(09-18-2020, 10:47 AM)sbarrera Wrote: That was also the turning point when the West took over from China as the exemplar of Civilization. So what were the Chinese before the West was W.E.I.R.D.?
Some terms that come to mind are Cultured, Disciplined, Opulent, Traditionalist - not sure where the acronym is there.
See also "Ossified", also a fit description of the Byzantine Empire, which was somewhat Western. With opulence for elites comes a tendency for ossification of society and a direction of its people to exist solely for the gain, indulgence, and power of those elites, all of which ultimately lead to cultural and technological staleness, gross injustice, and military debacles. Entrench the ideology of neoliberalism with the vulgarity and cruelty of Donald Trump as the norm in America, and America will ossify fast.
The Western takeover of the leading role in defining the world due to guns, horses, and commerce. Motor vehicles have since supplanted horses but any society can learn the tricks of the West at its peak of power. China did successfully rid itself of the worst aspect of Western commerce -- opiates. It is basically an 'or-else" proposition in contemporary China, which has a long list of crimes including drug dealing, human trafficking, and various forms of economic crime. "Enrob" fraudsters and pump-and-dump scammers can consider themselves fortunate that they did not operate in China. (Except for genocide and human trafficking, the latter which I consider even more objectionable than murder, I oppose capital punishment).
But don't worry about the continuing predominance of the West as overlords of the 'backward' nations as they used to be called. On the average, all that would make me prefer to be an American than a South Korean is the aggressive, hostile thug regime to the north, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which is for all practical purposes an absolute monarchy, ill serves any part of the Korean people except for the entrenched leadership, and is about as democratic as the Third Reich was. (At this point I can see the perfect defense for South Korea based upon its current prosperity, but I don't want to tell that. It might be disgusting).
It is telling that Chinese-Americans, Filipino-Americans, Indian-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and Korean-Americans do statistically better than any white ethnic group in America except Jews. so Western culture isn't everything. (One need not be a reactionary pig to recognize the worthlessness of most of American mass culture, especially pop music in our time). To be sure those hyphenated-Americans typically pick and choose between what they like about the West and like about their old ways and can reject many 'American' ways. Were I married to a woman of such origin and had Eurasian kids I would encourage such a pattern in them. Then again, just because Goethe and Bach are part of the Western heritage does not mean that they are part of the heritage of most people in the West... even in Germany or among Americans of German heritage.
Aside: I am about half-German in ancestry, and if I have much use for Goethe and Bach, there is one former part of the German heritage that I want nothing to do with. That should be obvious). As that goes, two of the best markets for Western classical music are Japan and South Korea. Reputedly (I am guessing on the transliteration) the Japanese treat "Bakku", "Handoru", "Haidan", "Motsurato", "Beitoban", and I have no idea how "Schubert" and "Brahms" would be pronounced, as theirs. They are mine, too, but in case you wonder whether German-American kids get that with their mothers' milk or formula... for most German-Americans it is country, rock, or even rap. That is how it is with my family, and I am not blaming such on the English components of their ancestry. Besides, l love Chopin, Puccini, Dvorak, Sibelius, Bartok, and Tchaikovsky, and I am not of Polish, Italian, Czech, Finnish, Hungarian, or Russian origin.
I'd like to see China adopt one aspect of Western life that Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have all adopted. With democracy and a disciplined culture will come humanism and much creativity. With democracy and anything-goes, one might end up with Donald Trump and a really ugly and empty culture. I hope for better.
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.