02-05-2019, 12:21 PM
(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.
I think most scholars and historians consider the three monotheistic religions as "western" insofar as they are the source of western religion. Judaism is the source religion of the three. Western religion is as much western as western science, politics and philosophy, and they all are inter-related.
But what modern Israel looks like or what any western or any country looks like is irrelevant to the question. We don't live in The West anymore; no-one does. Ethnically, politically, intellectually, religiously, commercially, or any other way, the world is one global civilization now, and has been since the climax of European imperialism in the 1890s, the anti-colonial wars against it, the advent of modern tech, and the world wars. The civilization we live in now has the whole world as its heritage and source.