From: hubey@pilot.njin.net (Hubey)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet,talk.politics.soviet,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: Russian Speakers in Estonia
Date: 3 Jan 93 19:54:15 GMT
Followup-To: soc.culture.soviet
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

In article <Sorokin.41.726070743@ps1.iaee.tuwien.ac.at> Sorokin@ps1.iaee.tuwien.ac.at (Sorokin Zhenya) writes:


> In principle, yes. It is already the case with Chechens. However, there is a 
> question of borders and previous states. What are the borders of Tataria, 
> for example? The same refers to the whole North-Caucasus region. Before 
> russian occupation there were Osmans there, with short periods of some 
> short-living sultanats, which were also occupants to neighbouring peoples. 
> Almost every meter of every border is subject to conflicts. Another example 
> is Tajikistan, just an artificially created state.

Thank you for your courteous posting. Yes, there are questions of
borders and will not be easily solved.

And yes, what my posting was about was about ethical and moral
consistency and obviously your attitude is quite impeccable.


> Referring to *asiatic* was NOT insulting. My father is a professor for 
> Chinese literature (ancient and modern), hence my respect to asiatic culture 
> is very high. However, there are big differences in life order in european, 
> islamic and far-eastern societies. 

Well, I guess what I was pointing out was that the word 'asiatic'
like negro, and nigger is insulting. A better term is simply
'asian' like 'european'. And yes, there are differences among
cultures.


> With respect to law-abiding, there is a big difference in understanding  
> of laws in western democracy and what I called "asiatic" way of life.
> First, do not mix laws and traditions. In the literature, the societies 
> you mentioned above are normally called "traditionalist" rather than 
> "democratic". 

I must admit that there's a very thin line between law and tradition.
Western. British 'common law' is not much different than tradition
and in fact that's essentially where it comes from.


> Second,
> in western sense, law is impersonal and written. 
> In "asiatic" sense, law is personified by the boss.

I've seen this written in a few places by purported scholars. When
I said something like "Traditionally the Confucian system just accepts
the authority in power." --which I got from a book written by a
Western scholar--the retort was; "How is that much different than
most people in any country?"

Most people accept the 'boss' in every country. The ideals
enshrined, somewhat romantically, that only in the West do we
see people fighting injustice and oppression is a silly myth and
and insult. There have been plenty of revolts in plenty of countries
against their rulers spanning millenia.

This is in keeping with the 'asiatic despotism' attitude. This 
idea is passe among most clear thinkers. The 'age of enlightenment'
was the primary motivation for this myth. And the real reason
for it was probably to try to lift the tyranny of dogmatic
religion.

If we examine things over long periods of time, what we see
is that early ethical systems (actually the people who 'invented'
them or tried to propogate these ideas) found it a lot easier
to say "God said so." than to write milions of words. One can
certainly appreciate the practical difficulties of spending
days and weeks arguing about ethics among an illiterate people
who might have spent most of their time chasing food.

Even today. many (if not most) people still give God and religion
as a basis of morality and ethics. The recent western invention
(enlightenment) of basing ethics not on God, does not make it
superior to Confucian ethics. It frees it from God, (and thus
"God said so!") makes it more Confucian-like, in fact.

 
> As a result, corruption is considered both immoral and illegal in modern 
> western societies, whereas it is simply a part of the way of life (i.e. 
> moral) and to some extent even legal in "asiatic" culture. 
> To see it quantitatively, just mention what a big class in western countries 
> all sorts of lawers are. The same profession is almost absent in "asiatic" 
> societies. 

Corruption is corruption everywhere. I think these attitudes displayed
above are an example of what I'm talking about. If you post this to
soc.culture.asian, you might get roasted :-).. Corruption exists
everywhere, and is tolerated just like cancer.


> Sometimes the difference is hard to express in words, but you'll easily feel 
> it if you make, e.g. a trip from  Northern Germany through Bavaria to 
> Austria (like I did). Not just look at churches, but speaking to people and 
> living their life at least a week. Although the language is the same, 
> history is to big extent common, the difference is drastic. On such axis, 
> I'd place Latvians somewhere in Central Germany (no wonder, Latvia was a 
> Teuton state), Estonia somewhere in the North, Ukraina somewhere in 
> Yugoslavia and Russia closer to Turkey (maybe Greece?).

This observation might be correct but neither the implications nor
the basis for it (which you've described above) are correct.

It's difficult to really understand what causes these Life-Cycles of
nations and how they come to that state. The earliest attempt
at explanation comes from Ibn Khaldun who advocates a kind
of Life-Cycle Theory of Nations. Ayn Rand tried to explain this
similarly by postulating a three-type-class society; and the 
latest along those lines is the work of an Indian philosopher
who posits a four-division system and a cyclical life cycle.

They're all interesting reading. At least they're a good
antidote to the 'asiatic mind' type of pseudo science as
practiced by some purported scientists in the west. There
are more books that can be read on the subject.


> Once again: this estimation is purely personal and NOT INSULTING.
> 

Thank you for your kind response and I think we disagree. If I
were an Asian I'd be really insulted. 
-- 

	mark	

   hubey@amiga.montclair.edu         hubey@apollo.montclair.edu
   hubey@pilot.njin.net               ...!rutgers!pilot!hubey