From: ntetsuya@lamar.ColoState.EDU (Nishimura)
Subject: Re: Brainwashed
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1992 07:55:25 GMT
Organization: Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO  80523

In article <34325@twics.co.jp> dcroz@twics.co.jp writes:
>Tetsuya Nishimura writes:
> 
>=}I am really glad I am NOT denying cultures of others because no culture is
>=}ever superior to any other culture.
> 
>     Really?  So modern Japanese culture, such as it is and independently of
>any of our opinions of what it is, is in no way superior to the Japanese
>culture of 1600 AD?  Doing away with feudalism and all the injustices that
>serfdom implies was not an advance?  What Japan has now is in no way better
>than the repressive oligarchy that spawned approximately 3,000 ikki (peasant
>revolts) during the Edo period?
> 
>     The pre-literate, pantheistic, stone-age, cannibal cultures that have
>existed to historic times were (are?) in no way less than the culture of
>Renaissance Italy?
> 
>     Dark-age European cultures that burned "witches" at the stake, practiced
>slavery, held personal cleanliness to be an affront to "god," enforced
>illiteracy on the vast majority of the population, and practiced droit du
>seigneur were in no way less "good" than modern Australia?
> 
>     Today's repressive theocracies that enforce extreme sexism (extending even
>to mandatory mutilation of girl-children) and religious intolerance (up to and
>including religious wars and executing people for their beliefs) are in every
>way as "good" as any other culture?  There's nothing to be said against them?
>Swiss culture (to choose an example at pseudo-random) is in no way superior? 
>

	To all of your questions above;
	No culture is any better than any other culture even if a comparison is
	between the present situation of one culture and the past of itself.

	The culture of feudal Edo period is "the" culture of the period and not
	of present.  The culture of middle-age Europe is of the period and not
	of stone age African.

	Culture, in my understanding, is what people in a period in somewhere 
	either enjoy(ed) or are (were) suffered from.  It is what a people
	live(d) in and with.  It is unique to a people in certain time in a
	certain place.  It is what ANY people cannot live without.

	How can you say the culture of 1600 AD Japan is inferior to that of 
	modern day Japan, or vise versa?  How can you say Italian culture is
	better than that of Spain, or vice versa?  How can you say the culture
	of YOUR childhood is worse than that of today's children?

	We can, IMO, compare one culture to another and consiquentally may find
	some differences.  But these differences are not what you can say "bad"
	or "good" in nature.  Or would you rather consider a slurp of a Japanese
	eating miso soup in Japan bad because Western culture does not permit
	it?  Would you rather say the Japanese should not eat miso soup without
	making noise?  I am not saying that it (making noise) is good nor bad
	though, in a part of our culture, making noise when you eat is actually
	considered a sign of enjoying food and appreciation.  Is this culture
	really inferior or superior to any other culture?

	If, as you might think, one culture can be inferior to another, why not
	abandoning it and adopting or adapting what you might call a "superior"
	and "better" culture?  Where in this world and in the past is a people
	who abandoned their culture and adopted a new culture?  As long as I 
	know there have been lots of peoples who adapted part of another culture	and consiquentally made it a part of their own culture.  And this was,
	I believe, not based on the judgdement whether the culture they were 
	importing was good or bad, or superio or inferior.  I believe it was
	based on whether they liked it or not.

	Well, one people I know who tried to abandon their own culture because
	they thought it was inferior to that of other countries... The Japanese.	:-(  They, or we, even tried to abandon the Japanese language and to 
	adopt one of European langauges such as English and German.

	Any way, at least for me, culture is not something you can judge good or
	bad.  A culture is a culture when it is with the people who lived with
	it.


>     I am distressed to see, Mr. Nishimura, that the PC fascists currently in
>ascendancy in academia have sold you their radical-relativism bill of goods.
>

	I don't like soliciting.  :-)


>     Might I recommend "The Closing of the American Mind?"  The poor repute it
>enjoys among the PC is IMO the strongest possible recommendation.
> 
>=}Bunka to bunmei wa zenzen chigau mono da to omoi masu.
> 
>     An interesting idea, but perhaps not so obvious as you seem to think. 
>Would you care to elaborate?
>

	Bunka = what people live in and with.  what makes people people.
		what sometimes makes people selfish.

	Bunmei = what people depend upon. what makes people lazy 
		 (but not always).

	Is this too simple???


					Tetsuya Nishimura

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