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On December 12 2017 00:13 Kickboxer wrote:
A formally secular culture is always superior to a formally religious one (I'm not even an atheist, it's just that separation of church and state is core to personal freedom and things like not having your genitals mutilated as a toddler).
A formally capitalist culture is, as history would suggest, always superior to a formally communist culture. Just ask anyone who actually lived under communism. Thought police and economic oppression aren't nice.
A culture with clear ideals and values is always superior to a relativist or postmodernist culture, because having ideals and values gives you direction in life and cancels out existential dread.
I could list many more examples. These things aren't relative, because it's not where you'd want to exist and you know it. The rest is semantics and virtue signalling.
There's a very clear reason why nearly the entire planet tries to move either to USA or Canada, or to Europe, or to South Korea and Japan, and only completely insane people are moving to places like Pakistan or Chechnya.
Superior according to what fucking criteria, and defined by whom? Yours? Great. Mammadou N’Gabe from Nigeria disagrees, he thinks your culture is decadent and full of shit, and that the right criteria for judging cultures are how close they stick to what he has learnt is essential.
Don’t you understand that you think, like everyone else, in a cultural frame that define your “obvious” criterias?
There are societies in which your concept of freedom means nothing and for whom we all are complete degenerates. Are they wrong, and are you right? And why?
And everyone moves to the western world because of its economic prosperity. If you want to make that your criteria for cultural superiority, feel free.
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On December 11 2017 18:19 Grumbels wrote:
@xDaunt, for the record, I am a cultural relativist. You can not objectively rate cultures by metrics.
Thats true, You cant rate cultures (whatever that means) objectively. Still that doesnt stop me from promoting my own culture. Not because its best or better than any other. But because its mine.
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On December 12 2017 00:13 Kickboxer wrote:
Just ask anyone who actually lived under communism.
I can't do that, unfortunately. Since I am not using cultural relativism, as Kickboxer doesn't want me to, I can't consider the beliefs that exist in other cultures. Sorry.
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Well Biff you are clearly a proponent of social constructivism while I'm most certainly not. I am in fact an "essentialist" and believe human beings have innate longings, wishes and motivations arising from the specifics of the consciousness phenomenon, most obviously the desire to be free, self-determined and able to actualize their deepest personal potentials with as little constraint as possible.
As for "everyone prefers their own culture" this is completely false. Where do you get this idea? People from shit cultures are happy as hell to have escaped their particular hellhole. Talk to them and see for yourself. They like our way of life so much they are willing to die or be permanent second-rate citizens just so their kids can grow up in a place where they don't get shit on by religion or state oppression. Nobody who got out of Stalin's Russia was missing that place, and nobody who gets out of NK is missing it either. Muslim women aren't risking honour killings and acid attacks for leaving their house because they like their culture.
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The problem you have with your "examples" is that they're anecdotal at best.
You have a sample size of one where in history capitalism provided to be the best model and communism was performed by people that dealt in archaic, barbaric ways.
You look at states where religion dominated as a powerful influencer of power and how it transformed the state after abolishing that influence, without there being cases of harmonizing it.
You say 'clear ideals', but the West is literally the most grey in ideals when we push technology and consumerism on the backs of developing countries, enslaving their people.
There's a very clear reason why the countries are so wanted: they're stable. We don't experience famine, war, strategic intervening of other nations, drought or any other thing.
You're a thick, narrow minded idiot.
Edit also @Kickboxer: innate human longings are relative.
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And now we come to the shocking revelation that living under an oppressive dictatorship is shit. Though it is unclear if both Korean culture is shit, since North and South Korea very different places to live. Or if Russian culture is shit since, you know, Stalin.
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What is black culture (in the US context) even supposed to mean?
I guess its codespeak for "black people are criminals/gangsters".
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On December 12 2017 00:18 Biff The Understudy wrote:
Don’t you understand that you think, like everyone else, in a cultural frame that define your “obvious” criterias?
That is simply not true. I don't know how you can pretend social constructivism is anything more than a weak hypothesis. You're free to believe in it of vourse (at least here in the West, that is) but you should at least be able to understand many people think it's bullcrap just like gender fluidity and other postmodern piffle.
People are not sheep, we have the capacity to self-reflect and change our brain, and the degree to which we are influenced by society is relatively small in fact. Easy example: how come millions of thoroughly indoctrinated people still manage to leave their religion, even under threat of exclusion or violence?
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On December 12 2017 00:29 Uldridge wrote:
The problem you have with your "examples" is that they're anecdotal at best.
You have a sample size of one where in history capitalism provided to be the best model and communism was performed by people that dealt in archaic, barbaric ways.
You're a thick, narrow minded idiot.
Edit also @Kickboxer: innate human longings are relative.
Sentence 1 is so wrong I'm almost laughing. Communism has been tried 10+ times and each time resulted in a murderous, oppressive and economically collapsing shithole. That is because people are vastly different in their intellectual and productive capabilities, and trying to enforce equity is, by design, murderous.
Sentence 2 is super typical of the regressive left. Thanks for insulting me for no reason, you win the argument.
Sentence 3 I politely and wholeheartedly disagree with. Unless you're confused or immature, very few things in life are relative. If you are young, this is something you will likely understand in 20 years.
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Nonono, black culture is: bitches and ho's and pimps; saying: "whaddup dawg"; liking chicken and watermelons above everything else; being very expressive with one's emotions, especially when seeing magic tricks + Show Spoiler +; being the best at rapping, having rhythm and physical sports and let's not forget, they love big booty.
On December 12 2017 00:38 Kickboxer wrote:
Sentence 1 is so wrong I'm almost laughing. Communism has been tried 10+ times and each time resulted in a murderous, oppressive and economically collapsing shithole. That is because people are vastly different in their intellectual and productive capabilities, and trying to enforce equity is, by design, murderous.
Sentence 2 is super typical of the regressive left. Thanks for insulting me for no reason, you win the argument.
Sentence 3 I politely and wholeheartedly disagree with. Unless you're confused or immature, very few things in life are relative. If you are young, this is something you will likely understand in 20 years.
Wow, it's tried 10+ times with the exact same principles like the other times it was tried? I wonder why it turned out the same way every single time. The fact are this: it's always been dictators, you can't provide your entire country (if it's just you practising communism) with everything the country needs and I firmly believe the core principles were executed wrongly. But hey, keep saying you "know" why communism fails guy.
I didn't want to repress your speech. I called you a thick, narrow minded idiot because you're unable to see how nuanced literally everything is.
And how dare you tell me that what humans want isn't relative. If this wasn't the case we'd have one blanket culture, we'd have every nation adhering to the same core principles without internal conflict, we'd have no different philosophies, we'd have everyone wanting the same things. This is not the case, nor in very poor countries, nor in very rich countries. People want to do with their lives what they want to do with their lives. There's a basic few things not being relative and those are: I need food and water to survive, and I am, to a certain extent, dictated by my physiology. Everything around that is constructed by how humans have managed to work around that and each other.
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On December 12 2017 00:33 Velr wrote:
What is black culture (in the US context) even supposed to mean?
I guess its codespeak for "black people are criminals/gangsters".
Congratulation, you have cracked the code that was evident in the 1980s and 1990s. Notice how black culture is a negative, western culture(white) is a positive and considered the default for the US and other “good” nations. And then note that the same people making this argument strongly object to the idea of whiteness and white culture. But they also want to have an “honest dialog” about culture. This is because US culture considers white to be the default and everything else is Other Than The Default. It also allows them to champion what they want, while ignoring the negatives of white American culture: AKA Roy Moore and systematic racism.
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That being said USSR was secular, and we know that secular countries are "always superior" to formally religious ones, so we can state with certainty that USSR > Vatican.
We also can state that nazi Germany > today's Europe, as they had a clear set of values and we are mired in this postmodern nightmare, which is always going to be inferior.
I mean I still like my initial criticism better cause I think it's hilarious that you ask us to consider the opinion of people from other cultures who have lived under communist dictatorships in the middle of your argument against cultural relativism, but it's not like there's only one small problem with your position so... carry on I guess.
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On December 12 2017 00:33 Velr wrote:
What is black culture (in the US context) even supposed to mean?
I guess its codespeak for "black people are criminals/gangsters".
I think that's generally what people mean. Black churches don't actually exist as key components of the black community for most people who use words like "black culture" (or only exist as Christian and thus under the auspices of "Western Culture").
I just hope the American Right fight off Roy Moore's attacks on Western Culture with as much fervor as generic internet feminist #1465.
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The USSR was not secular. Its religion was Marxist doctrine, and its god was the cult of personality. To me, the definition of "religion" is any dogma you have to accept at face value just because society tells you to. I know it's not a widely accepted definition, but for the sake of convenience I hope you can understand what I mean.
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Yes, that would be the exact opposite of a religion. That only works in the Calvin Ball rules for discussing secularism.
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On December 12 2017 00:48 Kickboxer wrote:
The USSR was not secular. Its religion was Marxist doctrine, and its god was the cult of personality. To me, the definition of "religion" is any dogma you have to accept at face value just because society tells you to. I know it's not a widely accepted definition, but for the sake of convenience I hope you can understand what I mean.
Okay, let's create a distinction between an atheist state and a secular state, it's probably fair to do that. Let's put a secular dictatorship instead of USSR here. Bashar in Syria I guess? Better than Vatican.
Don't think I didn't notice you not answering the second or third part by the way.
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And yes, unless you were a Jew or Roma, I would theoretically consider Nazi Germany a better place to live in than a correspondingly totalitarian postmodern society. Humans need values in order to survive, since the absence of values equals nihilism which strikes me as the worst mode of being you can even speculate. Consequently even the most cancerous and hellish value structure beats no value structure.
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What's good about Vatican? Are you a fan of the celibate or open structural sexism perhaps? Vatican is the world capital of sexually repressed pedos.
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On December 12 2017 00:54 Kickboxer wrote:
And yes, unless you were a Jew or Roma, I would theoretically consider Nazi Germany a better place to live in than a correspondingly totalitarian postmodern society. Humans need values in order to survive, since the absence of values equals nihilism which strikes me as the worst mode of being you can even speculate. Consequently even the most cancerous and hellish value structure beats no value structure.
Woooow, what the hell is that? "Correspondingly totalitarian"? You said "always", my dear friend.
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On December 12 2017 00:55 Kickboxer wrote:
What's good about Vatican? Are you a fan of the celibate or open structural sexism perhaps? Vatican is the world capital of sexually repressed pedos.
Not a fan of Vatican, no. Would certainly much rather live there than in Syria though.
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EPT
