161–170 of 209 posts
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That's like saying Facebook is good because everybody uses it.
Or Cocaine. If you try it a few times, you won't ever want to stop using.
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Something this author gets that most people (of all political stripes) don’t: whether a culture is “better” than another is not even a well-formed question. We must ask “better at what?” We must define some criteria to measure, and speak in those terms, not in ill-defined terms like “just better”. The author speaks mostly in terms of specific consequences of different value systems. This is not the same thing as decl…
It's pretty easy to objectively measure which cultures are better. In general we can just look at long-term trends in voluntary migration rates by country / state / region (or whatever geographic area aligns with a particular culture). Sure there will be some noise in the data based on natural disasters and legal restrictions but those revealed preferences give a good first approximation.
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It really depends. I have noticed this same trend recently, whereby things are accepted in other cultures because judging it would be "cultural imperialism". It even got into some previously non-controversial (in liberal circles) topics, like female genital mutilation. Google for "FGM cultural imperialism" for a lot on this.
Any discussion of morality is moot in a society where genital mutilation (of any gender) is tolerated.
The central thesis (thar as a toxic value) seems plausible, but his examples are all crazy, and his deduction about economic prosperity is questionable at best. Look at the UK as an example of somewhere with extreme classism and heredity of employment for hundreds of years, the bit in between the "honourable knights" and the industrial revolution (which happened in the midst of astonishing inequality of wealth and op…
Sure, women were treated unequally in Western societies, but even in the 18th century, girls of the U.S. were educated in the same local schools. Contrast that with some societies where women can't even drive... Which economy's future would you bet on?
This isn't a good metric. Countries with slavery, for example, can easily have a stronger economy than free ones. The amount of material goods a society produces is at best tangential to notions of morality or justice.
PLO first recognized Israel in 1988: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/12/08/world/arafat-says-plo-acce... Then again in 1993 during the Oslo Accords: http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/MFADocuments/Yearbook9/P... The Palestinian Authority now in control of parts of the West Bank has also done it on several occasions and even Hamas has de facto recognized Israel: https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20141011-forget-its-charte...
Meanwhile, Israel has not once recognized the right of Palestine to exist.
Why discuss this detail of his essay? Because details are important and if you are ignorant about them, like this author is, you reach the wrong conclusions. The ignorance forms preconceptions that are not true in the slightest. In this conflict, we have one side who is occupying the other and refusing to let go of territory it has conquered. Resisting that is justified and obviously based on nationalism, not the Thar concept the author writes about.
You can't just claim that all those Middle Easterners are driven by Thar, and we Westerners are always the rational ones. It's not so easy.
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> Rape and genocide and embezzlement also exist for a reason, and make sense to people who think a certain way. > Something this author believes that most people (in our coastal bubbles) don't: that some cultures are better than others. I think you can ask people in coastal bubbles about the rape and genocide cultures of various wars and embezzlement subcultures of various corporations. My money is on them saying tho…
Actually i would argue the opposite. Not to the extent of genocide but the lid has really blown on Hollywood's sexual harassment problem (read: rape culture). Let's not forget Uber's contribution there and of course the whole gamer gate scandal which is still fresh in the minds of the people involved in the community. Racism, classism, and authoritarianism's roaring 2017 comeback. Then there's Madoff, Exon (classic)…
What about that? The feminist-frequency videos where reverse dog-whistles; insults directed at the gamer community, but couched in misrepresentations and pseudo-intellectual terminology to dress it up as honest critique. Then the trolling and cyber harassment that was received from some demographics were used to tar any critic with the same "GG-supporter" brush.
Not at all similar to physical harassment and rape by powerful celebrities.
I feel most of these 'cultural prognosis' are generally just old racial prejudices being justified to fit whatever one sees. You can see how the author extricates Japan from his 'analysis', but not so for other Asian nations; in fact much of this can be said to be true of China and India (amongst others), but many here and elsewhere will somehow extricate China, but not India for obvious fiscal reasons. This trend is…
> I feel most of these 'cultural prognosis' are generally just old racial prejudices being justified to fit whatever one sees. I think there's an element of truth to your statement. One key sentence in the essay that lends itself to your conclusion is this one: " A thar-dominated society will never achieve equality, regardless how prosperous it becomes, because prosperity for the masses is a direct affront to the sta…
In other words, a "thar-dominated" society won't achieve equality, because the west typically isn't one anymore.
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If you read the history of Columbus meeting the Arawaks on Hispaniola in his own words and the subsequent annihilation via genocide of the natives, it's hard to accept that the culture of Columbus is better.
Isn't survival, at a minimum, an instrumental value that has to support the objective values of a culture?
(And yes, I am aware of how fuzzy the term "morally" is here...)
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Sure, women were treated unequally in Western societies, but even in the 18th century, girls of the U.S. were educated in the same local schools. Contrast that with some societies where women can't even drive... Which economy's future would you bet on?
>Which economy's future would you bet on? This isn't a good metric. Countries with slavery, for example, can easily have a stronger economy than free ones. The amount of material goods a society produces is at best tangential to notions of morality or justice.
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It's pretty easy to objectively measure which cultures are better. In general we can just look at long-term trends in voluntary migration rates by country / state / region (or whatever geographic area aligns with a particular culture). Sure there will be some noise in the data based on natural disasters and legal restrictions but those revealed preferences give a good first approximation.
Hmm, seems North Korea comes out on top..