Expatriates are commonly urged to adopt the outlook that their own culture is no better or worse than any other - just different. The most enlightened internationalists aspire to a sort of cross-cultural nirvana - entirely ridding themselves of cultural alliance. Somewhere in between is that class of highly educated liberal westerners who decry the folly and gross ambition of their birth culture with an evangelical fervour reminiscent of those once sent to promulgate it. Can it be that globalisation is beginning to shrink our prejudices? Are we starting to get our minds (and hearts) around the elevated idea that the moral, religious, political and aesthetic values of a culture should be considered only relative to that culture - that is, as individuals within that culture would see them? Can we finally accept that all cultures are equally valid? Of course not. The invasion of Iraq and the rhetoric that accompanied it provides ample evidence to the contrary. People from all walks of life felt abundantly qualified to pass judgment on Iraq's way of life. The doctrine that 'everything is relative' may serve the purpose of psychologically redressing ancestral injustices. But nobody is going to persuade the majority that there is no such thing as objective truth. That goes against common sense. As Robert Edgerton, the author of Sick Societies, points out, few would accept any relativistic claim that Saddam Hussein's Iraq had a political system no more or less worthy than that of, say, Australia. Another notion lurking in our shared mental toolbox is that of the 'noble savage'. Smaller, simpler societies, we suspect, are invariably more authentic, harmonious and happy than more complex, modern ones, and therefore more deserving of respect. Deeper still is the assumption that the features found embedded in a culture - particularly in a 'primitive' culture, as most members of developed societies would classify Iraq - do not arise arbitrarily. Indeed, this is the position that Hussein has taken since his arrest. He defended his regime by claiming that extreme brutality does not have the same meaning in Iraq as it would in the social climate of the industrialised west. In the cultural context of Iraq, he suggests, liberal democratic 'fairness' would be read as a sign of uncertainty and weakness. The subtext is that cruelty, intimidation, prejudice, poverty - any feature that has become entrenched in a culture - is, by definition, an example of collective psychological need-fulfilment of some kind. Like the 'everything is relative' approach, there is some merit to the idea that cultures evolve in much the same way as plants and animals - by adapting to their environment. But, as usual, trouble starts when the theory is spread too thin. It is certainly the case that many small, 'primitive' societies have developed mainly in the direction of 'progress' and become wonderful models of optimal cultural adaptation. But it is also undoubtedly true that many societies have developed in the 'wrong' direction, incorporating maladaptive traits such as human sacrifice, cannibalism and infanticide - or endemic programmes of terror. Such practices probably serve some socio-psychological function. They may allow people to safely vent hostility, to bond through heightened states of consciousness or associate with and feel safely contained by power. But, other societies have devised solutions to these psychological needs that cause less suffering. Finding a satisfactory collective way around social difficulties such as abuse, corruption and poverty is not simply a question of rational problem-solving. Many of these features develop very slowly and unevenly, root themselves deeply and are only belatedly perceived as problems, if at all. Errors of judgment with lasting consequences are commonplace, as an examination of most any culture's history would show. The power of human thought, according to Richard Shweder, author of Rethinking Culture and Personality Theory, is limited, unsophisticated and 'somewhat impervious to the evidence of experience'. Darwinian reasoning does not justify respect for a culture simply because it exists. Nor does it make sense to judge a culture solely as a person within that culture would. Both perspectives are useful. But so is that of an outsider. This is especially the case as it becomes harder for any nation or group of nations to maintain the illusion that they are invulnerable to the reverberations of what is happening within others. Jean Nicol is a psychologist specialising in issues of cultural identity and change in an era of globalisation everydaypsychologist@yahoo.com