Of Ducks, Music, and Cultural Relativism

American philosopher Robert Nozick once offered a brilliant reply to relativists who maintain that truth depends solely on one’s angle of observation. Nozick pointed out that the statement “Everything is relative” can be either absolute—in which case it contradicts itself—or relative, in which case it lacks any general validity. I quite agree. Not everything is relative, of course, although values and patterns of behaviour often are, among human cultures. It is arduous to understand a person, or a social group, without grasping their historical experience and worldview. And this may also be true of the many forms of animal life inhabiting our planet. Unfortunately, we do not know how the world appears to a horse, a snake, or a fly; and that is something I began to ponder a few weeks ago.

I was in Lugano by the lake, sitting on a bench and reading a magazine. I enjoy doing that— the view is pleasant and there are many lovely birds to observe. I like ducks in particular; they are so different from one another, and each one seems to display a distinctive personality. Then, one day, I realized that instead of being the observer, I had become the object of observation—by one of them.

A duck approached me and stood still a few feet from my bench, staring at me. It was rather embarrassing. I didn’t know what to do. I tried to smile—because smiling, supposedly, improves your face value. But then he or she moved a few steps to the left, then to the right, and stared again, as if trying to get a better view of me. It felt strange to be the object of such curiosity; and, believe it or not, at that point I almost had the impression I could hear what the duck was thinking. Something like: “Poor thing! How ugly you are! You have no beak, no webbed feet, and you can’t even fly! What kind of life is that? You know what—if I were you, I’d probably just kill myself.”

No doubt, that was my imagination at work. Yet this train of thought helped me understand that—from the perspective of a duck, capable of flying and orienting itself on a continental scale—a poor creature like me, who easily gets lost not only in Chicago but even in the much smaller city of Lugano, is undoubtedly an inferior form of life. I may think I’m superior to a duck because I can play the piano. But ducks probably don’t consider piano-playing particularly relevant. Points of view— that’s what they are. But they matter, always, everywhere and, of course, even in art and culture.

There is an anecdote told by musicologist Curt Sachs. He recounts how a Montenegrin gusle-player, upon hearing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Germany, remarked that the music was not at all unpleasant, but just “rather naïve.” Sachs explained further that the man was neither incompetent nor foolish—he was simply judging according to the standards of his own culture, where people favour additive rhythms of the aksák type, rather than our simple binary or ternary meters. Of course, that gusle-player, so attuned to the music he was familiar with, could not appreciate Beethoven’s thematic developments. And that is precisely the point: our culture enables us to perceive things that are invisible or irrelevant to others, and so prevents us from perceiving what others very easily grasp. 

All this I would have liked to explain to the duck that was staring at me why, even without a beak, without webbed hands and feet, and with no ability to fly, life can nonetheless be worth living… even for inferior animals like myself.