RoR: Forum

Jim, you said:
"my opinion is that most people American, European or Asian are ignorant of most cultures."

Ha, that's probably why most people are all think that their own culture is superior to others!

Post 21

Saturday, August 20, 2005 - 10:22pm

Everybody,

I agree with the spirit of what Marty was trying to say, but - as I wrote before - I disagree with his terminology. I hate "multiculturalism" probably as much as Marty does, but I agree with Ayn Rand that language matters, and that because it matters one must define one's position not by what one opposes, but by what one values and defends. The opposite of "multiculturalism" is UNI-culturalism: the recognitions that ours is the one, single, universal Human civilization. To call it "Western Civilization" misleads the reader into thinking of our civilization as the particular civilization of some men - of "Western" men - and not as what it really is: the proper civilization of all men, of man qua man.

Post 22

Saturday, August 20, 2005 - 11:23pm

I don't mind calling it Western Civilization, but I would like to add that in the Far East there are a few nations that can now be considered to be members of what we are refering to when we use the term Western Civilization. Primarially Japan and South Korea. Taiwan, Hong Kong and pockets of mainland China are also moving quickly in this direction as are parts of India. Just take a look at modern Chinese movies like the comedy "Kung Fu Hustle". This is a wonderful example of Chinese culture married with a big, bold westernized sense of life and comedy.

- Jason

(Edited by Jason Quintana on 8/20, 11:31pm)

Post 23

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 2:27am

I enjoyed the discussion my article generated and I take no offense at anyone's comments.

Perhaps some of you might enjoy reading my book: "The Saga of Mathematics" published by Prentice-Hall (Go to Amazon.com),
in which I include the important contributions of Egyptian and Mesopotamian mathematics to that of Ancient Greece.

I also praise the mathematics of Islamic civilization (approx. 800 - 1200) during which the House of Wisdom in Baghdad was a center of algebra (an Arabic word from the title of a book by the great Al Khwarizmi), translation of Greek works, and the Hindu-Arabic numerals and their algorithms for the basis arithmetical operations.

The West drew on many non-Western ideas and improved them. (Musical instruments, sails, gunpowder, the printing press, the calendar, primitive philosophy, etc.)

The contemporary meaning of Western Culture does not exclude symphonies written by Indian composers, science and technology all over the world, etc. Anyone can embrace a scientific, rational view of the universe operating under natural law, in which man's happiness is the ultimate point of life. Anyone who embraces Enlightenment ideas is a Westerner in my book (no pun intended). I enjoy communicating with mathematicians around the globe.

By the way, Buddhism is philosophically out of step with a rational, pro-science, pro-technology, man-centered philosophy. So was Christianity with its other-worldly focus. But the power of Ancient Greek thought (the good stuff) brought the Church to the bargaining table. Checks and balances come from the French wing of the Enlightenment, as government resting on the vote of the people comes from Ancient Greece. (I'm tired of hearing that only 10% of Athenians were able to vote. What do you want from 500 BC?)

The pre-Socratic Greek philosophers started the ball rolling with an attempt at a secular explanation of the universe and man's place in it.
(Yes, I have heard of Aristotle's prime mover.)

Thales, the first pre-Socratic, was probably the first human to demand proof in geometry. Pythagoras, a mystic, cult-leader, who too hastily said, "Everything is number" (perhaps he had just received a novocaine shot at the dentist) produced much interesting mathematics, discovered the musical ratios, the Pythagorean Theorem, etc. Euclid turned mathematics into a field of study replete with axioms, definitions, etc.

Enough said.

I deal with anti-Westerners today - most of whom are Americans and Europeans.

The term "multiculturalism" should not exist. Any rational person would embrace truth from wherever it originates. Multiculturalism is a hate word that resulted in a culture bashing that hates the good for being the good. It has no opposite. It's a word that I hope not to have to use again.

Post 24

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 8:25am

And I was also rubbed the wrong way by Marcus� such comment �your present culture burnt all it's inventors and men of genius at the stake and enslaved men's minds with religion and superstition. Your culture is now tribalistic, backwards and fucked!�

Hong,

I first wrote that:
They can say, "actually we are a superior culture - because we discovered mathematics, gunpowder, computers, irrigation - while you westerners were still living in caves."

As you can plainly see, I was specifically referring to those cultures that act as if they are superior to western values because of what they achieved hundreds or thousands of years ago. (I also intended this criticism for westerners that also share that view).

Why did you ignore the context of what I said and act as if I am specifically targeting you?

Post 25

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 10:02am

Marcus,
I never said you targeted me. Your whole message, whole context, rubbed me the wrong way.
But does it really matter? I am not here to persuade you or anybody.

Post 26

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 10:13am

Marty says:

The contemporary meaning of Western Culture does not exclude symphonies written by Indian composers, science and technology all over the world, etc. Anyone can embrace a scientific, rational view of the universe operating under natural law, in which man's happiness is the ultimate point of life. Anyone who embraces Enlightenment ideas is a Westerner in my book (no pun intended).

Ha, changing definitions along the way. Sneaky. ;-) Even here the definition of Western culture is not completely clear, leaving rooms for further maneuvers. Why am I not surprised by this? Is this a Jewish trait? Or just a personal trait? :-)

Post 27

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 11:25am

Hong,

Yes, it is a Jewish trait to learn and to change one's mind with the evidence. You are already living with it at home. Enjoy.

(Edited by Adam Reed
on 8/21, 6:38pm)

Post 28

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 12:23pm

But does it really matter? I am not here to persuade you or anybody.

Well, I guess it doesn't if you don't want it to.

(Edited by Marcus Bachler on 8/21, 1:29pm)

Post 29

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 4:46pm

Hong,

You wrote:

"Ha, changing definitions along the way. Sneaky. ;-) Even here the definition of Western culture is not completely clear, leaving rooms for further maneuvers. Why am I not surprised by this? Is this a Jewish trait? Or just a personal trait? :-)"

Actually, it's a Western trait started by Socrates.

;-)

Marty

Post 30

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 6:26pm

Actually, it's a Western trait started by Socrates.

That's an almost multiculturalist answer! ;-)

Hong

Post 31

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 7:13pm

Adam, you said

Yes, it is a Jewish trait to learn and to change one's mind with the evidence. You are already living with it at home. Enjoy.

You always give me a straight answer every time I have this sort of "racy" remark. Thank you. Indeed I've had a lot of practice of this sort of argument at home, and have benefited greatly from somebody who has a different perspective and who's smarter and wiser than me in many aspects of life! Perhaps you also have some interesting experience of cultural clashes at home?

Post 32

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 8:01pm

Kevin,

Aristotle's _Politics_ contains a lengthy discussion of the constitutions of the various governments known to the Hellenic Greeks - including of non-European powers such as Carthage - and places an emphasis on the division of powers. The government of the Roman Republic had no fewer than 6 branches. Cities in Medieval Europe had charters that divided their governmental powers between the mayor and city council. You mention the Prime Minister of England without realizing that the existence of that office and of the House of Commons over which it presides predates any English knowledge of the Iroquois Conferacy. The Helvetian Confederacy is one of the oldest nations in Europe, and one whose example was studied and commented on in detail by the Founding Fathers of this nation.

By contrast, I have read the writings of the members of the Revolutionary generation, searching in vain for any mention of the manner of government of native tribes.

In short, the claim that the Framers borrowed the concepts of separation of powers and federalism from Native Americans is a lie told by the multiculturalists that you have swallowed.

The Romans were famous for their Baths, some of which have been discovered by archeologists. The town of Bath in England takes its name from the baths there that originally date to Roman times. The upper classes at least took baths in Paris in the days of Eleanor of Aquitaine.

You would do well to study political and cultural history in more detail before venturing to offer lessons in them.

-Bill

Post 33

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 8:58pm

Hong,

My wife Yoon is the widow of Ron Merrill, who was something of an "honorary Jew." So she is well acculturated.

I did have some interesting intercultural interactions with Yoon's mother, but Yoon's mother is not on this list and I prefer to respect her privacy.

Post 34

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 9:12pm

Hong,

Thomas Sowell has written that there have been several riots in the city of Manilla in each of which the number of ethnic Chinese murdered by Roman Catholic mobs over a period of a few days exceeded the total number of blacks lynched in the entire history of the United States. A war that is fundamentally religious in character continues today in the Philippines between the (Roman Catholic) central government and the Muslim Moros of the southern islands. Another struggle has occurred (with the shoe on the other foot) between the Roman Catholic inhabitants of the former Portugese colony of East Timor and the (Islamic) central government of Indonesia. The Communist militarist government of Burma has waged a war of genocide against its Christian minority centered in an enclave on the eastern border of that nation. The Christians there have received support almost exclusively from the voluntary donations of Evangelical Protestants in the United States.

Catholics in Japan and Christians of all stripes in China have been subject to harsh repression and discrimination. I know personally an ethnic Chinese American Protestant who has carried out clandestine missionary activity in China. Muslims in northwestern China and Tibetan Buddhists have been and are very harshly repressed.

And ideological strife in East Asia predates the coming of Christianity, Islam, and other Middle Eastern religions to the region. If one reads between the lines in the accounts of the library burnings perpetrated in China by the Legalists, it is clear that there was harsh repression practiced in that era too against the defeated side, even if the conflict in question was "philosophical" rather than "religious" in character. More recently, the civil war of the Taiping and the war of the "Boxers" each had a prominent religious component.

So I disagree with your claim that there has never been a major war in East Asian history that was fought in the name of religion. The Taiping war, for example, was the bloodiest conflict, worldwide, of the 19th century.

-Bill

Post 35

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 9:22pm

Bill,

Until I read your post I thought that the Napoleonic Wars were the bloodiest conflict of the 19th Century. Do you have numbers?

Post 36

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 9:40pm

Adam,

Good question. I think the histories I was going by were using the convention that the "19th century" lasted from the Battle of Waterloo until the assasination of Archduke Ferdinand. In that case, Napoleon would not be in competition with the Taiping.

20 million is a commonly cited figure given for the total number of deaths resulting from the Taiping war. Entire provinces were laid waste. That places it well beyond the total for the Napoleonic wars (from ~3.25 million to ~6.5 million according to Wikipedia.)

-Bill

Post 37

Sunday, August 21, 2005 - 10:10pm

Bill,

Thanks. That does put many things in perspective.

Post 38

Monday, August 22, 2005 - 4:38am

Adam Reed wrote: "Yes, it is a Jewish trait to learn and to change one's mind with the evidence."

Ah! Well, that explains why the Middle East has enjoyed two generations of peace. Gratefully, because the Jews benevolently seek converts to their superior way of life, Jewish missionaries to Ireland, Italy, India, Indonesia, the Incas and the Iroquois taught this changing of one's mind to the peoples of the world.

All kidding aside, one of the many intertwined reasons that the Jewish rulers arranged for their Roman overlords to execute Joshua ben-Joseph (the Nazarene called "Jesus" today and some say Christ or Messiah) is that many of his followers were Greeks: Shimon called Peter, Phillip, Luke, Mark, Andrew, and Thaddeus: six of the 12 disciples. The Jewish priests were terrified of the effects of hellenism on their people and wanted to do away with all foreign influences.

After the Diaspora, the Jews were forced to be an international people with no homeland. From that point forward, some progress was made as they Westernized their thinking. At the same time, their orientalist ideas were assimilated by a moribund Mediterranean social milieu -- as were Mithras and other cults.

Perhaps the most important idea borrowed from the Jews was tolerance, which they learned the hard way from about 1054 AD forward through the Middle Ages. By 12th century, you could pretty much pick the bright spots in Christian Europe by the tolerance for Jews and their culture. Places like Troyes rose and fell on that.

The same thing played out in Islamic lands. Those rulers who maintained open relationships with other cultures and who permitted latitudes in religion among their own people allowed prosperity to find a home. Spain before the Christian hegemony is an uneven example. The court of Harun al-Rashid is another. There are many.

However, everything changes. We have a friend who was disappointed that her girls did not marry other Ashkenazis. "There are so few of us," she said. My wife and I just looked at each other: Intermarriage is not the solution to that problem or the world would be run from Appalachia.

One thing the Jews do accel at is tradition. I knew a guy who told me that his father was a Marxist, a dialectic materialist, and as far as he knew, therefore, an atheist. However, his father always lit the candles and did the other things. He said to me, that what a Christian does is not important, it is what a Christian believes that is important, but it doesn't matter what a Jew believes, but rather what they do that defines them: the traditions are everything in maintaining their culture independent of the wider world.

I will say that Adam Reed might change his mind in the face of new facts and new ideas. He might even credit his Jewish heritage with providing him with a context for that. I submit, however, that the praise and blame lie with the individual.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 8/22, 5:27am)

Post 39

Monday, August 22, 2005 - 5:25am