Dachshynddawg
Verified User
This post is one of a series in which I will set down a vision for how we may be able to save Western culture/civilisation from the death-spiral it has entered. You will note that I have placed a solidus between the words "culture" and "civilization" in the first sentence. This is because there is a great deal of confusion about the meanings of these two words. Briefly, you can think of it like this: your computer or lap-top has both "software"(programmes) and "hardware", culture is like "software"; culture is like ideas in your mind (the cognitions in your consciousness) - you can't touch ideas or pick them up because they are immaterial, they are not physical entities. Even if you could place your hands inside your head, you could not pick out between your thumb and forefinger a thought like: "I'm hungry, I think I'll drive to McDonald's soon" The same applies for "software" , you can't hold some instruction in a computer program in your hand. Right? Now, as for the hardware of your computer or lap-top, it is the opposite to the software; it is a solid, physical, material objected made out of plastic and metals, etc. You can pick it up and carry it to college. The hardware is like "civilization". "Civilization" is made up of stones, cement, marble, metals, plastics, glass and other physical stuff. To some up, St Paul's Cathedral in London is a very famous piece of architecture. The software or ideas for the design of St Paul's were originally contained in the mind of the man who designed it: Sir Christopher Wren (in the 17th century).The Cathedral is made of many different kinds of material:wood, metal, stained glass, cloth, cement, sandstone and so on. So, when you look at St Paul's Cathedral today, you are, in a rough sense, "seeing", the thoughts of Sir Christopher when he was thinking about what kind of design he would use for his new architectural project. There is a direct relationship between "culture" and "civilization" in the sense that the "software" in your computer dictates the physical shape of the device itself. I should mention as well that civilisation are very, big things that contain lots of urban centres, like London, say, where there are, lots of different churches, cottages, government buildings, libraries, restaurants, temples, automobiles, statues, fountains,factories, art galleries, hotels, Houses of Parliament, motorcycles, palaces, art galleries, museums, skyscrapers, etc all built at different times in history.
This post is about Western culture and, in particular, how our schools and colleges/universities in: Australia, America and England, etc, have, for decades now, been stripping Western high culture from the Humanities curriculum. When I say "Humanities", I am referring to the non-STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects; and these include: ancient and modern languages, literature ,philosophy, history, law, politics, human geography, religion, art and social sciences.
In the West, in particular, the United States, multiculturalism has invaded the curriculum, it is hard to pin-point exactly when this movement reached its peak, but in American public schools and Universities, I would say that 30 years ago (at the start of the 1990's) is a conservative estimate. Multiculturalist educators attempted to inculcate in students the idea that the Western, Classic, liberal order, is in fact, the most oppressive order that has ever existed in the 6,000 year history of human civilisation. Where did this strange idea come from you might ask (?). Well, it came from the multiculturalists belief that all cultures are inherently equal, and therefore it follows that any differences in the wealth, power and accomplishment between different cultural groups in, For example, America, are, for the most part due to oppression. In other words, if African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native Indian, Arabic cultural groups are not as wealthy, powerful or accomplished, it is because they have been oppressed byWHITE, ANGLO-EUROPEAN CULTURE. So, in order to establish cultural equality multicultural education advisers emphasise non_Western virtues and Western oppression. They dismiss the illiberal traditions of other cultures and attack the idea of a common culture BASED ON AN INTELLECTUAL, MORAL AND ARTISTIC LEGACY DERIVED FROM THE GREEKS AND THE BIBLE - from the spiritual cities"Athens" and "Jerusalem."
Multiculturalism only excludes one worldview from its curriculum and that is the European Western perspective based on the contributions of our DEAD, WHITE, MALES Why ? Because they claim that Western culture/civilisation has done much to promote traditions of elitism, racism and sexism - and these are the root cause of many of our current social problems. It means- at the sharp end - that Aristotle's philosophy, Shakespeare's dramas, Shelley's poetry and Oscar Wilde's novels, for example, are nothing more than worthless, toxic garbage that must be thrown out with the trash. Try finding a volume of William Blake's poetry or a novel by Charles Dickens in in your kid's high school...Good Luck !! Try asking your kid's Senior- level English teacher why s/he does't have the opportunity to read and study books like these; that is, books (written by "Dead, White, Males") that happen represent the very best of the best - the creme de la creme of English literature Ask the teacher why your kid in his final year of high school is studying some book about a teenage lesbian with pimples who is addicted to crack and has a black father who molests ot weekends, (or some similar slop).
In the United States multiculturalists denounce the emphasis on American history and Western culture/civilisation as EVIL (Yes, I'm serious). White Anglo-European Americans were heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade, they received at least 12,000 shiploads of West African slaves just from England alone, and this dreadful trade did not effectively stop until 1830, therefore white European Americans today are evil and must pay billions of dollars in reparations to help assuage their guilt. Then there are the White Americans, some 6-7 million of them who were member of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) in the early decades of the 20th century who terrorised and murdered countless numbers of African-Americans - all of these men examples of the EVIL at the heart of White Anglo-European American culture. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons - yet another of the White Anglo-European American's evil deeds.
If you ask any ordinary American adult: "What was the most important document published in the year, 1776 ?" He or she will likely say to you: "The Declaration of Independence", by Thomas Jefferson. That's what children are taught at school, but really, it's not true. There was another famous document published in 1776 that arguably had a far more profound impact on America than "The Declaration of Independence."The document I'm referring to is a book called "The Wealth of Nations" by Scotsman, Adam Smith, published in 1776. Adam Smith was an economist and philosopher. "The Wealth of Nations" is an economic thesis on the topic of the "free market system." Another way to describe Smith's book would be as containing the first economic theory of Capitalism. Indeed, Adam Smith is still known today as "The Father of Capitalism".
There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers and other intellectuals in America would have had copies of Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" dispatched to to the colonies (hot of the press) in the UK. They would have found it a brilliant and inspiring work, and the rest is history. America eagerly embraced Smith's free market capitalism and soon (historically speaking) it became the most prosperous and powerful nation in all of Western civilisation But I doubt that Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" is read in too many US colleges today because Adam Smith is a Dead, White Male - a particularly evil one one as well, because his ideas about money have blighted the history of America with the oppression, exploitation, cruelty, inequality and injustices that are inherent in the operation of a capitalist economy.
To summarise: The main idea of multiculturalism is that all cultures are of equal value. But multiculturalists exclude one worldview from their realm of equally valid worldviews - the Eurocentric Western perspective based on the contributions of "Dead, White Males". Multiculturalists dismiss the significance of Western culture/civilisation by claiming that Western traditions of elitism, racism and sexism are the locus of all of our problems in the West today.
WHY WESTERN CULTURE IS OBJECTIVELY SUPERIOR
Today, many liberal/progressive intellectuals (mostly the kind who are in their 40's and unmarried, vote Democrat and still live with their parents) claim Western culture is not any better (many say it is worse) than other cultures. In addition, they argue that there are noOBJECTIVE STANDARDS that can be used to evaluate the merit or demerit of various cultures.
In reality the superiority of Western culture can be objectively demonstrated when cultures are evaluated based on the only befitting standard for judging a society or culture - the extent to which it is LIFE-AFFIRMING or ANTILIFE. Prolife culture recognises and honours man as a rational being who needs to discern and produce the circumstances that his survival and flourishing require. Such a culture would promote reason, man's natural rights, productivity, science and technology. Western culture, the prime example of this type of culture, exhibits levels of freedom, opportunity, health, wealth. productivity, innovation, satisfaction, comfort and life-expectancy UNPRECEDENTED IN HISTORY.
Western civilisation represents man at his best. It embodies the cultural values that make life as a man possible - freedom, reason, individualism and man's natural rights; capitalism, self-reliance and self-responsibility based on free will and achievement; the need for limited representative, Republican government and the rule of law; language, art and literature depicting man as efficacious in the world; and science and technology, the rules of logic, the idea of causality in a universe governed by natural laws intelligible to man. These values, the cultural values of Western civilisation are values for all men cutting across ethnicity, geography and gender.
Dachshund
This post is about Western culture and, in particular, how our schools and colleges/universities in: Australia, America and England, etc, have, for decades now, been stripping Western high culture from the Humanities curriculum. When I say "Humanities", I am referring to the non-STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects; and these include: ancient and modern languages, literature ,philosophy, history, law, politics, human geography, religion, art and social sciences.
In the West, in particular, the United States, multiculturalism has invaded the curriculum, it is hard to pin-point exactly when this movement reached its peak, but in American public schools and Universities, I would say that 30 years ago (at the start of the 1990's) is a conservative estimate. Multiculturalist educators attempted to inculcate in students the idea that the Western, Classic, liberal order, is in fact, the most oppressive order that has ever existed in the 6,000 year history of human civilisation. Where did this strange idea come from you might ask (?). Well, it came from the multiculturalists belief that all cultures are inherently equal, and therefore it follows that any differences in the wealth, power and accomplishment between different cultural groups in, For example, America, are, for the most part due to oppression. In other words, if African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native Indian, Arabic cultural groups are not as wealthy, powerful or accomplished, it is because they have been oppressed byWHITE, ANGLO-EUROPEAN CULTURE. So, in order to establish cultural equality multicultural education advisers emphasise non_Western virtues and Western oppression. They dismiss the illiberal traditions of other cultures and attack the idea of a common culture BASED ON AN INTELLECTUAL, MORAL AND ARTISTIC LEGACY DERIVED FROM THE GREEKS AND THE BIBLE - from the spiritual cities"Athens" and "Jerusalem."
Multiculturalism only excludes one worldview from its curriculum and that is the European Western perspective based on the contributions of our DEAD, WHITE, MALES Why ? Because they claim that Western culture/civilisation has done much to promote traditions of elitism, racism and sexism - and these are the root cause of many of our current social problems. It means- at the sharp end - that Aristotle's philosophy, Shakespeare's dramas, Shelley's poetry and Oscar Wilde's novels, for example, are nothing more than worthless, toxic garbage that must be thrown out with the trash. Try finding a volume of William Blake's poetry or a novel by Charles Dickens in in your kid's high school...Good Luck !! Try asking your kid's Senior- level English teacher why s/he does't have the opportunity to read and study books like these; that is, books (written by "Dead, White, Males") that happen represent the very best of the best - the creme de la creme of English literature Ask the teacher why your kid in his final year of high school is studying some book about a teenage lesbian with pimples who is addicted to crack and has a black father who molests ot weekends, (or some similar slop).
In the United States multiculturalists denounce the emphasis on American history and Western culture/civilisation as EVIL (Yes, I'm serious). White Anglo-European Americans were heavily involved in the transatlantic slave trade, they received at least 12,000 shiploads of West African slaves just from England alone, and this dreadful trade did not effectively stop until 1830, therefore white European Americans today are evil and must pay billions of dollars in reparations to help assuage their guilt. Then there are the White Americans, some 6-7 million of them who were member of the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) in the early decades of the 20th century who terrorised and murdered countless numbers of African-Americans - all of these men examples of the EVIL at the heart of White Anglo-European American culture. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons - yet another of the White Anglo-European American's evil deeds.
If you ask any ordinary American adult: "What was the most important document published in the year, 1776 ?" He or she will likely say to you: "The Declaration of Independence", by Thomas Jefferson. That's what children are taught at school, but really, it's not true. There was another famous document published in 1776 that arguably had a far more profound impact on America than "The Declaration of Independence."The document I'm referring to is a book called "The Wealth of Nations" by Scotsman, Adam Smith, published in 1776. Adam Smith was an economist and philosopher. "The Wealth of Nations" is an economic thesis on the topic of the "free market system." Another way to describe Smith's book would be as containing the first economic theory of Capitalism. Indeed, Adam Smith is still known today as "The Father of Capitalism".
There is no doubt that the Founding Fathers and other intellectuals in America would have had copies of Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" dispatched to to the colonies (hot of the press) in the UK. They would have found it a brilliant and inspiring work, and the rest is history. America eagerly embraced Smith's free market capitalism and soon (historically speaking) it became the most prosperous and powerful nation in all of Western civilisation But I doubt that Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" is read in too many US colleges today because Adam Smith is a Dead, White Male - a particularly evil one one as well, because his ideas about money have blighted the history of America with the oppression, exploitation, cruelty, inequality and injustices that are inherent in the operation of a capitalist economy.
To summarise: The main idea of multiculturalism is that all cultures are of equal value. But multiculturalists exclude one worldview from their realm of equally valid worldviews - the Eurocentric Western perspective based on the contributions of "Dead, White Males". Multiculturalists dismiss the significance of Western culture/civilisation by claiming that Western traditions of elitism, racism and sexism are the locus of all of our problems in the West today.
WHY WESTERN CULTURE IS OBJECTIVELY SUPERIOR
Today, many liberal/progressive intellectuals (mostly the kind who are in their 40's and unmarried, vote Democrat and still live with their parents) claim Western culture is not any better (many say it is worse) than other cultures. In addition, they argue that there are noOBJECTIVE STANDARDS that can be used to evaluate the merit or demerit of various cultures.
In reality the superiority of Western culture can be objectively demonstrated when cultures are evaluated based on the only befitting standard for judging a society or culture - the extent to which it is LIFE-AFFIRMING or ANTILIFE. Prolife culture recognises and honours man as a rational being who needs to discern and produce the circumstances that his survival and flourishing require. Such a culture would promote reason, man's natural rights, productivity, science and technology. Western culture, the prime example of this type of culture, exhibits levels of freedom, opportunity, health, wealth. productivity, innovation, satisfaction, comfort and life-expectancy UNPRECEDENTED IN HISTORY.
Western civilisation represents man at his best. It embodies the cultural values that make life as a man possible - freedom, reason, individualism and man's natural rights; capitalism, self-reliance and self-responsibility based on free will and achievement; the need for limited representative, Republican government and the rule of law; language, art and literature depicting man as efficacious in the world; and science and technology, the rules of logic, the idea of causality in a universe governed by natural laws intelligible to man. These values, the cultural values of Western civilisation are values for all men cutting across ethnicity, geography and gender.
Dachshund
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