Basically, this whole conversation came with an idea popping into my head. Leftists have to hear a lot about how they are the antithesis of "Western Civilization". However, we're just as valid as westerners as a lib or a CHUD. Why treat me like a foreigner in my own home country? Why do I even carry myself as a foreigner in my own country? That's because I don't think I hate western civilization.
I am simply against political forces that unjustly make others suffer for the benefit of a decadent, parasitical elite: whether it be rich people or a "desirable" ethnic/gender/etc in-group. This is neither unique to the west nor a core pillar of western civilization. However, I am accused of trying to "destroy western civilization" each time I say we should be nicer to black people or we should be more skeptical of oil companies. I don't think any of us get irrationally angry when we see the statue of David, or Ionic pillars. Plato's Republic doesn't have any passages on the importance of destroying the environment for the benefit of the wealthy, nor does it have any passage of relentlessly bullying people who have a different skin color or anyone who fucks in a way that makes the Christian God that no one is aware of yet when Plato's Republic was written upset.
However, this shows how successful the capitalists infestation of our cultural zeitgeist is: where if you criticize these oligarchs, people think you are criticizing the way of life of western civilization.
"Western Civilization" is just some nonsense that racists made up. It's not a real thing. By "Western Civilization" fascists imply that they are unique and special snowflakes and all the good things in the world come from white men dominating, controlling, and exploiting everyone else. It's nonsense. It's bullshit. It's a false narrative. We're not trying to destroy "Western Civilization" because that's not a real thing that exists. By even acknowledging it and treating the charge seriously you're ceding the field to the Fascists and trying to engage them on their own bogus terms.
What do Plato's Republic and David have to do with each other? They're a thousand years apart, the product of people who spoke different languages, practiced different religions, and had wildly different norms and morals. Plus Plato was a bastard who advocated for slavery and all kinds of other terrible things. His Republic is interesting mostly as a historical curiosity in the history of theories of government.
Western Medicine? Pretty much exists entirely because of Arab Muslims who preserved and translated classical texts, which were then carried to Italy by Jews fleeing the Spanish Reconquista. Same with a lot of Latin and Greek writings. Same with science, optics, all rely heavily on Arab Muslims and not a few Jews. The famous Avicenna, whose works on medicine were so foundational to "Western" medical practices, is actually ibn Sina, a Persia/Iranian. Is Iran to be considered part of "Western Civilization"?
America's alleged Democracy is at best partially based on European theories of government - It draws strongly from the Haudenosaunee Great Law of Peace, which no one would seriously call "Western Civilization".
Christianity is key to "Western Civilization?" Which Christiantity? Europe alone has several of them - The Catholics, the various Protestant sects. America has added many more, including the flagrantly heretical Evangelicals whose beliefs are an almost complete refutation of conventional Christian doctrine, and the Mormons who are only Christians in a vague technical sense.
I could go on and on. It's all bullshit. They made up a rhetorical device, an imaginary Golden Age that they can claim to be defending or trying to restore, but it's just fascist claptrap. It was never real.
there is no "west" as such. the only things unifying the west (constructed in opposition to the east) are colonialism, imperialism, and racism. agreeing that there's actually some kind of unified tradition of art, philosophy, or history called The West is conceding the fascists' point.
the fixation on Rome (and transitively, Greece) is actually a great example. here was an empire which conquered practically the whole Mediterranean, including North Africa and Central Asia, and contributed at least as much to the societies which arose there as to Europe's. During the middle ages, the scholars most dedicated to translating and preserving ancient Greek texts were Muslim. But because the empires of the industrial revolution found a need for establishing themselves in the earliest known history, they claimed a kinship with one of the great empires which came before.
IDK. Read Ed Said.
Right. In the so-called "West" the music theory is Greek, the numerals are Arabic, the alphabet is Latin, and nearly every modern invention is the product of some degree of intercontinental collaboration. The fixation on the alleged supremacy of various national/race identities is a cope for reactionaries lacking class consciousness.
thanksgiving's coming up hexbears, you know what to do
We're against the fake boundary that is called "the west". What they call "western civilization" seems to be founded upon the neo-platonist and aristotlean idealism that was integrated into catholicism after Constantine co-opted christianity. It's quite politically expedient to ingrain idealism into the superstructure as you never have to deliver materially and it's also quite politically expedient to recuperate the effective belligerence of monotheism into your imperialist project. They try to say all progress comes from this system, but when understood through a materialist lens it has been severely hindered by the intangibility of idealism. Da Vinci did not produce so much because he had found the right ideas in the western canon, he produced so much because he had the free time and material abundance afforded by the accident of birth in the material abundance available in the italian republics. Thousands of people who could be Da Vinci's have died uneducated, forced to toil in the fields of grain or war.
I'm not against any particular "civilization," whatever that term even means, and I doubt anyone else here is either. I'm against imperialism and I think we need to move beyond capitalism. For a variety of historical reasons, the western European nation-states, and countries in their geopolitical-cultural orbit like the United States, happened to develop industrial capitalism before anyone else. Because of that, they currently head the imperialist system that governs the world. Western "civilization" might be interrelated with this imperialist system, but they're not exactly the same thing. It should be noted that Japan and South Korea are two non-western states that are also members of the "western" order, which is why "the west" is an imprecise term for what we're really talking about. It should also be noted that Marxism is a product of western civilization.
It should also be noted that Marxism is a product of western civilization.
I mean it's at least implied by the notion of "Western Civilization" that Marxism is a Jewish assault on all that is good and holy. They literally kvetch about "Judeo-Bolshevism". That's why you can't take "Western Civilization" as a serious concept. If you engage with it at all you're accepting the premises of their delusional fabricated world view.
I don't know whether I fully agree or disagree with what you're saying, though I do think that the term "Western civilization" is a slippery and problematic one, and it's hard to even define a "civilization" as a distinct entity in the first place. But it's unquestionably true that Karl Marx was working from a body of thought and study that emerged out of Europe and the intellectual traditions that were particular to it. Marxism came from the West.
My answer is different to what others write and that is to listen to David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything, or read the first half of the book.
However there are plenty of reasons to be critical of the west, though I understand that you like some parts of western civilization, most likely the focus on stuff like "rights" and "freedom". For me those things turned out to be more and more propaganda in their practice. The freedom and rights were often fought for and achieved by marginalized, by socialists, by anarchists etc. Furthermore I came to believe that the enlightenment and the "rationality" held in so high regard are effective tools for imperialism and domination of others, they were not used to free others and ourselves.
Someone already suggested the dawn of everything, but there is also a very nice and relatively short essay by Graber " There never was a west " which is a great read and discusses the idea of the "western civilization".
there is no fucking "western civilization". it all exists on a continuum and this distinction is as useless as the borders of countries.
Yeah, I'm not against Western civilization. I've lived in the west my whole life and I understand the world through western values and frameworks, it isn't really coherent for me to be against it.
Reactionaries who say that Marxism is against Western civilization are just revealing their ignorance and very selective understanding of what Western civilization is.
I think Zizek said he stresses the importance of Western civilization because it provides the tools for it's own critique
how the fuck Marx having been born and raised in Germany and then living in England isn't western
I'm pretty sure that we're all very much against the mythology of "Western civilization" and Western exceptionalism. The inevitable conclusion to those ideas is Fascism.
Plato is actually lame and all of Western philosophy building on it is also lame. A lot of the assumptions about human nature being greedy assholes comes from flawed Greek ideals that later fit with Christianity.
Plato at least was pretty funny and could spin a yarn. Aristotle was wrong but far worse, boring
