and act on what they see to be truth in order for their culture to be “well-grounded or justifiable.” Having a “well-grounded” argument is determined by the information at hand. This means that the belief that children go to hell if not baptized is a valid belief that affects a culture. The question is, who determines whether or not something is “well-grounded?” If it is people in a society then all we have to do is come to a conclusion that most of the population agrees with, and that will be a constantly changing thing, and even leading our society to make decisions we may regret in the future, making all cultures equally valid because results do not determine validity. It is easy for christians to say that God says whether something is “well-grounded'' or not, but many others in our society do not believe in such a God and they call our beliefs invalid while we do the same to them. 

Effectiveness or results do not determine whether or not something is valid. When we try our hardest and still fail, what do we say? We say “it’s okay. You gave it your best shot.” How can we validate an attempt if it resulted in something unpleasant? We can validate these things because the time, costumes, and available information is different for each person. If we all had the same information then we could talk about how someone is not valid in having that opinion, but because we all have different experiences, opinions, and memories we cannot say that someone has an invalid opinion. Now is that opinion or belief going to lead them to the place they want to go? Perhaps not. But that does not mean that everything they believe or understand does not come from a place of reason. Humans all have reasons that we see as logical and that is what makes something valid. 

Now the idea that was originally brought up about no culture being perfect is wonderful and I love it. I think that when we recognize our own imperfections it brings humility and a chance for different cultures to work together to make a better world. I think that recognizing that we all have valid thoughts, feelings, and beliefs gives us a foundation to protect so that other people or cultures are not given the power to walk all over us and degrade us. With these two principles together we can balance confidence in ourselves and our ability to learn new things so that we do not fall at the first sign of trouble and we still get to grow. 

When we are in relationships with others, let's recognize this so that we don’t fall into habits of treating each other's feelings as obsolete. I think we can validate what people understand due to their circumstances and feelings while rejecting the effectiveness of their process. When we are okay with doing that, we can live in a beautiful place with tolerance. 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/valid