01-31-2019, 12:27 PM
(01-30-2019, 03:53 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: Objective naturalism in art and science both have roots in empirical interest in material reality, while non-Western cultures were more interested in intuitive cognition.
The ideal of athletic male beauty? I have yet to encounter a Chinese or Indian sculpture flexing biceps
Going back to politics, I think institutionalized competition is something typically Western. Other cultures had competition in form of war, obviously. But only Westerners could invent something like Jeffersonian democracy with its constant "cold war" between political parties. Parties should be banned because they divide society! Capitalism, the typically Western economic system, is also a form of institutionalized competition. But many Westerners oppose it. Those who do, like Marxists, seemingly believe that scientific planning is better, so they merely replace one Western idea with another.
Yes, those are good contrasts. There were some Indian philosophers who were materialists about the same time as our Greek materialists, but they do not dominate the Eastern culture.
The Western model of competitive politics is something else that has been imported now worldwide. As for parties being banned, it makes sense to us because we see how parties become vehicles for corruption and divide society. However, they formed right away in the USA and in Republican France because alliances are how things get voted on and passed in a majority-vote legislature.
It seems natural, just as on the Survivor show Richard Hatch invented the alliance system and used it to win the game, and ever since then contestants have formed alliances in order to survive on the show. Alliances can shift but they seem ever-present there.