tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post1497573166729634774..comments2024-03-29T02:03:49.151-04:00Comments on History Unfolding: Changing Culture and its ConsequencesDavid Kaiserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05020082243968071584noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-92214318588727814482021-03-06T18:45:22.694-05:002021-03-06T18:45:22.694-05:00Professor
I have to say that you have deeply misun...Professor<br />I have to say that you have deeply misunderstood the Old European order in this passage below, certainly for Western Europe:<br /><br />"Within honor culture, people--especially, but not exclusively men--customarily respond violently to insults, and demonstrate their worth through a willingness to engage in mortal combat. Such insults can be verbal, but they can also consist merely in failing to receive some payment, preferment or show of respect which one feels to be his due. They might also include an unwanted advance towards a wife, daughter, or sister. I explored in Politics and War how European politics from 1559 through 1659 were dominated by the aristocracy and its values, which monarchs in various states successively tried and failed to bring under control. The great aristocrats routinely resorted to violence to press claims of all kinds, and walked around with armed retainers to emphasize this point. They recognized no legal higher authority, and foreign monarchs often dealt with them as allies and equals."<br /><br />It is hard to unpack all the ways you are misled here. <br />While there is an element of truth, it misses the connections throughout the societies back then. <br />The Great Chain of Being has been one way of putting it. That idea has been dropped entirely from accounts such as yours.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-39350360530345741722021-03-03T17:56:02.229-05:002021-03-03T17:56:02.229-05:00Professor
Here are a few thoughts.
What was once ...Professor<br />Here are a few thoughts.<br /><br />What was once thought of, mostly by white Westerners, as enlightenment liberalism, <br /><br />whether it involved white supremacy 19th C science and pseudo science, or later multiculturalist equalitarian white liberalism where racial differences were seen as nurture not nature, <br /><br />was all that had held the globalist LIEO understanding together from a moral perspective.<br /><br />With the rise of racial and ethnic self determination, forces also heavily sponsored, almost uniquely sponsored by the white Wilsonian and Fabian West, Western white supremacy, and then Western enlightenment liberalism were left without foundations for understanding or cooperation between races and civilizations, leaving only animosities and false histories Western liberalism itself sponsored, such as that the West was responsible for the backwardness of the Rest, a view it still acknowledges to be true and for which it accepts misplaced responsibility.<br /><br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-51946442167102539122021-03-02T10:44:59.033-05:002021-03-02T10:44:59.033-05:00Excellent, of course. History is more cyclical tha...Excellent, of course. History is more cyclical than most people want to believe, but history and human nature go hand-in-hand due to the complexity of human nature. It is easy to see the honor culture as primitive and barbarous, but just remember that <br /><br />(1) the human family has much the same structure as a wolf pack (which explains why we have pet dogs)<br /><br />(2) if we do not have family we find surrogates that offer and demand much the same (gangs, military platoons, business firms) <br /><br />(3) the cycle is one of lapse of habits that go in and out of fashion as parts of human society get neglected, which explains how the honor culture has its resurgence.<br /><br />Honor culture and dignity culture have very different responses to grievances from economic hardship to outright repression. Not part of an honor culture, I cannot understand why people want their own arsenals and speak so often of the Second Amendment when neglecting the others (like the First). Then again, maybe Donald Trump has found that it never fully disappeared and has found ways in which to revive it, only to show its inadequacy. It is easy to refute intellectually, but to do that one needs to cultivate, use, and respect the rational processes. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06207437083268914414noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-19702551540306701952021-02-28T18:26:50.393-05:002021-02-28T18:26:50.393-05:00The link between honor culture and victim culture ...The link between honor culture and victim culture is alarming. Must we return to a time when men like Hamilton and Burr will duel to the death, even though at the top of the political heap in the democracy of their time. A problem when the left will now define speech it doesn't like as "violence," justifying actual violence in return.erik f storliehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674430310730993153noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-80513334031726816922021-02-28T15:54:56.933-05:002021-02-28T15:54:56.933-05:00Professor
Great highly informative essay and refer...Professor<br />Great highly informative essay and references.<br />I have been reading Sowell, Intellectuals and Race, Chapter 6 Liberalism and Multiculturalism, which also helps, especially re the transformation of liberalism to put into perspective the discussion here re Changing Culture and its Consequences. His Ch 4 Internal Responses To Disparities is also to be recommended in this discussion.<br />All the bestBozonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18078858723231122013noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-60720683930195917212021-02-28T14:18:45.075-05:002021-02-28T14:18:45.075-05:00cont.
Culture creates unwritten rules in any coun...cont.<br /><br />Culture creates unwritten rules in any country. When in Rome do as the Romans do... or Texas or NYC or Iowa. Once the USSR collapsed conflicts erupted on borders and mafias commandeered the markets. If the national guard is permanently tationed in the capitol, protected with barbed wire due to one unruly protest mob, basically unarmed middle class, relatively harmless then this shows great moral weakness, feelings of guilt by those in power, due to general corruption( lobbyism, revolving door politics, lack of contact with common man). A serious revolt would certainly bring a panic of martial law, dictatorship and a true insurgency and separatism. Like a marriage on its last legs, when people drift apart due to lack of communications , basic respect of mutual values then it takes little to dissolve it. Our culture is from Western Europe and America is the edge of it, like Russia. Things move faster on the edge as culture, rules are more fluid. Magna Carta nearly 1000 years, constitution 200 and already " just a ##### piece of paper". Going back to more primitive basic great power picture with more local moral concepts and legal structures decentralized from Washington, Brussels is not the end of civilization anymore than not finding a coke and google in Shenzhen while on a business trip is. We have gotten too used to uniformity while differences and local strengths help give people and groups identity, sense of deeper meaning as not just a cog in a machine.Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-32816822732052173802021-02-28T14:18:05.966-05:002021-02-28T14:18:05.966-05:00The three seem to be a progression of sorts. I thi...The three seem to be a progression of sorts. I think people adjust naturally to their environment. Clearly a primitive and brutal life activates different instincts than a more comfortable one. And a very comfortable one is then decadent, returning full circle. Let us use a sports or martial arts perspdctive or yoga. Self control and anger are in dian tien or navel center. Anger is seen as bad, insane even. In yoga, Christian concepts perhaps one mihght emphasize bhakti( devotion) or love, heart centredness. Old testament was perhaps eye for eye pre moses as local tribes each had own Gods and police were nonexistent, rathr elders, males of adult seniority, landholders, made up authority. Law was practical, religious tradition, moral codes. In the post modern era where religion and morality, fundamental belief has been reduced to individual speculation, there is little to bind the whole society together. People form then groups who find common ground fluidly, based on mutual felings of respect, which was previously completely lost for their elder' s worldview(60s) and groups confront each other on that basis. As their trust is minimal, being mutually unintelligible morally, they treat the other groups members as animals, not worthy of respect. The loss of a basic religious concept, therefore means a loss of humanity. The post religious concept was rationalism, nationalism, the state. We have gone beyond that as you have often noted. Obviously the 60s loss of family centred society also meant a general rise of atheism casually. Education brings skepticism. Children have little respect as schools contradict parental guidance, ideals and TV, now internet information allow children to know vastly more than parents on every subject immediately. Essentially society can only become so complex before decadence sets in. Anonymity, alienation, cynicism alllead to decay. The 80 year cycle is one but in this larger case we must note the larger cycle of rise and fall of civilizations. Rome, like Plymouth was a village. From simple devout wilderness settlers to global or regional power with lost internal identity has a clear road map, repeated in many cultures. Perhaps America as a concept is in its declining phase. Perhaps like Russia, a reorganization without half its land and troops abroad will save its core. A rationalistic America and a conservative religious one could emerge. If the rationalist one is based solely on power abroad, but uses printed debt to secure it and a rich oligarchy then it cannot last. The middle class, working class with stable incomes and family lives is the basis of stable democratic governments. As in Rome when farmers were conscripted, lost their land, lived in slums after returning from war or tilled the soil as servants we now see less independence of the individual as debt encroaches, military and security state grows along with general corruption. So honor code returns as dignity code or rule of law declines( police take money from drivers, swat teams raid houses, facebook bans users of one side without redress, others do as they please, courts treat wealthy better). Generally people must live and work together to feel empathy regardless of class, color, religion. As people gradually sort themselves out over decades in the states perhaps the conditions for permanent separation occur if not war. Energyflowhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14476915209268786507noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-16153346075086542582021-02-28T11:29:23.271-05:002021-02-28T11:29:23.271-05:00Interesting. But I would add that, while this des...Interesting. But I would add that, while this describes our perspective in the US, it doesn’t necessarily apply to other parts of the world. For example, while Ralph Waldo Emerson was setting the table for rationalism, that still plays a major part in our society, Dostoevsky was advocating the opposite: what makes us truly human is our irrationality. Or, as I recall, he said that if someone demands that you agree that 2+2 equals 4, we will demand that 2+2=5. That’s what—he suggested— makes us truly human. This might account for why we have so much trouble dealing with Russia, even today. <br />Likewise, I doubt the categories you discuss apply to even the most prosperous countries in Asia, where Confucian culture still plays a strong role. When reading the newspapers in Singapore a couple of decades ago, they repeatedly commented that the USA’s shortcoming was an excess of individualism, whereas “Asian values” promote a balance between respecting the rights of the individual, the family, and the community. <br />This is not to disagree with your comments, but it’s also important to consider that their relevance may depend on whether we’re only discussing behavior and attitudes predominantly in the white population of the USA and Western Europe, or something larger than that.Shelterdoghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09973906960864702661noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8746692.post-56170773153241890322021-02-28T10:58:39.718-05:002021-02-28T10:58:39.718-05:00This post is excellent. I look forward to future ...This post is excellent. I look forward to future posts regarding this issue. In part, it explains the cultural and societal phenomena of post-Renaissance America.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11629116622092214120noreply@blogger.com