There have been a flurry of blog posts triggered by the article in Chronicle of Higher Education on ‘Occidentalism’ (a clever play on Said’s ‘Orientalism‘) – we were tipped by MaroonBlog.
I’ll try and catalog some of them here and then wrap up with some of my own views (which are, unsurprisingly almost completely in agreement).
First off, the article itself:
However, the kind of violence currently directed at targets associated with the West, from the World Trade Center to a discothèque in Bali, is not just about the United States. Nor can it be reduced to global economics. Even those who have good reason to blame their poverty on harsh forms of U.S.-backed capitalism do not normally blow themselves up in public places to kill the maximum number of unarmed civilians. We do not hear of suicide bombers from the slums of Rio or Bangkok.
Something else is going on, which my co-author, Avishai Margalit, and I call Occidentalism (the title of our new book): a war against a particular idea of the West, which is neither new nor unique to Islamist extremism. The current jihadis see the West as something less than human, to be destroyed, as though it were a cancer. This idea has historical roots that long precede any form of “U.S. imperialism.”
It’s been blogged several places that I’ve found; here’s the full Technorati list.
This is a subject right at the beating center of my interests, given my early posts on Romanticism and Terrorism and The War on Bad Philosophy.
Ultimately, I think that we’ll win this war with philosophy, not with violence (but in the short and intermediate term, we’ll certainly need violent men and women to protect the philosophers while they philosophize).
Here’s the ‘money quote’ I pulled from Isiah Berlin’s ‘Roots of Romanticism’:
Suppose you went…and spoke with [long list of European Romatic intellectual figures, including Hugo, de Staël, Schlegel, Goethe, Coleridge, Byron] Suppose you had spoken to these persons. You would have found that their ideal of life was approximately of the following kind. The values to which they attached the highest importance were such values as integrity, sincerity, readiness to sacrifice one’s life to some inner light, dedication to an ideal for which it is worth sacrificing all that one is, for which it is worth both living and dying. You would have found that they were not primarily interested in knowledge, or in the advancement of science, not interested in political power, not interested in happiness, not interested, above all, in adjustment to life, in finding your place in society, in living at peace with your government, even loyalty to your king, or your republic. You would have found common sense, moderation, was very far from their thoughts. You would have found that they believed in the necessity of fighting for your beliefs to the last breath in your body, and you would have found that they believed in the value of martyrdom as such, no matter what the martyrdom was for. You would have found that they believed that minorities were more holy than majorities, that failure was nobler than success, which had something shoddy and vulgar about it. The very notion of idealism, not in its philosophical sense, but in the ordinary sense in which we use it, that is to say the state of mind of a man who is willing to sacrifice a great deal for principles or some conviction, who is not prepared to sell out, who is prepared to go to the stake for something which he believes, because he believes in it…this attitude was relatively new. What people admired was wholeheartedness, sincerity, purity of soul, the ability and readiness to dedicate yourself to your ideal, no matter what it was.
Map that against the Occidentalist article:
Calculation — the accounting of money, interests, scientific evidence, and so on — is regarded as soulless. Authenticity lies in poetry, intuition, and blind faith. The Occidentalist view of the West is of a bourgeois society, addicted to creature comforts, animal lusts, self-interest, and security. It is by definition a society of cowards, who prize life above death. As a Taliban fighter once put it during the war in Afghanistan, the Americans would never win, because they love Pepsi-Cola, whereas the holy warriors love death. This was also the language of Spanish fascists during the civil war, and of Nazi ideologues, and Japanese kamikaze pilots.
The hero is one who acts without calculating his interests. He jumps into action without regard for his own safety, ever ready to sacrifice himself for the cause. And the Occidentalist hero, whether he is a Nazi or an Islamist, is just as ready to destroy those who sully the purity of his race or creed. It is indeed his duty to do so. When the West is seen as the threat to authenticity, then it is the duty of all holy warriors to destroy anything to do with the “Zionist Crusaders,” whether it is a U.S. battleship, a British embassy, a Jewish cemetery, a chunk of lower Manhattan, or a disco in Bali. The symbolic value of these attacks is at least as important as the damage inflicted.
and against my own comments on terrorism and Bad Philosophy:
Finally, that the roots of terrorism, or rather the roots of the political decision to assume terrorism as a tactic, have to do as much with the desire to have an impact on people’s awareness as on their behavior. When I accuse the Palestinians of adopting tactics aimed at dramatic TV coverage as much as at damaging the Israelis, I’m pointing out that in terrorism the desire to psychologically defeat the opponent may outweigh the desire to defeat them in practical terms.
Now what is unique about terrorism is that it stands alone as a kind of “media war” in which the rhetoric and media images matter more than the actual balance of power “on the ground”. Terrorists almost never attack targets that would have substantive impact; they attack airport waiting areas, and not the radar or air-traffic control facilities that would shut down the airport. Even when they do attempt attacks against infrastructure (the Pi Glilot refinery), one wonders if it was for the effect on fuel supplies of the size of the explosion that mattered.
I think we’re on to something; a picture of a Western philosophical movement that ultimately connected to a Middle Eastern religious one. In fact the connections are explicit. NewsRack blog has a great piece on the connections between Qutb and Alexis Carrel:
It turns out that Qutb had a more direct connection to a variety of European mysticism and nascent totalitarianism in the writings and philosophy of one Alexis Carrel — Nobel Prize in Medicine winner for his work on circulatory surgery and transplants, arch-conservative Catholic, Vichy regime supporter, and, in the end, apologist for Nazi euthanasia and eugenics programs.
Rudolph Walther, a historian living in Frankfurt, recently wrote a piece for the German newsweekly Die Zeit that discusses the Qutb-Carrel connection, “The strange teachings of Doctor Carrel: how a French Catholic doctor became a spiritual forefather of the radical Islamists.”
This is gonna be fun.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the great discussions on Qutb at Demosophia, Ideofact, and Regnum Crucis.
An “arch-catholic” doctor who supported eugenics, that is definitely odd. The Catholic Church has traditionally been one of the most vocal opponents of eugenics that I can think of. I guess its that “selective beliefs” thing again.
I hate to say it, but I think the Islamists have a point about us. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not in the least defending terrorism or saying that we brought it on ourselves. The terrorists are the worst kind of barbarians, and they must be eliminated. Nonetheless, we live in a culture where parents devestate their children by splitting up because they care only about their own happiness and f**k their childrens’ well being. We live in a culture where women are allowed to kill their babies in the womb, and this is considered progress. We live in a culture whose credo is well summarized by the Checkers commercial that says, “You don’t do nothin’ you don’t wanna do/There’s nothin’ phony about you.” As if authenticity means ignoring duties, obligations, morals, and ethics if those little inconveniences mean you have to do “somethin’ you don’t wanna do.” I don’t think that’s any excuse for killing 3000+ of our people, but are they entirely wrong in calling us the “Great Satan?” And can you blame them entirely for not wanting to be polluted by our moral decay?
Hi.
I’d toss into the “worth reading” pile:
_The Culture Cult: designer tribalism and other essays_, by Roger Sandall, 2001, Westview Press, Boulder Colorado.
By the recently retired Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sydney, Australia.
Chapters are divided into three parts, the headings of which pretty well tell the story:
Part I: Romantic primitivism: the anthropological connection
Part II: Academic primitivism: the political implications
Part III: Civilization and its malcontents: the economic and cultural implications
I can well understand why he decided to publish this after retiring, not before.
Surprisingly perhaps, he’s not an unqualified fan of Isaiah Berlin at all.
“Freedom” has become a devalued word, now meaning roughly, “the ability to do things I agree with”. I just heard some Goldberg feller literally calling liberals traitorous for disagreeing with the President during time of war. By using the word “traitorous”, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and assume he thinks that anyone who vocally disagrees with the party line should be jailed. Any more of his brand of freedom, and I, for one, will be begging Russia to let me in. Or almost anywhere, except Africa. Or Columbia, or Sri Lanka…ok, not anywhere, but you get the idea.
“Rights” were enumerated in the Constitution, not to protect what was popular, that nobody would object to, but precisely to protect actions that were unpopular.
Moral decay is relative to your morals. One of the most exceptional things about Western culture, and American culture in particular is its harsh moral individualism. Other societies around the world, including those of Western Europe and going east, and Mexico and going south, are far more social than we are. What this means is that decision making moves away from the individual and towards a group center along a sort of spectrum. Our culture has decision making at the extreme end of the individual. East Asian cultures you might say are the most likely to decide by consensus. Thus responsibility is expanded to include many, and there exists responsibility between the individual and various groups; whereas our culture is primarily “it’s me and the universe” — we don’t really feel responsibility towards others (compared to others around the world). So is there moral decay in American culture? I doubt it. If you’re saying that, then you probably prefer a less individualist form of moralism.
It’s worth noting here that the concepts embedded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for instance are based upon and individualistic moral point of view, and thus is not shared by all human kind in the sense that it doesn’t cover the totality of existing moralities.
Thus a Palestinian suicide bomber might be committing murder, a simple violation of another human being’s human rights, but he or she may still feel moral because his or her allegiance is first and foremost to his or her group — that is where the responsibility lies. In this world view, it’s not “humans taking care of humans”, it’s “Israelis taking care of Israelis” and “Palestinians taking care of Palestinians”. The Palestinian suicide bomber expects the Israeli and the American to share the same world view.
Since the moral views of Americans and people living in the Middle East do not occupy the same part of that individual-group spectrum, they see us stepping beyond the boundaries dictated by their group moral point of view by meddling in the Middle East, supporting Israel, using our economic and military might, etc. thus making us fair game — i.e. because we did, now they’re allowed to step beyond boundaries too. 9/11 in this case was long overdue — we were only saved by two oceans.
So if we want to keep our power, that is our power to meddle in other peoples’ affairs, we can expect them to feel free to meddle in ours.
“May the best culture win.”
Fred –
I absolutely agree with you that our culture faces challenges from within; I spent most of my college and grad chool years studying the forms of alienation in Western society, and I certainly believe that we are moving slowly from any sense of moral obligation to others – those in the past who gave us our world, those we share it with, and those in the future we will leave it to.
But you have to remember that Qutb’s critiques of the US and West were based in no small part on his experiences in the Greeley Clollege of Education in the late 1940’s – before the current round of Janet Jackson breast-baring.
A.L.
A.L.
Good point. I don’t want to be understood as saying that there was ever a time when America was some kind of Eden, when everybody cared about everyone else, and there was no crime, violence, or bad behavior. I agree with cookie that the seeds of our current predicament have always been present in American culture. But I do believe the worst trends of American individualism have accelerated considerably since the 1960s. Drug abuse certainly existed in this country before then, but it was not as widespread or as mainstream as it has been for the last 35 or 36 years. Americans have been having sex presumably from the get-go, and there have always been unwanted pregnancies and venereal diseases. But those problems have exploded in the last few decades because of the sexual revolution. There has always been crime in this country, and the crime rate has always ebbed and flowed. But I believe the crime rates of the 1970s and 80s were unprecedented, at least in the 20th century. Nor do I believe there was ever a time when the American family was accurately represented by “Leave it to Beaver.” Nonetheless, there was a time when families generally stuck together, when marriage was taken seriously by individuals and the larger culture, and when children’s well-being was considered more important than their parents’ “happiness” and “fulfillment.”
I’d also like to say a word about “my morality.” There’s no such thing. Nor is there any “your morality.” Moral relativism is a logically untenable position. It is self-refuting. If all moral statements are relative–to an individual or a culture or a gender or what-have-you–then then you have a problem. Either that statement, as a moral statement, is itself relative, in which case it’s true if it’s false and false if it’s true. Or that is the one absolute moral statement, in which case there is at least one absolute moral statement. Again, it’s false if it’s true and true if it’s false.
Fred, A.L. , et. al.,
You ought to go back and read Oriana Fallaci’s screed form shortly after 9/11. It will put you back in your proper place.
It is exactly the liberty to order your life as you see fit that the plebes will fight to the death for. And they will be willing to use every trick in the book to minimize the cost since their idea is to fight with the minimum of losses so as to be able to return to their lives of indolence, sloth, and moral decay.
Remember the Super Bowl Commercials? The quintessential American is the mellowed out outlaw biker. They got that exactly right.
Now how does the average outlaw biker view JJ’s tits? With a critique similar to: “I’ve seen better”. As to the idea that kids ought to be innocent he says: “Innocence is not for the real world. The real world demands realism. Realism is girls have tits. And I like ’em.”
It is “improper” America that the improper plebes are fighting for. It is “improper” America that is the most potent weapon in our arsenal. Doesn’t any one remember “Whiskey, democracy, sexy” ?
M. Simon:
Some blogger once labeled this phenomenon “The Emerging Pornographic Majority.” Sounds basically like hedonistic libertarianism and it accurately describes many of the working-class Joes I’ve known. I wonder how widespread it actually is and whether it’s quite as straightforward as that. Have any reputable opinion polls or sociological analyses been conducted on this, and were any conflicting or contradictory beliefs discovered among the adherents of hed-lib?
“Some blogger once labeled this phenomenon “The Emerging Pornographic Majority.” Sounds basically like hedonistic libertarianism and it accurately describes many of the working-class Joes I’ve known.”
I call it the first step down the same road once travelled by the Roman Empire.
FH,
Here is what Fallaci has to say on the matter. BTW it has been every one’s complaint about America for at least 225 years. Welcome to the club of those with no clue. It is truly amazing how universal is this mistaking strength for weakness. Every one who has ever gone up against the culture of the plebes – their love of Elvis, the Beatles, Roseann, Married with Children, the Simpsons etc. has gotten teir nuts cracked.
” “We hold these Truths to be self–evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men…” And that piece of paper that we’ve all been copying well or badly from the French Revolution on, or from which we’ve drawn our inspiration, is still the backbone of America. The vital lymph of this nation. You know why? Because it turns the plebes into the People. Because it invites them, rather orders them, to govern themselves, to express their own individuality, to pursue their own happiness. All the opposite of what communism did, prohibiting people to rebel, to govern themselves, to express themselves, to get rich, and setting up His Majesty the State in place of the customary kings. My father used to say, “Communism is a monarchic regime, and it’s an old–school monarchy. Because it cuts off men’s balls. And when you cut off a man’s balls, he’s no longer a man.” He also used to say that instead of freeing the plebes, communism turned everyone into plebes. It made everyone starve to death.
Well, in my view America frees the plebes. Everyone is a plebe there. White, black, yellow, brown, purple, stupid, intelligent, poor, rich. Actually the rich are the most plebeian of all. Most of the time they’re such boors! Crude, ill–mannered. You can tell immediately that they’ve never read Galateo, that they’ve never had anything to do with refinement and good taste and sophistication. In spite of the money they waste on clothes, for example, they’re so inelegant as to make the Queen of England look chic by comparison. But they are freed, by God. And in this world there is nothing stronger or more powerful than freed plebes. You will always get your skull cracked when you go up against the Freed Plebe. And they all got their skulls cracked by America: English, Germans, Mexicans, Russians, Nazis, Fascists, Communists. Even the Vietnamese got theirs cracked in the end, when they had to come to terms after their victory so that now when a former president of the United States goes there to visit they’re in seventh heaven. “Bienvenu, Monsieur le President, bienvenu!” The problem is that the Vietnamese don’t pray to Allah. It’s going to be much harder to deal with the sons of Allah.”
BTW you can find the whole Fallaci piece on the www if you look. I think it is copyrighted so posting the whole thing is probably wrong.
What I want to say to the person who did it. And you know wo you are. Thanks.
It is “proper America” that is making war on whole swaths of Americans.
Drug users. Gay people. Cohabitors. Divorces. etc.
I am beginning to detect that this “moralism of our betters” is starting to wear thin.
The left is going to need a new banner to march to now that socialism is dead. May I suggest a more American banner: liberty.
Randy Barnett gets it. Look him up on the www. or read his books.
I’d like to add in here that I do believe moral relativism is ultimately the most truthful position to hold. Morality is relative to civilizations, nations, cultures, generations, social groups, families, couples, individuals.
Freedom is relative too. What? Yup. There are different conceptions of freedom out there. For instance, consider France, the birthplace of human rights, etc. — what they call la liberté which we translate and understand as what we call freedom is actually quite different, both at a theoretical and practical level, as our understandings of it are quite different. Relative to each other, we may say that freedom in the US is positive whereas in France it is negative. What does this mean? Positive freedom is the freedom to say yes. Negative freedom is the freedom to say no. In the US, the origin of freedom is within the individual, and in direct relation to God, or the Creator. In France, the existence of one’s freedom originates from the existence of freedom in another individual, thus “your freedom ends where my begins” is a common refrain. God is out of it, in the sense that if God were in it, then we’re all in it.
Cut to the Iraq debate in the UN: the US is saying, here are the “facts”, here is the question, what say you? -“No.” -Well, you are free to say yes. -“No” -You are free to say yes to something! -“Yes, and we are free to say no. We say no to you.” -But we have to do something! -“No we don’t; we can simply say no.”
Ad infinitum. Both are free, don’t you think?
cookie,
The way you judge values is by their results.
Individual liberty is something that the men and women of America are willing to fight and die for.
The liberty to say yes is more liberating than the ability to say no. Affirmations have more power than negations.
So yes there are different definitions of liberty. Not all of them are equal.
Proof? Which way is the brain drain going? From France to America or America to France. QED.
You have the eternal pomo problem: confusing words with reality. Take care reality doesn’t bite you in the ass or eat your lunch.
Cookie,
I stand by my statement on moral relativism. One reason people like you believe in it is because you misread the morality of other cultures. For example: the Eskimos (or whatever the PC term for them is this week) leave their old people to die when they can no longer contribute to the tribe. So murdering old people can’t be an absolutely immoral act can it? In their culture it’s ok to murder old people. The problem with that point of view is that they are not murdering old people. They love their grandparents as much as we do and make their deaths as comfortable as possible. They are simply doing what is necessary in the environment in which they live. And what they are doing is different in moral kind from you or I murdering our aged parents to avoid the expense of a nursing home. That is a fact which any Eskimo would recongnize him/herself. If there is a culture somewhere that actually does maintain that it’s ok to murder your parents to avoid the expense of a nursing home, then it seems self-evident to me that we’re dealing with a barbaric and morally inferior culture.
M Simon,
I’m not a prude (I think the Janet Jackson tit-flash has been blown way out of proportion), nor do I subscribe to a divine command ethics. I don’t want to “declare war” on any Americans. But the elements of our culture that I’m calling “moral decay” have resulted in real unnecessary pain, suffering, and death for real people. You can blather all you want about “Pornographic Majorities” and call people elitist prudes ’til you’re blue in the face, the fact remains that lives are being ruined and lost by drug abuse, divorce, premature and excessive sexual activity, crime and all the rest of it. It seems to me the hedonists that are at war with Americans, a war they are unfortunately winning.
M. Simon,
How do you judge values by their results? Why must a value necessitate a result according to you? What does it mean to fight and die for individual liberty? Do you mean they are free to do so? Aye, they are.
As for whether positive or negative freedom is more liberating, I would disagree and say that both are, at bottom, freedom. I am American, born and raised, but having lived in France, I can tell you that I tasted liberty there like I had never known (and now cannot indulge in since I’m back) in the US. There are both positive and negative ways to “use” freedom. Saying no can be quite liberating.
I have no idea what you mean by “not all [definitions of liberty] are equal”. Technically yes, but I suspect you meant more, something like, “some are more equal than others” — “equal” here being a substitute for “good”.
I’m afraid that you’ll have to supply “proof” that the brain drain is “proof” that America offers “more freedom” or “better freedom”, as you seem to imply, compared to France. More resources comes to mind as a plausible alternative explanation. The French are free to follow the money as well, you know.
Eat my lunch, Reality!
Fred,
You offer a good example of when the different practices of another culture may be judged by ours in a way different than how they judge themselves, but stick to a “baseline idea” that “murder is bad” in any culture. But as you yourself note, the definition of murder is hardly universal. What is relative here is the “self-evidence” that what we’re dealing with here or anywhere is a barbaric and morally inferior culture here or elsewhere. The Chinese abhor the way Americans treat the elderly — they consider it the epitome of a barbaric and morally inferior culture. Do we mind? Do we consider ourselves less moral? Or do we have different views of the world, different environments to work with, different cultural histories, and thus different moral judgments and results? Regarding murder, how do you square with capital punishment? Just who is barbaric and morally inferior these days? You imply there is civilization and moral superiority somewhere. Where is it?
Fred,
Read my stuff on drugs here. Civitas section.
My take on drugs is that people in chronic pain chronically take drugs. Doh! Which is why government prohibition is having a negative effect on the problem. People will not give up their pain medicine just because you disapprove. You would think people had learned their lesson from alcohol prohibition. In any case you might want to ask yourself why Prozac is good and marijuana is bad. Both are anti-anxiety drugs. What are the differences – one is provided by pharmaceutical companies at dollars a dose. The other you can grow yourself for tenths of a cent a dose. Wait. I’m getting a clue. I’ll let you know when it is fully formed.
In Mass. the mental health people consider youth drug use a symptom of PTSD or other effects of abuse. They inform their police accordingly.
My answer to the rest of your post was penned by a recently freed Iraqi. “Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy”. Evidently what the rest of the world likes about plebean America doesn’t meet with your approval. I think I can help you with that. Sharia is the answer to your problems. Under sharia no one is hurt by drugs or sex. I know this is true. Just ask any Afghani mullah. I have proof right here. Suppression of sex and drugs leads to paradise on earth. No one gets hurt.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=9815_The_Dirty_Secret_of_the_Madrassas
Cookie,
I’m so glad to hear the morally superior Chinese have given up on capital punishment and the suppression of Tibetans. I’m feeling really morally intimidated.
The thing you miss about the American system is that lots of things can be tried and those that don’t work will be abandoned usually (except for drug prohibition currently) in less than a generation. Already the pendulum is swinging re: marriage. Without government’s heavy hand. We like it that way.
cookie,
You pose the wrong question. You ask based on the principle: there is perfect and then there is everything else. i.e. you are a utopian.
I am in the realist camp. There is better and then there is worse.
Since you are a utopian and what you want can never be realized you must suffer eternal unhappiness. I hope you enjoy it.
As a realist I can be happy being in one of the best places on earth. I can tell you for sure. I enjoy it.
BTW Fred in some ways you also are a utopian. You posit that it is possible to end certain human problems. The best I can come up with is that there are better and worse ways of dealing with them. Suppression is definitely one of the worst. As has been proved over and over and over. Sweeping the dirt under the carpet does not make the house clean.
M. Simon,
Regarding capital punishment and the suppression of Tibetans, I’m sure the Chinese, or for that matter, the rest of the world are really intimidated by the morality of the US too. What goes around comes around.
I’m sure your assurances about the American “system” would have been sweet words to the slaves of the good ol’ days. Pendula swing everywhere, M. Simon.
It seems to me someone who always wants better, and never worse, would suffer from greater unhappiness (i.e. constant dissatisfaction with the Present). Theoretically a utopian would be unhappy too. Guess I’m neither of those, comprehensively speaking.
I’m glad you’re happy being in “one of the best places on earth” (isn’t that one definition of utopia?). Why oh why do you want to better it? Must best be better? Can it be?
I personally have lived in three societies (US, France, Taiwan) and comparatively, I must say, socially speaking, America ranks the lowest. The problems we have here are unimagineable in other places. It’s a good thing (or maybe it’s the result of?) we have such optimism and a go-to-it attitude around here — as M. Simon grandly illustrates.
Suppression in and of itself is not bad. Chinese society is one of the most oppressive around to individuals, yet, as illustrated by Taiwan and numerous other Chinese satellite cultures, social harmony reigns supreme when individuals are taught to suppress their destructive individual impulses in the name of “group good”. (That’s not something you find encouraged around here — wink wink to you, Britney!) In the US, we’re taught to “express ourselves” (usually without regard to consequences), “be ourselves” (throwing most of us into identity crises), “take care of ourselves” (while leaving others in the hole), and “be the best we can be” (stepping on each other to get to the top). Without God blessing America, where would we be?
Cookie and Dave,
I’ll take freedom and individual choice over any imposed morality or social norms. None of us would want Dave to pick out our books and TV shows, nor would we want Cookie to tell us how to take care of our families.
Dave,
Who’s to decide what is moral or immoral? You? Where’s the net increase in morality if you force people to mind the appearance of morality? It’s impossible to control what is in a man’s heart, so the best you could hope for is improved appearances. Only God can change a man’s heart. Forcing people to behave as you’d like will not increase virtue, but WILL increase suffering.
Jesus didn’t promise that everyone would agree with you. In fact he said the opposite. Christians will be ridiculed. Why are you surprised that this remains true? He also didn’t command that you forcibly convert people. In fact, he said the opposite. So you see, Jesus is on the side of Liberty too.
Cookie,
There are many, many cohesive families in the US that look out for themselves and their kin. The difference is that in the US the association is much more voluntary. In China the square peg is beaten down.
You may find this hard to believe, but there are oddballs, eccentrics, and those who don’t quite fit in. In China, they’re pretty much forced to conform. You have argued that this can be beneficial to society… and it is if one of the primary values is to uphold appearances, or ‘face’ if you prefer.
The US is different. People can choose how best to order their own lives. The blacksheep can move on instead of tolerating the continual abuse by his family. But, he is also free to return. How many people do you know who leave their families to start careers in completely different cities? Our whole country was built on people like this, except it was different continents, not cities! How many do you know that eventually make their way back home to be near kin? Plenty I bet. I’ll stack up American families to any in the world. When the chips are down, Americans pull together.
Everybody,
Freedom makes American society look ugly, divided, and chaotic. Many have mistaken this for weakness… because they are passing judgement on appearances not substance. Unnoticed is the steel underneath… the strength of individuals, CHOOSING to come together. Who was in charge at ground zero after the disaster? Who was in charge on Flight 93?
Cookie, pray tell what are our problems that are unimaginable elsewhere? I’m dying to find out.
“and “be the best we can be” (stepping on each other to get to the top). “
Yeah, because this only happens in the US. Sure.
“Regarding capital punishment and the suppression of Tibetans, I’m sure the Chinese, or for that matter, the rest of the world are really intimidated by the morality of the US too. What goes around comes around.”
This statement makes absolutely no sense. Do you even know anything about the US and China? I’d no idea the US army was still chasing the Injuns.
“Who’s to decide what is moral or immoral? You? Where’s the net increase in morality if you force people to mind the appearance of morality?”
Hey, then I guess it’s ok for fathers to fuck their daughters and women to kill their husbands. It’s freedom baby! Who’s to decide for you what is or is not morality?!? Societies will always establish codes of what they regard as moral or immoral behavior. No codes=anarchy and a lot of people would get hurt. Ever wonder why pre-marital sex used to be so frowned upon? Look at what’s happened in Africa regarding AIDS. Without our modern technology and society to insulate us, the sexual revolution would have been put in reverse. Why impose standards? Because they’re necessary for group survival and integrity. In the past, the successful societies were the ones that effectively established taboos and group norms. Taboos and group norms are still necessary however. What would we do if everyone stole or cheated or lied or killed for a pair of Nikes?
The SuperBowl backlash was our society saying “That’s not who we want to be.” And I’m thankful for it because the society I saw in the commercials and the half-time show (I could care less about the breast. It’s the whole package that grates.) is not what I want America to be. Did you read this Friedman editorial? Because he nailed it.
cookie wrote –
“ personally have lived in three societies (US, France, Taiwan) and comparatively, I must say, socially speaking, America ranks the lowest. The problems we have here are unimagineable in other places.”
Cookie, we just must have lived in different parts of Paris (or, actually, since I lived in the 17th just up Ave. de la Gde. Armee from L’Etoile, visited different parts). When I was there – as far back as the late 1970’s, before they went completely to hell, les banlieues were places where I saw high-rise slums as bad as anything I saw as a planning student visiting Chicago or the South Bronx.
So help me out; the street crime levels are astronomical, corruption is endemic – try getting anything done without a pb; the political and economic elites are in bed with each other (literally, lately); and an Ami is about to win his sixth Tour. What exactly is it that you’re talking about that is so ‘unimagineable‘ over there? Because I lived there, and in my experience, they had pretty damn good imaginations.
A.L.
Linden,
I said:
“Who’s to decide what is moral or immoral? You? Where’s the net increase in morality if you force people to mind the appearance of morality?”
And then you said:
“Hey, then I guess it’s ok for fathers to fuck their daughters and women to kill their husbands. It’s freedom baby!”
Of course you are right about that. I deliberately didn’t mention the cases where any person is harmed. These are self-evidently immoral. This in fact is the foundation of morality. I’m free to act as long as my actions harm no others. No further discussion required.
Now if I want to engage in some cunnilingus with my willing wife, it’s none of your, or Dave’s, damn business. Unfortunately the state of Texas, among others, has laws against this wholesome fun. It’s missionary for procreation with anything else against the law. How does this behavior threaten the survival of Texas?
Am I truly immoral, or just offensive to certain busybody Baptists in the state house?
‘Of course you are right about that. I deliberately didn’t mention the cases where any person is harmed. These are self-evidently immoral. This in fact is the foundation of morality. I’m free to act as long as my actions harm no others. No further discussion required.”
Some societies believe that not murdering someone will create substantial harm. How do you define ‘harm’? It’s defined differently in different socities. What is and is not acceptable is different from culture to culture. What is self-evident to you does not translate across all boundaries. You’ve just stated that others have no right to decide what is moral and immoral and then you turn around and do the same.
I don’t care where you put your tongue, but there are others out there who are perfectly entitled to think you’re a pervert for where you put it. You don’t want morality dictated to you but then you dictate to others. And it is always possible that taboos against the likes of cunnilingus developed because no one wants an STD on their face or in their throat. And let’s face it. Mankind hasn’t always had soap.
Actually, I believe in Texas that it’s legal to have sex with a dog, which is pretty funny.
Linden,
Are you deliberately misunderstanding me? Which side of this argument are you taking antway?
One further clarification, it is self evident if you accept the premise that all others have the same rights as yourself to order their own lives. Sorry if this wasn’t clear before.
The underlying assumption of many alternative “moralities” is that some have the right or duty to command others ‘for their own good’. Lords command serfs, chiefs command tribesman, Europeans command Americans, you know, that whole divine rights of kings thing. The trouble with this is that those ‘kings’ claim higher authority based on some innate “goodness”. This asymmetry should bother you. What is the fundamental premise that allows this violation of reciprocity? Tradition? Power? Some just know better than others? What is it?
Oh yeah… Stay away from my dog!
*Lurker, the Greatest American Deception is that we do not have any imposed morality or social norms. We do, in abundance, and they are actively at work, with everyone participating. You probably think there is no such thing as “American culture”. There is.
I laugh when you say that in the US the “association of families” (let’s corporatize everything, shall we?) is “much more voluntary” than in the Pacific Rim (Continental China is a whole other ball game). You think an 8 year old is volunteering to be with a certain family? OK, assuming you mean at a certain age, I agree, but by then it applies to the Chinese too. In no way is “a square peg beaten down” to force families to be cohesive over there. That’s ridiculous! 🙂 They have dysfunctional families too you know. Individual freedom is a natural force in every human being — it’s hardly absent in Chinese just because they’ve been brought up with different social values! Though you might find this “weird”, many Chinese see the wisdom of the way Chinese are socially ordered. Crazy enough, it’s been goin’ on for thousands of years! Long before the pilgrims ever set down on “India”. That’s why they look down in disdain, generally speaking, when they have time, at the American social system. But then they’re only judging by their own values too.
Of course there are oddballs who don’t fit in. They exist in China too. When I was talking about social harmony that included the oddballs. Imagine Grandma gets sick and needs help. Even the oddball has a sense of ‘shiau shwen’ instilled in him to think it is his duty to take care of his own mother. If he decides not to, for whatever reason, then Brother or Sister will pick up the ball. But NO ONE would leave in her in the hospital or in some care facility without family around to vegetate. It just wouldn’t happen. If you’re talking about ‘oddballs’ who do not share the same social values well, those are almost always ‘foreigners’. They’re not Chinese.
‘Face’ is not as simple as ‘upholding appearances’. It’s an intricate art, with exchange and currency.
I’m from the US, as I mentioned above born and raised here, so there is no need to lecture me on it.
Compared to families in other cultures, American families are A LOT LESS cohesive.
*Linden, off the top of my head, CRIME CRIME CRIME. Guns. The way we treat our elderly. Our level of poverty. The wealth gap. Plastic surgery of all kinds. Obesity. Our lack of general education (history, math, etc.). Is that enough?
We have a system which aids stepping on each other to get to the top. We practically encourage it. This is not shared around the world.
My example concerning China just says that no country is a moral saint who has the right to judge another without having its own faults pointed out too.
Though it came under a post titled to me, I couldn’t find myself writing this: “Who’s to decide what is moral or immoral? You? Where’s the net increase in morality if you force people to mind the appearance of morality?” Presumably it’s not directed at me? So I didn’t read the rest.
*A.L., Paris sure does have a lot of variety. I’ve lived in four places around there. Certainly the arrondissements are hardly equivalent! I’m living about 10 miles from Newark right now. I can tell you that though there are only 15 miles between Newark and New York, they are WORLDS APART. Even where I am is completely different. So I’m sure your experience gave you a different impression than mine. Paris, actually, is really not representative of France AT ALL, but that’s a whole other subject. I say we go with statistics on this one as much as possible, and unfortunately I don’t have them on hand. Are street crime levels lower or higher in France than the US? I’m pretty sure their wealth gap is smaller. And certainly they have much more social help, doing much more, than in the US. Their health system is the best in the world.
BTW, the political and economic elite have always been in bed with each other. The political, educational and social system is set up that way. I don’t see how it couldn’t happen. It’s not like the US.
I mentioned to Linden (up there) what was “unimagineable” to the world in general about life in the US. Hmm, for France it’s more specific, but many of those still apply more or less — poverty, wealth gap, obesity, health care (more like crime), capital punishment, crime, guns. But the French, you know, really like us, so add a good bit of overwhelming admiration for other things with all of that. But if you lived there and conversed with them, you would know this.
Socially the French are much more cohesive and homogeneous. You go to enough soirées and you can sense it. There’s a social norm that if you uphold, rich or poor, pretty or ugly, “you pass”. Once you hit that social norm, you’ve got much more freedom of movement than in the US. There, compared to here, it really is “no one left behind”. Here, we judge each other all the time: who’s got the bigger house/car, the fancier clothes, the better degree, etc. We’re always in social competition. But then our society has a lot more up and down movement (or so the myth goes). This is just relative to each other, I’m not trying to paint a black and white picture.
*Everybody,
My point is, we’re different. I don’t think many of you realize what that means.
Can’t imagine this cunnilingus conversation going on in China, but who knows? We have this, they have that. Enjoy it for what it’s worth!
It’s worth noting here that these criticisms I’m sharing with you all from conversations I’ve had abroad and in the US with immigrants (mixed in with thoughts of my own) are only worthwhile so long as the critic has had some experience with the US (here you’ll have to go by my judgment). Certainly, I can’t speak for all places, all peoples! Most people’s contact with the US is in the movie theater, and there only the major blockbusters with enough money for worldwide distribution (think Titanic, LOTR, Finding Nemo, etc.). Different countries will have different levels of contact. In France and Taiwan, there has been a deeper level of cultural contact, compared to say, India and Russia. That’ll make a difference in how sharp / on-target the criticism is.
*Lurder, your saying this: “The trouble with this is that those ‘kings’ claim higher authority based on some innate “goodness” echoes exactly the Protestant cultural criticism of Catholicism.
M Simon,
I guess being a utopian is better than being a prude 🙂 Actually, though, I’m neither. I do not in any way believe that we can eliminate the behavior I describe above. I’m not particularly religious, but I absolutely buy the Christian concept of original sin. As the Howard Beale character in the movie _Network_ said, “Anybody who can look around this demented slaughterhouse of a world we live in and tell me man is a noble creature, believe me, that man is full of bullshit.” I’m fully aware that evil (or immorality, or bad behavior or whatever you want to call it; I’ll use evil for shorthand), like the poor, will always be with us. But I don’t think it’s utopian to believe that the actions of individuals and the larger society can affect whether we have more or less of it.
As for suppression not being the answer, I don’t entirely disagree. It’s certainly not the whole answer. We also need persuasion, education, good examples, etc. But while I don’t believe suppression is a sufficient condition for reducing (notice I didn’t say elimninating) the evil in our culture–and that separates me from the Taliban–I do believe some degree of it is a necessary condition.
As for the failure of prohibition, it failed if your definition of success is, well, utopian. It certainly didn’t eliminate alchohol consumption in this country. But it did “work” if you accept a more prosaic definition of success. Per capita alchohol consumption was lower during prohibition than at any other time in our history before or since. We can argue about whether that was a good thing or not, but it’s a fact; look it up. I’d say the same thing about drug prohibition. By the standard of eliminating drug use it’s an abject failure. But it does put certain constraints on drug use. Prohibition makes drugs more expensive, harder to obtain, and more dangerous to buy, sell, or possess than if they were legal. In addition, the illegality of drugs gives their use and especially sale a degree of stigma in many minds. It seems rather utopian to me to imagine that if those constraints were lifted, drug use wouldn’t skyrocket with attendent spikes in addiction, overdoses, traffic fatalities, heavy equipment accidents, and other consequences of drug abuse.