There was a story recently of a young expat woman in Georgia being hit by a car while crossing on a green pedestrian signal. Fortunately she moved just in time so that she was not seriously hurt. Still, the driver simply drove off as though nothing had happened, unconcerned whether the person he had hit was OK.
The young lady took to social media to share what had happened and was met with a torrent of abuse—telling her to stop complaining and to, basically, ‘go home’ if the country doesn’t meet her expectations.
Such responses to honest cultural criticism are not uncommon, and in Georgia are usually accompanied by a chorus of sanctimonious westerners offering such wisdom as “this is Georgia,” “welcome to Georgia” and “you chose the wrong country.” As if the driving isn’t a problem; it’s the person hit by the car who just doesn’t ‘get it.’
The only true moral failure of this lady, as far as I can see—and apparently by her critics’ own words—is that she failed to adequately anticipate the moral failings of others. To whatever extent this is actually a failing on her part, it must necessarily be of a lesser degree than that of her adversary and his supporters critiquing her on his behalf. And any possible solution to her alleged failure can only be precisely in seeing this clearly. Not in apathy. Not in the avoidance of any genuine moral effort and calling it equanimity. Any critique of her by her persecutors only serves to incriminate themselves a hundredfold.
The online persecution and bullying of individuals like her are classic cases of psychological projection—where the ones most falling short of comprehending the situation are not those who notice it and have the audacity to point it out, but those who would rather not and instead try to preserve it for reasons unknown to themselves.
Other common relativist refrains include the likes of ‘no one should tell another what’s right,’ ‘they do things their own way’ and ‘it works for them.’
Not if you’re the one getting hit by a car. Nor for anyone else, it turns out, when you learn of the impact the lack of road safety is actually having on the country.
According to Georgia’s own Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of road crash fatalities was 12.9 per 100,000 people in 2025. That is more than five times the rate of my home country, the UK, at 2.4 per 100,000 in 2024. (The Georgian numbers are likely worse in reality due to suspected under-reporting, a suspicion hardly allayed by the aforementioned hit and run.)
As for the impact on the Georgian economy, the Eastern Partnership Road Safety Observatory in a report from April last year estimates the damage attributable to injuries and fatalities from road accidents to be an untenable 3.9% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (source). That’s higher than the entire economic growth rate of any western country in any recent period. It’s a hard difference to justify on grounds of cultural preferences.
Many in Georgia hope that the country will one day join the EU, and yet continue to drive in such a way that causes 65% more deaths than even the EU’s worst performing country (Romania, currently 7.8 deaths per 100,000), and almost three times as many as the EU average (4.4 per 100,000). Either Georgia is going to have to improve its standards, or the EU is going to have to lower its own in such a way that undermines what any coalition like this can possibly mean.
Which brings us back to the common rebuke that ‘no one should tell another what’s right.’
Whatever wisdom there is to be found in this comment, in practice it’s often used as a disingenuous reframe of what is really being said, and here’s why: the common, insidious point of confusion is that it’s not necessarily you, me or anyone else who is “making the case” that others should “do things differently;” it often is those very entities themselves, who are tacitly admitting it by their own needs and standards, but doing so implicitly and not realising. That is what makes it truly a problem. They attempt to get around this by distancing themselves from their own necessity and making someone else the fall-guy—pretending that it’s only the whims of others, their own petty preferences and coddled expectations, that are compelling any uncomfortable change. Their left hand preventing their right hand from knowing what it’s doing.
While there is infinite beauty to be found in difference—different styles, preferences, expressions, personalities, traits, cultural artefacts and creations—there is a distinction to be made between difference and dysfunction. Between diversity and dissonance.
Most people—including most moral relativists when pressed—would acknowledge that this distinction exists. But further to recognising that there is a distinction between difference and dysfunction, the deeper need is to understand what drives and defines that distinction, and how to know them from each other.
As always there is truth and falsity to both sides.
It is true that we all benefit beyond measure from honouring and embracing differences—and to offer well-discerned tolerance of other preferences and choices—but it’s also true that there are such things as dysfunction and better and worse ways of operating.
It’s false that every moral position is just relative and equal to any other, but it’s also false that any one person or culture can claim to be the ultimate source of moral authority.
This might sound like an impossible conundrum to overcome, and yet it presents challenges that cannot be made to go away by ignoring them. So what’s the answer?
There is no single answer that can capture and convey the entire range of responses you will need in order to navigate and resolve this in your own decisions, but the energy produced by these tensions is precisely what drives us forward to ever truer and more workable answers. While refusing to engage is the true moral failing.
The danger lies in doggedly committing to one side and refusing to see any value or truth in the opposite. This danger is usually accompanied by pretence and performance, and always by hypocrisy. Blanketly failing to acknowledge either side sooner or later produces felt, real-world disasters that beyond a point can no longer be ignored.
No single individual can be the ultimate arbiter or judge of another—and to that extent the moral relativist does have some truth to share, but it’s not for the reasons they think. The reason is that it is the principle of self-contradiction which governs how aligned and reasonable any individual or entity is, and its true moral stature within the world around it. The extent of self-contradiction is the non-arbitrary standard.
Many disputes around personal and cultural differences are not only matters of superficial differences and preferences, but of basic prerequisites for the kind of world that either side seeks to establish and maintain. It’s important to understand that in all cases these needs are not only explicit, but implicit—in one’s words, actions or the principles arising from them.
Features and “values” such as honesty, non-corruption, freedom and a degree of manners and service—these are not mere cultural quirks; they are basic requirements of any individual, organisation or culture in the 21st century to operate according to the terms that they themselves have set out. The real issue is not that no one else can ultimately decide what’s right and wrong, but that the thesis carried forward by any actor must in time reveal exactly what it itself has left out. Whether there is a willingness to understand, take responsibility and empathically respond to what arises, however, is another matter.
Certain societal systems and personal decisions don’t merely ‘work better’—(because, indeed, by what metric? In what way? And who decides?)—they contradict themselves less. The determinant of whether something truly ‘works,’ how well it works and for how long, is intrinsic to the thing itself.
The one who says ‘go home if you don’t like being hit by cars’ is not defending an alternative but nonetheless coherent moral framework—they’re defending incoherence. They’re quite happy to benefit from the inventions, contributions and connection of others, but not to develop and align their behaviour with what those very same benefits depend on.
Wherever the distinction between difference and dysfunction has not been made, it can seem very convenient to dump your own contradictions onto others. Likewise, it opens up the potential for exploitation by anyone seeking to do exactly that, leaving you with nothing but the possibility of mere compromise, or of leveraging the blunt instrument of power in your attempts to ‘resolve’ the dynamic.
And while the stereotype of western imperialists telling others what to do might be the prevailing one, it is a particularly western luxury to hang out with the idea that others just do things differently.
