We hammered this one out several weeks ago in Human races after all!?! — What now?
As I noted in that thread,
Be back later on. I have some business to take care of. Someone tell Lucki Chaarms that he needs to do a little more stepping up.
Here we have a lack of Education. Christianity was not conceived by Europeans, but by Middle Easterners, and Jews, at that. Christianity is a global religion, and Jesus is worshipped in every nation and every continent.
The Renaissance and the Enlightenment may be episode in European intellectual history, but that does not mean that other cultures have not contributed to world civilization. Civilization as we know it, in fact, originated among the Sumerians, a nation that rose in what is now Iraq, and gave us the 60-second minute and the 7-day week.
Every culture has had its glory era of art, science, and achievement. The Arabs in the Middle Ages, the Chinese in the Tang Dynasty, the Japanese in the Heian Period, the Koreans in the Unified Shilla Era, the Indians in the Mauryan Empire, the Mayans in the Classical Era, Ghana in the Songhai Empire.
Think of all the great art we have from around the world–Benin bronzes and Ibo wooden sculptures from Africa; Tang horses and Song dynasty paintings from China; Horyuji Temple, the Meiji Jingu, and the Great Buddha of Kamakura from Japan; the Sanchi Stupa and the Taj Mahal from India, thje Temples of the Sun and the Moon, El Caracol, and the ruins of Palenque from Mexico. To say that only Europeans have created great art and functioning societies is to speak from ignorance.
Yes. But that’s not what I’m asking. Instead, I’ve asked you to identify the commonalities, among all those wildly diverese nations and peoples, that you perceive as tying them together under the category of Western Civilization (“WC”), particularly so that they may be legitimately celebrated as the common heritage of all white people as the WN’s seem to insist is the case.
Okay, that’s a start. I think you’ve got a lot more work to do, however:[ul][li]Christianity exists all over the world, far beyond Europe. There are more Christians in Africa than there are in Europe, if I remember my population statistics correctly. The Coptic Church has existed in Egypt since the first century A.D., as just one small (but very well established) example. Moreover, many geographic areas that are undoubtedly European received Christianity late or not at all. WN’s seem to love pre-Christian German and Norse mythology, after all, so presumably it’s part of WC. What about the cult of Isis, probably the most popular god in the Roman Empire? Is Isis WC because she was Roman or non-WC because she was Egyptian in origin?[]Renaissance. Which Renaissance? The Italian, the German, the French, the Engish, the Spanish? Oh wait, there wasn’t a Spanish renaissance. Come to think of it, most European nations never had anything that could be described as a renaissance, and the ones that did have something called a renaissance all experienced it at vastly different times and in vastly different ways. The English Renaissance has about as much in common with the Italian Renaissance as it does with the Harlem Renaissance.[]Enlightenment. See Renaissance. It didn’t come anywhere near to all of Europe, and it was experienced in vastly different ways even when it did show up.[/ul][/li]Would you care to respond to any of that, or could you show in some other way what the alleged commonalities of WC are?
Tars- You’re gonna have to be faster than that!
And how exactly is this threatened? Good lord, it’s not like they’re tearing down Notre Dame, or have stopped teaching about the Renaissance in school.
And does this extend to women or whites? Or is this only true when it’s expedient? You do realize that women weren’t given the full vote in the US until 1920. The most common reasons justifying this; were that women were by their nature not as intelligent as men, and that they were far to delicate to take something like politics seriously (do these intelligence/temperament arguments look familiar?) . Black men, on the other hand, were allowed to vote in 1870.
Do you think that straight, but unmarried couples should be discriminated in housing, how about if they’re just roomies, how about a single mother? Should she be discriminated against? How about if her husband abandoned her? Then why should gay men? If as you say
then how should what they do in the bedroom have anything to do with whether they get a bank loan or a job?
Should religion should be a factor in legislation at all? If a religion finds something abhorrent, should I as U.S, citizen be bound to that?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by gobear *
Minty Green, I think you are picking on our visitor unfairly**I am sincerely trying not to pick on our guest. Perhaps my most recent post (and that of Sionnach) has better explained what I’m driving at?
And still no answer from Sionnach to my questions about the whole “jewspeak” comment…
I think you are asking her to make cultural distinctions that even professional historians of early modern Europe squabble over.
Generally speaking, when one talks about theRenaissance, one is talking about the Italian rediscovery of Greco-Roman art and literature that led to a cultural rebirth (hence Re-Naissance) in quattrocento Italy. The “English Renaissance” was really just a side-effect of the Reformation. Without Henry VIII kicking the slats out of the Roman Catholic Church and Elizabeth’s official toleration of religious dissent, the cultural flowering under Elizabeth and James couldn’t have happened. And while it is true that the Spanish never had a Reformation of the Church and they didn’t start composing Petrachan sonnets, they, too, had a bloom of culture in the 17th and 18th centuries (OK, way behind every other nation, but still…El Greco, Velazquez, Cervantes…)
In any event, I don’t think we should demand much familiarity with European intellectual history of our guest–from my survey of the SF board, I drew the impression that, while the SS, er… SF folks placed a great deal of emphasis on “European heritage”, they couldn’t have told the difference between Dante Aleghieri and a pig in a sack. Not a well-read lot are the SF board members, was my take on the situation.
I’m aware of the distinctions, gobear. I do not believe that Sionnach is aware of them. Otherwise, he/she would not have attempted to define Western Civilization by reference to “the Renaissance.” The Italian Renaissance was a highlight in European history, no doubt, but not a reason for a Spaniard, a Scot, and a Neapolitan to (walk into a bar and) celebrate their shared white identity.
I do think there is a common thread to those concepts, and that’s modernism. The notion of modernism developed in the Western world during those vague periods described as “Renaissance” and “Enlightenment.” Modernism meant acceptance of the principle that there is a real world existing independently of ourselves, that truths about the world can be discerned through use of the scientific method. This moved philosophy and all the sciences into a new age. When contrasted to the occidental religions and philosophies, which are generally more focused on the internal world of the mind than the external world, and which tend to be more perspectivist/antirealist than modernist (again, a broad generalization), it does seem that there is something common to the intellectual movements in Europe across that time period.
Again this is somewhat of a generality, but it does show at least something to point to as European intellectual tradition. This is not to say that scientific innovations did not come out of the East, for they certainly did. It’s the way that modernist ideas proliferated throughout Western thought en masse that makes that development unique, IMHO.
Sionnach said:
[quoteWhat about parades? I think they are silly, but my comment about bureaucratic liberal mumbo-jumbo referred to hate crimes legislation and lawsuits. [/quote]
That was my point – you said something about that but also included in your statement:
In other words, you brought it up, I asked you about it, you ignored it, I asked about it again, and now you’re making it sound like you never said it!
[Moderator Hat ON]
Edited thread title for clarity.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
“Occidental” refers to the West, so I think you mean Oriental, but otherwise, excellent point.
Attributing the Renaissance and Enlightenment (however defined) to all of Europe is simply incorrect. Those movements (or whatever the were) came out of a handful of European nations and slowly spread to the rest. Not coincidentally, that is exactly how those ideas spread across the rest of the world, in much the same way that, say, modern mathematics spread from the Arab world to Europe. Oh, sure, if you’re Italian, by all means celebrate the Italian role in the Renaissance. But on what basis can (say) an Irishman be proud of the Italian Renaissance? Because you’re both kinda on the same continent? The very notion is silly.
Or to put it in a slightly different way, why on earth would an Irishman look at an Italian and say “Come, my white brother, let us celebrate our common heritage in the Italian Renaissance”? I mean, I dig sushi, but that doesn’t give me any basis to celebrate a common civilization/culture/whatever with the Japanese sushi chef.
Returning back to the topic of Western Civ. Where is the cutoff point geographically? Are we including the Middle East? Didn’t the Christian faith first come to existance in Israel? Are we going to include Ancient Egypt?
I’m also curious as to whether people of Iranian extraction are considered white? They are Indo Europeans and Farsi is distantly related to the European languages.
Why not? Nothing human is alien to me. We are all stuck together, whirling around on a rock in a vast, indifferent universe. Lao-Tze, Muhammad, Sakyamuni, Jesus, Avicenna, Li Po, Homer, Wole Soyinka, and all the rest of the thinkers, philosophers, scientists, musicians, and writers who have inhabited this planet are all our borthers and teachers.
Mind, I agree with your point (and have done from the start) that the paleness of one’s skin does not give one much of a basis for brotherhood.
gobear said:
It does if you’re too insecure to deal with people on a rational basis, I guess…
I myself feel a great and profound connection with pale-people-who-sunburn-easily, based on our common heritage of getting sunburned. But those pale-people-who-can-tan are lazy, shiftless liars. And those albinos may be pale and sunburn but they’re all sneaky bastards controlling the media to get rid of everyone but them. And those pale-people-who-sunburn-easily who actually mix their blood with pale-people-who-can-tan, well, they’re just skin-traitors and lower than scum.
I’m going to form a nation where we pale-people-who-sunburn-easily can associate only with each other and can rejoice in our common heritage of sunburns and pale skin. We can then celebrate the accomplishments of pale-people-who-sunburn-easily – we are clearly much more talented than anyone else! Of course, we’ll have to kill all those albinos who plot against our noble nation, and we’ll kick out any skin-traitor who actually falls in love with a pale-person-who-can-tan, but that’s a small price to pay to preserve the glorious heritage of pale-people-who-sunburn-easily. I mean, if we don’t do this, maybe the skin colors will mix so much no one will ever get sunburned, and then our shared heritage and special talents will be gone forever! :
:
HEY! We tanners burn too!