(06-09-2021, 03:55 AM)Captain Genet Wrote:(04-25-2021, 06:05 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: So it's basically Christian countries (which rules out Albania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Israel, and Lebanon) not in Africa (which rules out South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, and arguably Cabo Verde).
I think South Africa should be in the pale blue category. It's about as Western as Guatemala or Peru, with a small but significant white population whose culture strongly influences the majority. Otherwise, African Christianity is often a syncretic religion with no Western traits. I've seen a video about a guy in Congo/Zaire who pretends to be a pastor, but sells "magical juice curing all diseases". His followers are willing to pay a lot to buy it. I cannot imagine such a person flourishing in a Western nation.
Although heavily Christian, Ethiopia isn't particularly Western. It has been isolated and independent for too much of its history to be Western. Cabo Verde looks as if it has more in common with Brazil than with any other part of Africa. Namibia and Botswana are at least cultural satellites of South Africa.
Sorcery is heretical in all forms of mainstream Christianity.
Quote:Quote:I would definitely consider the Philippines western, if in the pale blue category (as I see most of Latin America). Guyana and Suriname must have too many Hindus and Muslims... whatever.
I agree. Haiti's culture also looks like Africa rather than America.
But one could say much the same about Brazil's Northeast. I recall the 2016 Olympic celebrations, and Afro-Brazilians seem to have kept more traces of African culture than have US and Caribbean blacks.
Quote:Quote:I would strike Hawaii and Greenland, and largely-Inuit areas of Alaska and Canada.
Pale blue.
OK.
Quote:Quote:Turkey has a huge role in western history.
It was Western until the fall of Constantinople. Ataturk re-introduced some Western thinking, but nowadays Japan is way more Western than Turkey.
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The Emperor Constantine can be considered the "founding father" of Western Civilization, for his decision marks the "marriage" between Greeko-Roman antiquity with its philosophical tradition which became Western rationalism and Christianity which is the source of ideas about human dignity resulting in Western individualism.
Puritanism and later Evangelicalism can be viewed as an attempt to restore Christianity to its Hebrew roots.
To be sure, Turkey had more of a share in Western history before it exterminated or expelled the once-large Greek and Armenian Christian populations. How Turkey evaded become a theater of war during WWII still amazes me. Too many obvious positions of defense for an Anglo-Turkish alliance?
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.