Talk:Western culture/Archive 1

message: I am sure there will be many additions.  The Roman chapter and especially law needs to be developed.  WHEELER 18:26, 13 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: The glory that was Greece... blah blah blah

message: For a possible projected future for western culture, see also: Technological singularity
Kim Bruning 12:00, 7 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Western culture next steps

message: "Western Culture is composed of a triad of influences: ancient Greek culture, ancient Roman culture and Christianity." - That's a hell of a sweeping conclusion to present as the first line of an encyclopedia entry. Just discussing the premise would probably be several doctorates-worth of material. 
Off the top of my head - what about Babylon? Egypt? the Germanic cultures? Islam? Judaism? India? And has nothing of note happened in the past 2000 years? (the Enlightenment? The Reformation? Romanticism? the Industrial Revolution? modern democracy? The nation state?) Starting with a descriptive point would be a good beginning. How about: "'Western Culture' is a term applied loosely to those cultures which are predominately European in origin." But even that's dubious - 'western' is used so loosely to mean 'democratic' or 'industrialised' or 'Christian' or 'rich' or 'non-Islamic' or 'non-Soviet' that the boundaries are messy as hell - is Russian culture 'western'? what about Brazil? And there's the article's emphasis on philosophy and science, rather than the arts, clothing, food - why? It's not an article on 'western philosphy'. The entire article strikes me as wrong-headed and I think the best thing would be to rewrite it from scratch, rather than try and edit it as it stands. Harry R 10:42, 10 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Origin influences

message: There is also a lot of 19th century Victorian era Public School (which were themseves modeled on Ancient Greek ideas) stuff in the ideas expressed in the term Western culture in this article; that enlightenment is Greek and Roman (and we have to begrudgingly include Christianity to keep the vicar happy). When Rome falls the whole world is in a dark age (Lets ignore the Eastern Empire and pretend it does not exist), which only ends as we crawl out of the dark ages into the Renaissance. 20th Century archaeology and historical research have been shrinking the Dark Ages and blurring the boundaries of the Renaissance. Most Victorians argued that all democratic ideas/ideals came from Greece. But a pound for a penny that English democratic values have a much stronger root in the way that North German tribes organised themselves. That if no text from Ancient Greece had survived, then via concepts that created the Witan, democracy would have developed, it really had little to do with Ancient Greece.
In the section entitled Spread of Western Culture there is a paragraph which starts "All non-Western indigenous societies which encountered Western culture underwent massive and fundamental changes as a consequence." Well yes if the indigenous societies was early Iron or stone age, but is this true for all of the Muslim World, China and India? India perhaps more than the other two, but it was and is a 2 way street.  I'm off to drive my juggernaut back to my bungalow in Blighty, where I will change into my silk pyjamas and have tea in a porcelain cup while I eat my potatoes and do my maths homework without using Roman numerals and smoke nice pipe of tobacco.
The things mentioned in the last paragraph are mostly commodities, but it is a very Victorian idea to say that the flow of ideas were all from the Imperial centre to the far flung reaches of the Empire. It is of course a very convenient theory because it held to justify West European Empires. The Victorians excused their empires by arguing that they were bringing enlightenment to the "poor benighted heathen[s]". (Kipling)
However just as trade flows in both directions, so do ideas. For example in the
area of military technology, inventions came from outside Europe which had huge impacts on Western Society and culture. Gunpowder and the stirrup to name but two.
So I think this article would be improved if an acknowledgement was made that that Western Culture is a synthesis of many ideas from many sources and that western global trade acted as a catalyst in disseminating those snthesised ideas with Western Europe as a central cleaning house.  This meant the ideas had the larger, faster impact on Western Europe so that is why they are known by the lable "Western culture". Philip Baird Shearer 10:56, 26 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Victorian white-washing

message: Now, this article suffers from a Mediterranean/Classic POV, and I am adding such a label. There is no denying the heavy and important classic and Judeo-Christian heritage in Western culture. BUT, where is the influence of the Celtic, Slavic and Germanic cultures, that the bulk of the European population started out with? 
To pick one example we could take the Germanic influence on Western culture. The Germanic Common law was dominant North of the Alps and the Loire during the Middle Ages. Without the institution of Germanic kingship and its tradition Western monarchy and Western history would have taken a completely different route. What about the democratic foundations in institutions such as tings and Witenagemots? The parliamentary systems (houses of parliament and their counterparts in other West European countries) from the Middle ages and onwards are more indebted to them than to Athenian democracy.--Wiglaf 07:56, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: per this user's comments, it seems like he/she really has a problem with limited geographic scope. Since there's a tag for that, I'm rm'ing the POV tag and replacing with the proper one. Feco 23:16, 27 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: And I've added it to the talk page, since it is a message intended for editors. — mark ✎ 13:52, 31 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: POV

message: The relationship between Christianity, Judaism, and Western culture ought to be presented. For instance the questions: Do Jews in the Western world have a culture other than "Western culture"? Is Western culture instrinsically Christian? Is Christianity intrinsically Western in origin/nature? I'll try to elucidate when I'm able to come back and edit the page...--Dpr 19:25, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Christianity, Judaism, and Western culture

message: ...I care about characteristics: blue jeans, expensive cars, casual sex, flush toilets, Shakespeare, Hollywood, and rock & roll. That's Western culture. Groove on that, Poindexter. --Tysto 05:24, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I have to agree with Tysto.  This article should focus on the (relatively) contemporary manifestations of Western culture. - IstvanWolf 23:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: I don't care about origins

message: The discussion of the status of south africa, while not incorrect, is jaringly out of place in the article so near the start.  This sort of discussion (what is covered geographically is covered in the Western World article, so it, if it is to appear at all should be in that article.  I am removing it for that reason.
DonSiano 14:57, 27 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: South Africa

message: Much of this article uses Christian heritage as a guiding concept for inclusion, and communism as a guiding concept for exclusion.  Although a recent development, communism was all but a 74-year (or less) blip on the map.  Given the Christian heritage in many of these areas dates to 1000+ years - it would make sense Ukraine, Belarus, European Russia, et al be included, but with qualifications, of course.  After all, is St. Petersburg, Kyiv, Odesa, etc, not western cities?  If Orthodox Christianity (with its ties to Byzantium) is to be excluded, Christianity as an organziating concept should be denoted in some respect to Catholic and Protestant Christianity.  Ideas? --Yakym 04:12, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eastern Europe and Orthodox Christianity 

message: The two sections marked POV - have been marked because alot of these ideals stated as "purely" western are opinion.  Personal freedom, etc. are based on Western interpretations of what personal freedom, etc. actually are. 
Further, the "technologies" etc. attributed to western culture is debatable - particularly concerning certain developements by Western countries based on technology adopted from non-Western regions.
:I don't think that this article can ever become POV. The perception of what belongs to the west has changed dramatically throughout time. The culture that is called western nowadays had different names in earlier centuries. 
:The Greek described themselves as Greek and they felt being influenced by ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. 
:The Romans described themselves as Roman and felt being influenced by the Greek. 
:Before the 15th century, the westerners called themselves christian and all the christians belonged to their realm. The christians wanted to convert all humans to chrisitianity and wanted unity with other christians. The split between the eastern christians and western christians was seen as a loss.
:From the 15th century untill the 18th, the term civilization was introduced and Europe was the most civilized region of the world according to the contemporaries.
:I don't know much about the later centuries, what terminology concerns. It could be noted in this article when the term western was introduced to describe 'our' culture. Europeans settled in other continents and were called transplanted Europeans. 
:Communism is a part of western culture to my opinion. Karl Marx was a German and he wrote his books in London. Communists are extreme advocates of western style secular modernization. Their ideals were based on the French revolution and the terror regime of Robespierre. Equality among all humans was popular in the 18th century, without a connection to religion.
:The whole world has been influenced dramatically by the western culture. Chinese and African people wear t-shirts and jeans. Every country has a western style government. Western inventions are everywhere. India and many African countries have a western language as official language.
:There is a strong bias in this article, which belongs to the concept of the western culture. Looking at the map, then i come to these conclusions: Including Japan means that all rich countries are western. Excluding Japan means that all white, (former) christian countries are western.--Daanschr 09:32, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Neutral point of view