"Western Culture" and the Metric
WHAT DOES "WESTERN CULTURE" MEAN TO YOU?
Not intending to start a flame war (the world outside is already on fire enough as it is), but every time I hear anything about gender, capitalism, money, sex, beauty, masculinity, femininity business and power, the recurring theme I hear from critics of the identified norm is "Western Culture," and I have to ask: Western, as opposed to what? Eastern, Southern, Northern? Where's the point of reference, and whose culture is the "correct" culture, according to those who oppose "Western Culture"? What's the metric for defining what "Western Culture" is, short of the misnomer of conflating it with "Modern" or "First World"? I feel as though it was an umbrella term created to strawman all American and European ideas into being considered "bad" or "wrong".
Thoughts on this appreciated.
Not intending to start a flame war (the world outside is already on fire enough as it is), but every time I hear anything about gender, capitalism, money, sex, beauty, masculinity, femininity business and power, the recurring theme I hear from critics of the identified norm is "Western Culture," and I have to ask: Western, as opposed to what? Eastern, Southern, Northern? Where's the point of reference, and whose culture is the "correct" culture, according to those who oppose "Western Culture"? What's the metric for defining what "Western Culture" is, short of the misnomer of conflating it with "Modern" or "First World"? I feel as though it was an umbrella term created to strawman all American and European ideas into being considered "bad" or "wrong".
Thoughts on this appreciated.
Comments (32)
(I had a moment of self-realisation a few months back, watching a doco on Netflix about WWII. IN the episode about the build up to the atomic bombing of Japan, there was a bit of footage of workers in California, going from a station to their workplace. I had this vivid realisation that they were 'my kind', the cultural archetype that I instinctively identified with as a youth (I'm a Baby Boomer). I got my first pair of blue jeans and sneakers, aged about 10, and a Beatles record, and suddenly felt that I knew who I was.)
Contemporary western culture has been strongly influenced (to a greater or lesser degree) by ancient Near East, Greek, and Roman cultures, and to a lesser extent, pre-Roman native European pagan cultures.
Western Culture is embodied in: languages, literary, plastic musical, and architectural art forms, jurisprudence practices, [edit: economic organization], behavioral norms, and religious traditions, is influenced by climates, geography, natural resources, and race.
Geography and natural resources have enabled several small European countries (some parts of European empires, such as the Hapsburg Empire) to have an outsized role in exploration and colonial activity.
Quoting SleepingAwake
This is a phenomena of affluent, naive, college educated, young people who have recently discovered that evil is resident in their own culture, and that countries with a lot of power can do things that weak countries can not do -- like dominate, exploit, and colonize. Various influences such as late-stage feminism, postmodernitis (a brain inflammation causing confused thinking and obscure language use), the cultural needs of corporate managers who wish to operate globally, a variety of marxist-inflected theorizing, and the like have produced this.
Trends come and go. Have patience. This, like a bad smell, will eventually dissipate.
However, it will leave behind quite a large footprint.
That's a good term, certainly for the recipients of GLCC. We grew up in the bosom of global, 'liberal' capitalist culture, whether we knew what that was when we were growing up, or not. But culture is complex and is layered. We don't all live in the same layer, and we who grew up in the donor GLCC homelands were not 'recipients', at least not until recently.
Quoting Wayfarer
One day when Wayfarer asked his mirror:
"Mirror, mirror, on the wall in the bath,
Who am I, really?"
It answered:
"You are a child of the global liberal capitalist culture, and you can leave those apostrophes out.
I will show you Californians; you are them and they know who they are. Behold a documentary.
They brush and floss daily. They wash their hands. They flush the toilet. They live in paradise.
Now, go to bed and leave me alone."
I don't think Western is necessarily intended as pejorative. In the minds of some shallow thinkers it is, but not generally. Consider for instance Bertrand Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy' which is still, despite its flaws, regarded as one of the best, most approachable descriptions of the Western philosophical tradition. Russell certainly did not mean Western in a pejorative way. He was very respectful of the achievements of Western culture. 'Western' is just an easy way to distinguish it from the other two large, influential cultures and philosophical streams the Earth has seen, which are Chinese and Indian.
By the way, I would include Middle Eastern culture and philosophy in 'Western' because after all the dominant religion of Europe and America is a Middle-Eastern religion. The European-native religions were actually things like Norse Gods and Druidism.
I think you are totally right. It is the historical influence of the most powerful empires that has the most influence in the distinction.
Honestly, I'm only halfway through these responses, but all of them are very well-thought out. I'm new here, and thus intentionally put myself within figurative stabbing distance, since I had no idea how sharp the intellectual knife's edge of these forums was. I have to admit I'm relieved at the rigor I've experienced thus far.
Thanks for this warm welcome, everyone.
I get what Bertrand Russell was on about, and I suppose that I should have clarified, but I was referring to the Millennial Progressive's use of the word "Western", as it's often deployed erroneously when protesting, especially in reference to "The Man", as the Boomers will recall it being called, or "Big Brother" and "The Racist, Sexist, Homophobic...etc. Patriarchy" as Gen X and Y (respectively) might often refer to the establishment (or Trump directly). Shit's gotten outta hand, and until recently (here and outside the net) I was starting to believe I was one of the few in the university sphere with half a brain left to use. When discussions like this come up, there's invariably that one person who will make you want to erase your head from your body.
Welcome to the forum, by the way. Your maiden trip out is doing well.
When it comes to decadence, the Soviets were in no position to accuse the kettle of being black.
The whole "property is theft" thing (Proudhon, French anarchist. 1840) is probably not coming back all that much. There are some members of the impoverished chattering classes that like the idea, but generally it isn't popular. Americans aspire to wealth earned the old fashioned way, through yankee ingenuity and ruthless exploitation. That most Americans aren't going to get anywhere close to wealth hasn't discouraged the aspiration.
I like the idea--property being understood in the Marxist sense as capital, not private property like one's small goods, and maybe a small house, a car, a wedding ring, etc. The property that really constitutes theft is the form owned by the to 5% to 10%: outright ownership or shares in factories, warehouses, rental properties, agricultural land, railroads, shipping, and so on.
Socialism is a piece of Western Culture, along with democratic or representative government, capitalism, free trade, pizza, single malt whiskey, martinis, and The New Yorker.
Mostly, I'm referring to "property" in reference to social capital, rather than actual riches, although there are microcosms wherein modern marxists and BLM activists actually demand property be relinquished from white ownership and given to black people, based on a feeling of entitlement and "300+ years" of oppression (in quotations due to fuzzy number).
The real problem is that socialism's ideas only work to a degree. Full Marxist Socialism would wreck the spine of the camel beyond repair, and not enough of it would be a step in reverse, temporally speaking. In order for the people and the government to give resources away like ecstasy at a rave, there has to be a limitless supply of resources. People who actually study the variables know that we're going to fold one day without capitalistic control of resources, so in truth, it only makes sense to do things this way until we no longer need either system. One day, maybe we'll move into the Universe and populate a new planet in a new galaxy, then fight over resources all over again. I'm cynical, but in a way, it really is a vicious cycle.
We only pretend to have answers on this planet. The real struggle is trying to figure that out.Quoting Bitter Crank
Now, to this point. The old fashioned way meaning by any means necessary, which is true, but has happened for ages. We're just willing to ignore that if it makes us feel smarter or better than someone who makes money. When it comes down to it, we're in a weird, parasitic symbiosis with each other. We need food, and instead of growing or hunting it, we have someone else manufacture our desires, which are also their desires, and give them slips of paper or a transfer of magnetic energy to obtain our 1 to 2 hours worth of family time with good food. The arrogant nature of any sort of modern economic system is that it instills a false sense of accomplishment in the head of house's brain when they receive praise for bringing home dinner. The head of house only purchased the meat or vegetables. In truth, the one who labored hardest was the farmers who farmed the meat and veg, and too often, they're the underpaid and talked down to. No matter what label is applied, there's always that arrogance.
Side Note: I must be slightly drunk. That made sense to me, but I'm only this cynical when I drink alone.
Also, thank you. Glad I'm fitting in this well.
Quoting SleepingAwake
Being slightly drunk may be one of the reasons you're fitting in so well. There used to be more beer drinkers than there are now -- or the beer drinkers have just stopped admitting it. I would drink more but I fall off my chair too soon.
Quoting SleepingAwake
I'm in favor of dispossessing the dispossessors of their ill-gotten gains, but I'm not in favor of reparations because a rain of cash won't fertilize the soil. I will grant you that the descendants of slaves (slavery ended 150+ years ago) have experienced on-going disadvantage. Cash grants, however, will not repay the misery experienced, and it won't help the current living generations of slave descendants. Cash does not transform people.
The unfortunate descendants of slaves need to get their collective acts together, and this is a project which the black community has to be in charge of and carry out. They have done it before. Where the cash comes in is paying for actually equally good schools, actually effective job-training programs, tuition free access to higher education where appropriate, job creation in black communities, and so on and so forth.
Of course, it isn't only blacks who have suffered. Many working class whites have also gotten fucked over by capitalism. Whites, blacks, asians, and hispanics all need to join together for living wages, strong unions, better housing, fair tax law, high quality health care at affordable cost, excellent public transit, strenuous efforts to reduce CO2, end pollution of the land and water, and so on.
I'm more of a Red Wine guy, myself.
Basically, Detroit getting its head out of its proverbial ass.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I wish we'd inspire people to create a movement called "One America," which would have the mission of encouraging everyone to leave a past they couldn't change in the dust, and focus on fixing those actual issues that we can change.
It's often used to delineate it from other cultures as if it is a monolithic thing but in reality culture is fluid, doesn't have clear boundaries and interacts with other cultures. Any definition of Western Culture is an attempt at a persuasive definition.
Let's call it what it is, "democracy". The western way is the way of democracy Those who are dissatisfied with the "decadence" of the western way are dissatisfied with democracy. And there has always been undercurrents of that dissatisfaction within the western world itself. In the sixties we had the movement of the hippies with their leaning toward communism. The capitalist powers portrayed communism as a dangerous threat to the existence of human beings in western society, and suppressed that movement on the basis of this danger.
Quoting SleepingAwake
This is known as the division of labour, and there is nothing shameful about the division of labour. In Plato's Republic you'll find it as the basis for his concept of justice, each person doing one's own thing, which is different from every other person's thing, without interfering with the other. In this way, each person is allowed to make a valuable contribution to society by doing what one is good at. I would prefer to be a farmer working the fields than to be an executive working the company, and I don't think it's correct to portray one as "harder" than the other. One is not necessarily harder work than the other, they are just different. But why should the executive get paid hundreds of times more than the labourer?
The West has expanded over the years, to the point where its ideology now regularly clashes with the East in all the ways you have itemized. Ideologically the Prime Meridian continues to shift with some narratives overlaying others.
China and Russia were at odds with the West shortly after WWII. The West put them and a few others behind an 'Iron Curtain'. The essence of the dispute was ideological. Forms of capitalism were posed against forms of communism. Reality under these two ideologies was described in very different terms.
What one side saw as colonialism, the other side saw as indoctrination. What both side saw together was the importance of technology for the advancement and safety of their respective populations. This emphasis on technology has a lot of different costs, which include huge financial and academic expenses. These costs dissolved many of the apparent ideological differences by creating technology as a 'common cause' which each could adopt as their own.
Technology became a kind of Point Meridian, I think it's still holds its position, but its being challenged by cultures with great moral/religious traditions, societies whose architecture is built around a religious ideology, one which is far more integrated into everyday life than in either the East or the West. These cultures also value Technology, but it is subservient to their religious/familial values.
Democracy is a form of government, not an overall mindset of the populace, which is what we're talking about--culture.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Answering this backwards, but here we go:
If they own the company. it's understood that the exec should obviously make higher pay, expecially if they're taking extra responsibilities into their own hands (like my own soon-to-be boss, who is CEO of our company). Simply put, they have more at stake. Now, on the other hand, I really have disdain for those who screw their workers out of decent pay. No job worth the money is easy, and should be compensated. However, I argue again for the farmer. Here in the states, there's an abundance of food. It's difficult for farmers to make a living because the overall cost of food has sunk in recent years, and as a result, they can't afford to hire the hands they'd need to get everything efficiently planted. A lot of farms go under, too. Not to mention, if you live in an area where flooding and erosion is very common, the challenge is greater.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Didn't say there was anything shameful about it. I simply pointed to the fact that we misattribute our success with buying from the people who produced them and claim that we provided for our family. I know it's nitpicky, but I sometimes just say what's on my mind.
Not sure which part of the country you live in, but a couple of points:
The price the farmer receives for a crop (wheat, corn, potatoes, vegetables, fruit...) is fairly disconnected from the cost of groceries. The price the farmer received for grain is a small part of the cost of bread or corn flakes. Grains could practically be tended by robots. Those big combines, like trains, don't really need anybody in the cabin. Dairy is highly regulated and dairy support programs are not exactly rational. I love small dairy farms, but they are economically obsolete, at this point.
On the other hand, fruits (pears, apples...) row crops (strawberries, asparagus, lettuces, various vegetables, melons, and the like) take a lot of labor from seed to the harvest.
Transportation, processing (at the least grading, sorting, washing, drying, packaging, labeling... and at the other extreme, turning rough wheat into angel food cake), warehousing, marketing, and labor and profit at every step of the way adds most of the cost. A $6 angel food cake might have 25 cents worth of cake flour in it.
At lot of food practice doesn't make sense. For instance, I don't know why Dean Foods in Texas is selling dairy products in Minnesota, and Land O'Lakes in Minnesota is selling products in Texas. It's nuts.
Yes it is part of an overall mindset. A democratic government will perform poorly with people who don't think and live in a democratic style, whose culture isn't based on the spirit of democratic decision making. Whether it's the garden club or the Democratic Party precinct caucus, the township board or the U.S congress, democracy is an essential culture in a democratic country.
Kentucky, for your reference. Mind you, I'm also talking about small-time farmers.
When it's being used, this is true, but I'll put the party with whom I would likely side, were they not so corrupt, under the bus for this. The Democratic Party betrays its name heavily. Its members call themselves liberal at times, but one striking oddity bewilders me--the influx of illiberalism in the last seven years. There's a culture of shaming and name calling not seen in ages in this party, which infuriates me greatly. The odd part of it, to me, is the use of the term "progressive," which implies a positive social change for the benefit of the whole, yet most I've met who identify themselves as such make me really uncomfortable--not because I think they might be right, but because they do not seem to understand the meaning of "benefit of the doubt," much less the idea of polite discourse.
One of my fellow liberal minded friends, as an example, prefers to air her grievances quite often, and almost never passes up the opportunity to be abrasive, simple-minded and oblivious to the fact that she'll say the most racist sentences in the name of promoting "defense of people of color," as though they can't speak for themselves. I hate that string of words, more than any other in the politically correct lexicon. In my view, simply "our fellow Americans" would do.
I've digressed a bit, but I felt it necessary.
I used to have some relatives in Corbin, KY; they're both dead now. I liked the area. My brother thought the politics in KY were appalling.
Quoting SleepingAwake
Yes, it is 'illiberal'. A lot of it is "identity politics" wherein groups who can form around an identity that can be made exclusive (something "our fellow Americans" can't be) list their grievances against the dominant groups. So you have blacks, gays, latinos, women, (who aren't really a defensible identity group -- neither are men) and various others whining, bitching, carping, complaining, demonstrating, etc. against the injustices imposed upon them by whites, straights, men, straight white male police, dead white male Europeans, and so on.
If these aggrieved groups are good at what they do, they'll put on a show good enough to attract the media. If not, they get ignored. Then they complain about being erased or being rendered invisible.
I'm a gay white male, but 70 years old. From my perspective, the gay rights movement has been over for quite some time. I wasn't and I am not a gay-marriage enthusiast. I'll grant that transsexuals have many challenges, but I don't think their struggle is the gay community's problem. It's their struggle, and they will make progress, or not, on the basis of how well they present their case to the public.
In English: Minor Annoyances that wash down well with expensive lattes and a bagel, or a craft beer and a vegan kosher ham sandwich.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'd say the same, were I gay, but I believe we've lost the one thing that made it all special when the movement came to a conclusion: The Live and Let Live attitude that your generation, and part of mine (I'm in between X and Y), may have had more of. At 31, and being an intergenerational Millennial, I worry that my youngers will, from this point in history, go on to lead dismal, poverty-stricken lives, belligerently pounding and scraping for handouts, while screeching incoherently when things aren't just so, according to some weird pseudo-intellectual ego-trip they've got going on, and even when faced with the reality that they've been living a convenient, comfortable lie, they'll deny the reality of it all.
I think the form of government plays a large role in the overall mindset of the populace. In the west, democracy is seen as the best form of government. This fuels a belief in the superiority of democratic societies over non-democratic societies. That belief in the superiority of the form of government is held by the individuals, and cannot be prevented from filtering down, and manifesting itself as a belief in the superiority of the individuals themselves, of that society. So despite the fact that democracy holds the equality of individuals as a high principle, we tend not to include those outside of democratic societies within this equality, in our "mind set", as we see them as having a lower form of government and therefore inferior to us.
I don't really know about that... maybe a good decision strategy, but as we've seen lately, our democrats apparently don't understand the meaning of "demos-kratia," or they simply choose to ignore it altogether, in favor of politically correct, passive-aggressive facism in the guise of "social progress." I've long held that the government should be subservient to its people, rather than a selectively hive-minded regime that shits on common people for perceived "hate crimes," like some Orwellian dictatorship, as though being a government official makes them any better than us.