02-05-2019, 08:59 AM
(02-05-2019, 07:50 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(02-02-2019, 06:15 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(02-01-2019, 06:36 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote:(01-31-2019, 12:13 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Now science and rationalism is part of our world culture.
Quote:The Western model of competitive politics is something else that has been imported now worldwide.
It only makes sense for everybody to import what has been proved to work. More reasonable non-Westerners adopted Western concepts of science and competitive politics, but maybe there are some Eastern ideas that could benefit the West.
Christian sexual morality is one, it was invented by a non-Western culture (ancient Israel) and promoted so heavily that most Westerners don't consider it foreign anymore. Now we are assimilating Buddhist philosophy of mind and mindfulness techniques. The same happens to art forms, many fashionable dancing styles have an African origin.
Yes. I agree. Although Israel and Judaism is usually considered "western" as it is the source of western religion.
Ancient Israel was not Western. It was a sister nation of Phoenicia, influenced by Egypt and Assyria. It also predates the West.
Modern Israel looks like Latin America, with a Western elite (Ashkenazim vs Hispanics) and large non-Western population (Oriental Jews and Arabs vs Native Americans and Blacks).
Western thought seems to have followed the development from Aristotle through Thomas Aquinas into Whiggism and Liberalism:
https://www.crisismagazine.com/1990/thom...-mendicant.
Somebody once called Trump the face of Western civilization, but no, this title belongs to Aquinas.
I imagine that Ashkenazi theology must have been influenced by Thomism, but the Judaism of Oriental Jews should have more Islamic influences.
The Ashkenazim are undeniably Western, having fully assimilated into German ways at one time on everything but religion. Roughly half-German or Swiss in origin, I consider them at the least cultural brethren. So they reject Jesus? Big deal as a cultural statement! The assimilation of Yiddish-speaking Jews into American life is largely the adoption of the English language (itself closely related to Yiddish) and acclimation to American political institutions. Cultural assimilation? It goes both ways. American theater and cinema are both heavily under the influence of the Ashkenazim. What happened to the much-vaunted Yiddish theater in such places as New York City? It started performing in English for non-Jewish audiences without much loss.
Politics? America proved itself a complete repudiation of the unpleasant practices of Imperial Russia. Litvak Jews did bring revolutionary ideas from a Russia under distress, but this is in contrast to German and central-European Jews who knew little of the sort.
It is more likely that Christian theologians have studied Jewish theology than vice-versa. Who would better know the Old Testament?
The relation of the Sephardim to the West is less obvious. The ones who took off for England or Holland maintained some Hispanic or Lusitanic tendencies, but could not avoid some cultural assimilation into English and Dutch culture.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.