Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (75062)	2/23/2000 9:11:00 AM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

goodness- "traditional cuisine"? Oh dear. Never mind. I don't think I want to take this any further with you. Someone else might want to. Not me.

To: Neocon who wrote (75062)	2/23/2000 11:21:00 AM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

A couple of comments on the East/West dispute. 1) First of all, let me say I agree 100% with X about the influence of Buddhism on the "West." And let me add flatly that it is "marked," whether you think so or not. 2) I think you are cheating by tossing in North Africa, Mesopotamia, et al. into "Western civilization." By doing so, you make it impossible, for example, to discuss Islam's effect on the "modern world": because Islam, too, it turns out, is a product of "the West." (For that matter, you might toss in China and India while you're at it, since there was a good deal of cultural interchange/mutual influence between the Middle East and the Far East during the formative years of Christianity & Islam, & so forth & so on.) 3) Just what is "The West", anyway? Seems to me that it has often been a purely arbitrary mental construct, used polemically to prove the superiority either of "The West, or of the entity opposing "The West." Let us recall the German Romantics,who may have been the first to set up this dichotomy between "The West" and "The Others." In their case, "The Others" were the Germans themselves, and so they saw the world in terms of a deep spiritual-cultural split between Germany and "The West" (which latter boiled down to essentially one country: France). Then the Russians picked up on this German dichotomy, but transformed it into Russia vs. "The West" (which now included Germany). To this day, most Russians do not consider themselves part of "the West." This is not just a philosophical stance; it is reflected in everyday language. The adjective, "Western," for example, is NEVER applied to things Russian. If you say "Western newspapers," for example, you mean exclusively "foreign" newspapers. Then we have the notion, born in the age of imperialism, of the West as the Civilizing Force, Enlightening All the Little Darkies of the World, Carrying the White Man's Burden. Your conception of Western Civilization vested with the mission of bestowing its highest(?) achievements, "modernity" and capitalist democracy, on an often ungrateful (tsk, tsk!) world reads like an updated version of the imperialist vision. 4) In conclusion, it seems to me that your construct "Western civilization" is too vague, both geographically and culturally. Furthermore, you have used it to coopt achievements of peoples and cultures that consider themselves (mistakenly or not) NON-Western. 5) And personally, I don't care for sweeping grand generalizations, in general. :-) Joan