An interesting and thought-provoking piece. I have an impression that being critical of culture has become an acceptable front for other types prejudice; based on my anecdotal experience, those who say "I don’t have a problem with X-people, I have a problem with their culture for Y-reasons" quickly devolve into more overt and specific racial prejudice ("X-people don’t value education, they lack parenting skills, they are lazy, etc., ad nauseam"). Now, I have associated being critical of another group’s culture as just being a politically expedient cover for the traditional prejudices. When I have lived in different cultures, I have always come away with the impression that the differences were ultimately trivial. We make a very big deal of the differences instead of focusing on the similarities. The in-group and out-group dynamic, I think, is so obvious in war. Tenfold more Afghani civilians died during Operation Enduring Freedom than US civilians on 9/11, but to sympathize with the Afghani civilians aloud in the United States almost sounds anti-American. I think the forward march of globalization and the internationalization of commerce will continue to make progress in breaking down barriers, to the extent that the public participates in it. It only takes one person of a certain background to be a solidified member of a person’s in-group before other people of that background become human, and their thoughts and interests begin to matter.

As an aside, I would love to hear your thoughts on the implications of the illusion of free will. I heard the Sam Harris lecture on free will being an illusion, and I found his arguments convincing, but he did not talk through much of what he perceived to be the implications, except to say we should feel neither pride nor shame, and that retributive justice makes little sense.