From: dpipes@spica.srg (Dave Pipes x4552)
Subject: Re: World Culture and Western Culture
Organization: just me
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 19:28:36 GMT
Followup-To: soc.history

In article <19764@ector.cs.purdue.edu> cutchin@cs.purdue.edu (Steve Cutchin) writes:
>
>    While it is probably accurate to say that many new and beneficial
>    culture concepts were introduced by the conquering of India by
>    the British this in NO WAY mitigates that it was the western cultures
>    view of Indians as inferior, backward and heretical that allowed them
>    to justify in their minds the slaughter of millions of indians in
>    their conquest of India.  Mr McCarthy's EXTREMELY selective view of
>    western cultures interaction with eastern is both abysmally poor in
>    its simple minded arguments and narrow viewpoint.  It is extremely easy
>    to extoll the benefits of Western culture and ignore its more destructive
>    tendencies  as abberations.  Let me make a list of some of the more
>    negative creations of Western Culture:
>
>    1.  Nuclear Warfare.

	Created in the West, now present everywhere, potentially.

>    2.  Capitalism (yes Mr McCarthy this has negative aspects).

	Systems of coinage and wages for labor have existed for far more time
than the current Western culture.  

>    3.  World Wars I and II.
>    4.  The Crusades.

	There has never been a period where the entire world was without
warfare.  Bloodthirstiness is not a Western characteristic, but a human one.
Besides, much of both of these wars was fought in Asia.  The Japanese had
been conquering in Asia for 30 years before WWII, and they were rabidly
anti-Western culture at the time.

>    5.  The Catholic Church.

	Religion, abusive or otherwise, is not exclusively Western.

>    6.  The Holocaust.

	Genocide has occurred all over the world.

>    7.  Mili Vanilli. :-)

	Bad pop music is everywhere :-).

>
>    These cultural aspects of Western culture are just as much an inherent
>    aspect of it as the more 'beneficial' kinds that Mr McCarthy lists.
>    So I would say that western culture while succesfully exploiting and 
>    destroying large segments of the global population is in no way superior
>    to any other culture.   Unless one defines superior to be 'doing whatever
>    the hell I want'.

Believe it or not, that is a good functional definition in history.

These cultural aspects are present in most other cultures that have existed
in time, when the specifics are removed.  You are just attacking the dominant
one - the currently dominant one - because it is there, as it were.  2000
years ago, you would have lolled indolently in a Southern Italian resort
town, munching grapes and complaining about the treatment of the Gallic
tribes in between sips of wine.  This whole bit about cultures being
"superior" or "inferior" is bunk, and racist bunk at that.  Cultures are
merely different.  You are in fact using the accepted parameters of Western
culture - good and evil in opposition - to judge it and others.  This is
counterproductive for your argument, I think.
>
>    I do not even consider the myriad of arguments that what McCarthy extolls
>    as 'benefits' are considered by many as not being benefits.  Particularly
>    the idea of societal 'progress' is often pushed for by the west yet why
>    should one want ones society to 'progress'.  Is it really a benefit?  I
>    am calling into question here Mr McCarthy's belief that organization,
>    rule of law, written constitutions are beneficial things.  Is 'progress'
>    itself a benefit?  I think you will find many in the west and east who
>    have lived near polluted areas who will argue that 'progress' is not
>    such a universally wonderfull thing.

Nor is it universally horrible.  Look at what lack of it did to China's
current position in the world.  Sometimes progress helps, sometimes it hurts.
>
>    To close, I would just like to state that it is very dishearting to see
>    an obviously well educated man put forth such poorly considered narrowly
>    construed drivel.  

And I am shocked and appalled that you think this stuff is new, unique to
current Western society or a change from the past.  Human history is the
history of a few conquering empires and a hell of a lot of dispossessed
peoples.  No matter how shiny the technology we create, or what illusions
we cast with our religious and social justifications, we have not changed
an iota from the Roman conquerors.  Go back far enough, and your arguments
apply to all parts of the world - India, China, Mongolia, Arabia, Africa,
South America, Polynesia...All of these cultural areas have as bloody a
history as the current European culture.

Whatever the state of John's argument, your criticism of it is way, way off
base, and is locked into only the last 150 years or so of history.  Widen that
to 4000, and you'll have so many horrible oppressing cultures, you won't 
be able to touch a world map without fingering some proto-Hitler.  That is
why I find your analysis misdirected.

David Pipes
robear@digex.com