Western Culture is Suprerior

however, i just checked on the internet, and it seems most experts agree with mark s (as usual). the fact that my point led immediately to such nit-picking though is telling.

Like the British Empire?

Please explain to me why the previous Arab imperialist rulers of India, who had no objections to all the above cultural practises are forgotten to history whereas the modernising liberal British Empire is condemned for 'raping and pillaging' across this continent? Surely anti-Western prejudice has nothing to do with it?

As for which bits are remembered, I am not inclined to be surprised that the British Empire is better known in Britain (there is a clue, if you look at the words carefully) than India's earlier rulers. There is also the point that we only relinquished rule of India in living memory, compared to centuries ago for what you're talking about.

Ah, you have posted again. Who are these people denigrating this culture? Where is this terrible anti-white prejudice? Are you finding it on ILE somewhere, or holding us to account for Islamic terrorists or something? You're not making a great deal of sense.

some would say that in the US we still have nearly institutional-level bigotry

i would not say that western is superior, but as far as the world scene goes, it does seem to be 'the thing to do!' for better or worse.

unless the question comes in the context of everythingtakentogether. in which case, i'd say there's no such thing as western culture since wc (lol) is just elite culture on a global scale. and elites consume/assimilate culture, they don't produce it.

Jesus, this is offensive on SO many different levels, that I don't even know how or where to begin, so I won't. Right, British imperialism which impoverished the wealthiest nation on earth was a wholly positive, liberalizing force...espousing communal freedom..and mass democracy...introducing wafers..

Uh-huh, yup, the Moguls are now completely forgotten, just how did their name come to pass off as an English words nowadays anyhow? Just keep forgetting how not only did they become Indianized and assimilated into the culture, they also contributed magnificent works of art and architecture to the history of the land, next time you "analyze" thissubject and admire the marvel all those brilliant British state-houses left behind in Delhi...what wold we have done without them?

Oh my, it's getting late. I'm going to miss out on some hot widow-burning, so you must pardon me. Catch ya later!

British Imperialism needs to be taken in the context of its time. The "civilising duty " rather than "crush and conquer" mindset was rather humanist and enlightened for the times however arrogant and *wrong* it is by todays *standards* (standards that encourage and condone the murder *termination* of 46 million unborn children *pregnancies* in the name of human rights each year.)

Still...Israel/Palestine,Pakistan/India,Northern Ireland/Ireland
what a fucken mess and that just the tip of the iceberg. Hmm The British Empire C/D?

Western culture is colonialism, hypocrisy, genocide, ideological war, capitalism, and racism.

Winner.

As for me, my belief is that the West has created the intellectual basis for mass exploitation and destruction AND the intellectual basis to undo all of those wrongs. Aspects of multiculturalist thought, for instance, are dependant on Marx (one of the first thinkers to really understand the ramifications of globalization), who is, well, a dead white european male, which is an insult in some circles.

The flowering of "Western Culture" as we know it, and the virtues its developed, spring from that influx of wealth, which allowed a large mercantile class to develop that could patronise the arts and sciences, which in turn led to the discoveries that led to industrialisation and the further development of a wealth gap between the West and the Rest. The crucial question for the next couple of centuries is whether the positive values of Western Culture, eg democracy, are like democracy and liberty in classical times i.e. a rich state's luxury.

Western Culture is great and admirable in many ways but it exists not because of any 'natural' superiority (as Michael rightly disavowed) or even any pre-existing cultural values but because of a couple of happy geographical accidents: i) the Atlantic is narrower than the Pacific; ii) China has excellent and difficult-to-pass natural land borders, which helped foster an isolationist mentality and stopped them becoming sea explorers and discovering the Americas at a time when they were much more advanced than Europe.

Sorry ???? Im unsure how youve reached this conclusion. I make no apology for my morals or views, I dont see how they prevent discussion however deluded or *wrong* you think I am.

"so I'm not sure that amounts to acknowledging that the Empire wasn't all good."

Martin chill out would you. Its prety obvious from my post I was only suggesting that there may have been some good to come from The Empire.
Your reaction suggests you are in a state of real flux within yourself. Take it easy eh.

Um, this would be the point where I would say that sensible debate goes out the window.

I guess I could rush to judge The West based on people who come from there who I've met, but they all seem to be weirdoes (especially that Raggett guy I ran into on the weekend). Surely not all Westerners are like that?

Tom is right. what is 'the west'? since it unquestionably includes, say, australia and new zealand, it can hardly be a geographical distinction. and i think a quick poll would highlight the extent to which it means different things to different people (e.g. western europe + anglophones?, 'democratic' nations?, neo-liberal economies?, etc). strictly speaking, though, its roots - as a functioning term - are in the cold war and, as such, are hardly buried all that deeply.

this is why 'the west' necessarily means the far-flung global centres of neo-colonial imperialism, utterly regardless of anyone's wish for it to relate, other than incidentally, to europe, the us, etc. and the various cultures that people (or have peopled) them.

as a conceptual entity, 'the west' boasts no cultural achievements because it does not exist in that realm. instead, it populates a quasi-ideological purgatory, dutifully serving out its twilight years until a less cold war, more war-on-terror way to describe the world's imperial powers takes its place.

and i love the, how you say, "amerikan rock end rowl"?

My point: because of the indisputably shabby treatment of American Indians, and the (largely correct) recent attempts to counter both racist stereotypes of Indians and to make some (insufficient) amends for the destruction of their pre-American life, there has been a movement away from describing American Indians in any sort of negative light. Even when the historical records show that certain Indian nations weren't peace-pipe smoking, pre-Columbian hippies (as certain New Agers or "Cortez the Killer" would have it).

It seems Western civilization has a problem with talking about non-Western cultures with any sort of balance. It's a persistence of the Noble Savage myth -- now we emphasize the "noble" and downplay the "savage," and in earlier times it was vice-versa. What gets lost is accuracy, the full picture, in the attempt of some to right certain wrongs. The humanity of these cultures gets lost, especially that non-Western people can be assholes just like Westerners (as well as being capable of culturally good things).

1. It is not racist simply to regard other cultures (‘culture’ in this sense being no more than a useful generalisation, based on prevalences among individuals) as ‘inferior’ in certain respects, so long as the root assumptions of ones cultural discrimination (i.e. value-judgements) acknowledge equality of individual potential between members of ones own culture and those whose culture one criticises. (‘Inferior’, of course, is a horrible choice of word because of its racist connotations, but offhand I can’t think of a better one.)

2. But it IS racist to refuse to countenance the possibility that intolerance, race-hatred, religious bigotry etc may be defining traits and key motivating factors of specific non-Western (geographically-speaking) cultures, because group identity abstractions such as ‘white’ or ‘Western’ are those which have been designated, thanks to the ideology-serving selectivity by which historical race-culture linkage is made, ‘imperialist, hypocritical, genocidal,’ whatever else DV said.

To give a concrete and topical example of what I mean: to immediately assume that Blunkett’s somewhat misguided and partonising call for immigrants here to speak English even amongst themselves, (doubly insulting given the notorious unwillingness of the British to bother learning other languages) must be symptomatic of ‘western’ or ‘white’ culture’s imperious attitude toward outsiders, of its institutional racism, etc, as the multiculti’s would doubtless have it, is to judge a present cultural reality (consisting of people, not ‘Westerners’ or ‘whites’) in terms of prejudiced group abstraction; prejudices which, when clung to – as all prejudices by their nature are – resist any honest examination of a culture’s real character, qualities, dynamics etc. For instance, the possibility that Muslims might not assimilate (not, in itself, necessarily a bad thing) as much as other ‘ethnic’ groups do, may have something to do with the fact that Muslim leaders of even the most ‘moderate’ stripe preach week-in-week-out that good Muslims need to be wary of mixing too closely with the immoral infidels, is not something most liberal would even think worthy of consideration. Why not?

(Mark S –) So I’m not at all saying: aren’t the good bits of ‘Western culture’ great while conveniently brushing the bad stuff aside –

‘Western culture’ can have three distinct meanings: i.) all the different cultures, recognised as being significantly different, which together constitute the cultural ‘tradition’ of the Western hemisphere, much of it wonderful, much, if not more, of it as unpleasant and oppressive as culture has ever been. ii) Western culture as an abstraction, which pro’s would say is a beacon of all things noble, and which the anti’s would say epitomises all things rotten. iii) Western culture as it generally is now. This last definition being the one I think worth praising. Of course, enormous diversity still exists within the broad sweep of such a generalisation, and there are plenty of shite sides to modern western culture to be sure, but there is also a consistency of valuable (almost uniquely so in the history of humanity) qualities to modern capitalist liberal democratic society which, in comparison to other cultures, makes it fair to generalise about its positve aspects. This certainly doesn’t mean that the happen-to-be-white humanists who started this trend reflect favourably on the white race. Nor does it mean that the happen-to-be-whites whose imperialism made, in part, our present prosperity possible reflects badly on the white race. Race has nothing to do with it. The culture we enjoy now is a consequence simply of what ‘people’ have done in the past.

If comparatively (economically) unsuccessful cultures today are profoundly hostile to our success, well their hostile attitude and actions may be mitigated by taking past cultural wrongs into consideration. They may even be wholly justified in their antagonism. One culture’s dominance can be, and often is, attained at the expense of another. But only the prejudiced group abstractions which cause cultures to be categorised as oppressors or victims on the basis of their racial or regional make-up, make it seem that this will necessarily be the case. (and in the process make it also more than likely that so-called past wrongs will be exaggerated or invented so as to conform to those abstractions.)

Why would left-liberals to go along with such prejudiced misrepresentation? Because it’s the only means of propping up the left’s long-since discredited anti-capitalist economic dogma in a post-Marxist, post-proletariat world. (If the original victims got rich then let’s just find new ‘victims.’) In other words, there’s a strong vested ideological interest in portraying economic success as deriving only from exploitation, and racial abstractions about oppressors and victims are a dandy substitute for generalisations about the workers and the masses.

(Apart from left-liberal prejudice leading to the appeasment of intolerant cultures whose true nature &/or responsibility must be denied, another effect is to arbitrarily delimit those whose culture is ‘favoured’ - as if the dominant cultural practises among a particular race were an expression of the essence (and limited potential) of that race.

In this regard it is deeply disingenous of left-liberals to complain that condemning say radical Islamic culture condemns a whole culture, regarded as 'the other,' on the basis of what some individuals might do within that culture, when it is the liberals themselves who refuse to distinguish between a specific culture and the race who happen to comprise it, or the region in which it happens to occur; who create 'group' abstractions, whose members are not treated as individuals but merely as part of a distinct 'identity' entity. It is the liberal-left who designate whole 'others' for whom even the liberal's own purportedly inviolable principles do not apply, and the liberal-left who, rather than undermine their ideological position by relinquishing their romanticised ideals of cherished victim cultures, leave unwilling individuals to the mercy of oppression and intolerance in 'their cultures,' helping ensure that those individuals remain, in an all too real sense, victims.)

Of course I agree largely with your central point, and consider myself far more than averagely fortunate to live how I do, but jumping around pointing at ourselves and shouting "We're the best!" is a pretty worthless way to behave.

For a couple of years, I lived on the dole in one of the shittiest sink estates in the country (Grove Hill, Middlesbrough). Yet even here, where a terraced house sells for 8k, most people had satellite tv, expensive trainers, cars, tv's, hi-fi systems etc. If the absolute pits of modern capitalist society enjoy a far greater quality of life, life expectancy, standard of health care, etc etc than the average middle-class Victorian, in what sense is the 'proletariat' still with us?

The question is - is Western civilisation based on a similar downgrading and imbalance, or have we sown the seeds of a situation in which these virtues are available to all nations with the impoverishment of none? The simple answer is: it's too soon to tell. Of course Western culture would still be superior by your definitions, but it would be a pyrrhic superiority.

Also (though this is completely unrelated to the defn of proletariat, which is a technical and fairly specific political term), in fact "the absolute pits of modern capitalist society" do NOT enjoy "a far greater quality of life, life expectancy, standard of health care than the average middle-class Victorian" => there's places in the US that this isn't true of, and unless you're using "modern" in a seriously self-selecting way, there are cities in south america, say, where the juxtaposition of poverty/degradation with exactly the "western structures" yr talking about is far more extreme than it was 150 yrs ago.

As it happens I personally think the unfettered free market of the last 20 years, combined with information technology, has proletarianised western society to a far GREATER degree than was the case back in Victorian times: all the middle classes right up into the lower and middle management levels are now latent proletariat (in fact the full definition also requires an awareness of the condition). The shrinking (in the West) of the industrial working class is a distraction, at least with regard to this definition.

one simple question: if wealth is expandable, which should now be indisputable, what possible obstacle is there for emergent capitalist states to follow the same kind of wealth-creating overall-society-benefiting trajectory that we in the west have, and that those in the far east have already emulated?

if i, then yr right
if ii, then yr wrong

You have to PROVE i., not just state it. It's not as easy as you think.

Over the last 20 years, in the section of the West yr primarily talking about, the transfer of wealth from poor (and middleclasses too, in fact) to the rich (and in fact quite a small enclave of the rich) has been unprecedented (several times the rate of similar swings in the 1880s and the 1920s). In the UK we also (on average) work a lot harder — as in longer, far more stressful hours — for pay which has NOT increased commensurately. Cushioning elements from earlier times — most alarmingly pensions — have been rendered almost ineffective. The political fallout of all these factors is only just beginning to be felt: a crackle of still localised angers, often in places hitherto totally unassociated with radical politics (hauliers) and relatively easy to isolate (farmers).

In addition, developing nations operate in a much more restricted space, with less freedom to mill forests or whatever because those are the only extensive forests left. Natural resources are limiting. Which is I think sometimes called the second crisis of capitalism (?) and it is all very marxist. But not necessarily wrong for that reason. To expand or refocus a theory doesn't mean that the first formulation of the theory must have been incorrect.

The myth of the 'noble savage' - in any of its forms, including 'ecological nobility' as considered by Grande - does few favours for indigenous peoples.

However, I've recently been reading my great-great-great-grandfather's diary - hand-written circa 1870-75. There's nothing mythological about the fact that he was strung between two horses and dragged forward and back through an open fire until he died simply because he preferred traditional land tenure to fee simple ownership.

there are any number of possible obstacles. but in terms of one of the bigger obstacles, i have a feeling we probably don't see the world bank / imf in quite the same way.

in general, though, maybe you would agree that there also isn't really any political will (in 'western' countries) for that to happen. and people (or voters, at any rate) do enjoy the benefits that outrageously 'low-cost labour' (one of my favourite euphemisms, btw) somewhere on the other side of the world can bestow.

this, unfortunately, is what makes the condition seem terminal.

if you mean that 'western society' (as it currently exists) couldn't be replicated all over the world because that position is filled, structurally, then i agree to an extent. but structures are constructed and they can just as easily be destroyed (or retooled) if sufficient will to do so exists.

what i'm assuming is understood, i guess, is that for the 'western' tenets spelled out in the original question (democracy, free speech, pluralism, tolerance of dissent) to be adopted and practiced globally, 'the west' would need to sacrifice many of the benefits of empire to which it is long-accustomed.

in this view, the structures that have evolved are symptomatic of the lack of political will on the part of 'western' voters for such a movement. but this is not to downplay the significance of the historically unprecedented levels of propagandisation these voters absorb, of course.

"the West doesn't simply consume natural resources. It also creates them. Natural resources are simply that subset of the earth's "stuff" that we can harness profitably for human benefit. As knowledge and technology expands, our ability to harness new and different sorts of inert matter for human use expands along with it. It's the only way to square the fact that — no matter how you measure the availability of fossil fuels, minerals, or foodstuffs — they're becoming relatively more abundant, not scarcer, even in the face of profound increases in consumption."

"consider activity [x]: what happens when absolutely everyone does it?" we are still not good at asking this question, let alone answering it

michael's answers all take the form of "er er it's like now only more!!", where now = the things we all like abt the present situation => what if now necessarily includes all the things we don't like? what if the ugly things are all direct products of the conditions which allow-enable the nice things? if that's true, then "now only more" will also amp up the ugliness

I prefer in praise of learning

some good and awful posts on this horribly conceived thread but it is so strange how prominent the spectres of anti-racism and anti-capitalism were at the time despite their almost total marginalisation from mainstream discourse. like people were really working hard to suppress any doubt that history might not be over

Western Culture is Suprerior

Western Culture is Supparrer

otm about in praise of learning

If I get to choose the yardsticks by which superiority is measured, I can prove that any culture is superior to all others.

western culture is superior

#WEXIT

Add: This is similar to the process by which each culture finds their own culture superior to those of their next-door neighbors.

Yardsticks are tbf a good implement to beat ppl with