When we discover that there are several cultures instead of just one and consequently at the time when we acknowledge the end of a sort of cultural monopoly, be it illusory or real, we are threatened with the destruction of our own discovery. Suddenly it becomes possible that there are just others, that we ourselves are an 'other' among others. All meaning and every goal having disappeared, it becomes possible to wander through civilisations as if through vestiges and ruins.

XREF: This echoes themes of cultural relativism and the loss of grand narratives familiar from anthropology and postmodern theory.

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Moderni…, loc. 14