These customs and morals are generally formed out of things such as environments, religions, traditions, knowledge and reason, living conditions, and the survival of a society. The idea behind cultural relativism was the recognition of indifference among humanity. It is way to understand why it is important not to judge a people based on ones own pre-disposition of morals and cultural norms. Ruth Benedict puts as this: " Mankind has always preferred to say it morally good rather than, it is habitual", and contends that morality is learned from the culture that one exists in alone, with no globally universal implications. So with the idea of cultural relativism, we must understand is that we are not morally right ourselves, except within the boundaries that our own culture outlines. Interference with another culture and its practices would be morally wrong. Ruth Benedict makes her argument like this: -Normal differs from culture to culture. Normal is synonymous with moral. Morality then, is relative to culture. The problem with this argument is that Benedict would lead us to believe that normal is synonymous with moral, without giving us reason to draw this conclusion. She concludes that morality is not a universal thing, but only what a culture deems it to be. The cultural relativist would boast that since it is culture itself that defines morals, there is no comparison to which one could base morality on. James Rachels criticizes and addresses the problems with cultural relativism. .
Rachels identifies six basic claims made cultural relativists in order to understand the basic idea of the cultural relativist theory: "1) Different societies have different moral codes. 2) There is no objective standard that can be used to judge one societal code better than another. 3) The moral code of our own society has no special status; it is merely one among many. 4) There is no "universal truth", no moral truths that hold for all peoples at all times.