In this link, Cecil posits that one reason Europeans dominated the rest of the world, and not vice versa, is that they are/were more obnoxious than anyone else. Is there any credibility to this theory? If so, can this attitude be seen in American culture today?
His thesis is more or less cribbed from Guns, Germs, and Steel (which was not entirely original in its own right). I think it’s a fair assessment, in some respects. Europe, being a geologically diverse and dissected region where major politcal powers and religions clashed on a more-or-less constant basis, was an ideal cradle of ruthlessly efficient militarism. I don’t think there’s any inherent obnoxiousness of the genetic variety. Culturally, the tendency to dehumanize and subsequently annihilate your enemy was simply a formula for success while the Old World still afforded a safe degree of insularity within borders.
Recent history in Africa and Southeast Asia gives me the impression white culture has hardly cornered the market on brutality. Give anyone a narrowly chauvinistic world view and the means project it, mass bloodshed ensues. Seems to be human nature.
Loopydude took the words from my mouth (and put them together far more effectively).
Obnoxiousness, ruthlessness, cruelty have nothing at all to do with race and everything to do with opportunity (which whites have had far more of).
It’s interesting that it usually takes something Really Big before humans recoil. Outside of the Balkans, a self-inflicted backwater of smouldering ethnic hatred, Europe has learned to eschew armed conflict, I think, largely because they can no longer wipe their neighbors out safely. The consequences of conflict simply preclude it. Fearing spillover, Europe (well, NATO) put a lid on the Balkan conflicts, and that was that. Even relatively petty conflicts (in terms of the weaponry the combattants are using on one another) cannot be tolerated by peaceful peers for that simple reason. Everyone likes to talk about humanitarian concerns, but the political will to act on those concerns arises from selfish interests when you’re talking about states.
Japan’s horrific WWII aggression took the very real threat of complete destruction to stop. I guess the myth of the Han empire didn’t quite work as well in China when the People’s army slaughtered tens of millions to bring them in line with that vision. You wouldn’t expect to see them going outside that region of influence, though, when you put the Bomb into the equation. The USSR saw to that the earliest, and India did pretty well stabilizing its own sphere of influence by having their own Bombs to launch East or West. Great little peacemakers, those WMDs. Maybe if some of the combattans in, say, sub-Saharna African had more than small arms and a few tanks to throw at each other, they might find the consequences of genocide a bit more sobering.
Well put,** Loopy**.
Satire is probably the most obnoxious literary tradition ever created.
What other culture produced an artform where it’s considered witty, clever and worth celebrating to openly riducule the beliefs of others?
And what other culture advanced so far so fast ?
What’s healthier for a society; going with the flow or mocking and criticising common “wisdom” and the pronouncements of the elite ?
One of America’s major problems these days is that too few people are willing to openly “riducule the beliefs of others”.
I hope you’re not saying satire alone is responsible for the ascension of Western Civilization, Der Trihs. I figured guns, germs and steel had something to do with it.
Look. Satrirical criticism is fine, even admirable. But mockery is much less so. Mockery is just juvenile-minded derision of something different without taking the time to evaluate why those differences exist and assumes that whatever is considered the norm is automatically superior. Taken to another extreme, it leads to things like racism, sexism, nationalism, classism, facism becoming accepted ways of thinking. Taken to the other extreme, it begins with the naive assertion that all cultures are inherently “equal.” The truth? Somewhere in the middle.
The psychic damage done when casual, everyday mockery, sarcasm and disdain for others enables one with a demonstrably false sense of superiority and excuses your own unnecessary aggression as acceptable are both far less cause for celebration. I think classic satire, “using words as weapons,” is very symptomatic of that.
… so, your claim is that there is no satire in any other civilization, predating it coming into contact with western civilization?
There is satire about as far back as we can find secular fiction and philosophy, mind you, going back to… hm. Aesop?
Thousand and One Nights is post-contact…
Well, I have to admit, I can’t think of any famous satirical works predating western contact, Ihara Saikaku’s poetry was somewhat of a satirical bent. Technically, it postdates Dutch contact with the japanese.
Pretty much every society, culture, civilization, or other grouping you care to name.
I came here to say just that. Satire aint no European perogative.
So, what do you call it if you take the time to evaluate why those differences exist, and dispense with the assumption that the norm is automatically superior, and then make with the derision?