Religious / philosophical exotism and cultural identity

by Narkissos 35 Replies latest jw friends

Narkissos

This post is going to be shamelessly ethnocentric. I am a European. Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, as well as post-Christian secularism, make up my cultural background.
Of course this is but a tiny part of the world of human thinking and as many others I enjoy -- at the risk of misunderstanding -- peeking over the cultural fence. Foreign culture and thinking are always fascinating. When I was younger I fancifully identified with the languages I learnt or the countries I visited -- as if I could become another. Later I came to enjoy the journey as a foreigner -- learning about the others but even more about myself and my own culture, from the very contact or rub of difference.
Yesterday I was visiting the Guimet Museum in Paris, which is devoted to Eastern arts (from India to the Far East). As I was wandering among those huge and magnificent collections I found myself attracted to a group of sculptures which stood out as strangely different. These were the Ghandara and Serindian treasures found in the early 20th century, West of China on the Silk routes (Xianjiang Province, Tajikistan, Afghanistan) where Buddhic motives were represented with a typically soft Graeco-Roman touch. I was amazed by the whole museum but here there was something really familiar and moving to me.
I can only see another culture or read its texts (I have been reading and quoting some Chinese Tao writings these days) from a Westerner's standpoint. Which, if I analyse it correctly, implies a typical emphasis on the individual, a sense of tragedy and pathos which is quite foreign to other cultures. I can see the limits of it but still I am who I am -- because I am where I am. I can learn and experience a lot from Eastern texts but I will never be an Easterner.
Christianity appealed to Romans as an Eastern religion but it eventually settled as a Roman religion. This changes everything. Post-Christian Westerners in search of spirituality are attracted to Eastern religions but they modify them to their own "soul" as soon as they identify with them. There is something like a "Western way" and it's the one Westerners are bound to cultivate -- with the help of worldwide cultural interchange and dialogue. Ultimately there is no "conversion" -- only slowly drifting in the interplay of cultures in which we happen to be where we happen to be.
No question here, this is completely useless rambling. But any echo, or comment, is welcome of course.
stillajwexelder

American culture is wonderful then because it has so many influences Anglo-Saxon-French-Native American-Italian-Irish--German-Scandinavian-Arab-Middle Eastern-Jewish-Creole-AFRICAN- and Lately Spanish,Hispanic etc
MerryMagdalene

I like your ramblings, Narkissos. I don't find them useless. I find myself in agreement with what (I think) you are expressing and I enjoyed reading it. I hope you feel free to ramble anytime.
~Merry
Terry

ARISTOTLE's influence was the "law of the exluded middle" which rescued (the Christian) religion (as much as possible) from the crappy mysticism of the East.
(Note: in the East there is no either/or....you can have BOTH simultaneously!)
Plato is the culprit who allowed the mystic element into Christianity; which is to say he allowed you to pull things our of your ass. Aristotle made you recognize your ass as the source of what was pulled out.)
Now, what does all this mean?
Eastern religions could and did become so untenable, so convoluted and illogical that the society which allowed itself to be tainted by Aristotleplegia (I coined the word; it means a lack of Aristotle) fell way behind on technology and advancements which marked the Western civilization (such as it was.)
Even Christianity struggled to EXPLAIN LOGICALLY the biblical core of dogma in some semblance of reason and coherence!
The great thinkers of Catholicism such as Augustine and Aquinas did the best they could; but, merely caused us Westerners to assume there actually was logical content in Scripture and we've suffered the consequences ever since with generation after generation of Apologists laboring to update the creaky old belief systems and make them palatable to the rational modernity.
Look at any nation or society and you'll immediately be able to tell the Aristotelian-influenced ones from the mystics. The ones that are starving and living under absolute dictators cling to the Mystics. The technologically advanced ones have LOGIC.
The fruits, as is, of Artistotle bring rationality and progress. The Platonic influence taints and confuses.
Cultural identity, such as the Muslims and Arabs have, is the result of turning away from their remarkable progress after they met Aristotle's works and spread them afar. The Theocracy of the mullahs has killed their chances to live in our century. Everywhere they are marginalized by their philosophy. The West rubs their noses in it. So, they can only scream in agony at their religious refutation and destroy modernity to erase the proof their mysticism is cancerous to their well-being.
When religion fails it is because of the mystical element and philosophy of Plato looms in evidence.
When religion becomes almost logical and explicable (I said "almost") it approaches the systematic objectivity of Aristotle.
In any contest between food and poison; the poison always wins. In the interim the sickness grows.
T.
Sunnygal41

Without dreamers there would be fewer inventions.............logic has it's place as has creativity and dreaming and mysticism.
Just my 5 cents.
(I loved Socrates best)
Carmel

Once againt Terry, you have set up a fallacious dichotomy forcing an either/or choice not unlike the endless discussions over the magic wand approach to the orgins of life and the universe. The scientific method would collapse without the creative process that has minimal logic until a creative hypothesis is formulated. Humanity and its advancing civilication would collapse if either extreme were followed.
Carmel
"Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism. "
(Abdu'l-Baha, Paris Talks, p. 143)
Pole

Narkissos,
:When I was younger I fancifully identified with the languages I learnt or the countries I visited -- as if I could become another. Later I came to enjoy the journey as a foreigner -- learning about the others but even more about myself and my own culture, from the very contact or rub of difference.
LOL. I can relate to that. I'm beginning to enjoy the foreigner's position now much more than I used to. It's simply more genuine and it give you a good excuse for cultural faux pas.
Terry,
:Look at any nation or society and you'll immediately be able to tell the Aristotelian-influenced ones from the mystics. The ones that are starving and living under absolute dictators cling to the Mystics. The technologically advanced ones have LOGIC.
So you're saying it works for any nation? Then you should be able to give me 3 examples of this phenomenon. Go ahead.
Pole
Narkissos

Thank you all.
Terry,
We disagree as usual -- even, in the present case, about the very issue being discussed. It was not meant to be the umpteenth rationalism vs. mysticism debate... never mind.
You cannot simply equate the West with logic and the East with mysticism. Even if you celebrate Aristotle and tertium non datur as the sun and day of the European civilisation (which is debatable), what you would then call the "night" remains and it is "Western" too. We just have our own ways of relating day and night to each other and relating ourselves to both. Symmetrically, I find the following assertion outrageous:
(Note: in the East there is no either/or....you can have BOTH simultaneously!)
Just as you can't reduce the West to your idea of logic you can't reduce the East to this. In everyday life exclusive thinking ("either / or") applies everywhere in the world. Where people and cultures diverge is about the extent of its validity (ironically enough, it took contemporay Western science, namely 20th-century physics, to demonstrate that "either / or" is not a universally valid approach). Besides, non-exclusivistic logic is counter-intuitive everywhere -- that's why it had to be taught (albeit paradoxically), even in the East.
Eastern religions could and did become so untenable, so convoluted and illogical that the society which allowed itself to be tainted by Aristotleplegia (I coined the word; it means a lack of Aristotle) fell way behind on technology and advancements which marked the Western civilization (such as it was.)
Oh boy, get a clue about the history of Chinese technology...
Even Christianity struggled to EXPLAIN LOGICALLY the biblical core of dogma in some semblance of reason and coherence!
The great thinkers of Catholicism such as Augustine and Aquinas did the best they could; but, merely caused us Westerners to assume there actually was logical content in Scripture and we've suffered the consequences ever since with generation after generation of Apologists laboring to update the creaky old belief systems and make them palatable to the rational modernity.
Look at any nation or society and you'll immediately be able to tell the Aristotelian-influenced ones from the mystics. The ones that are starving and living under absolute dictators cling to the Mystics. The technologically advanced ones have LOGIC.
The fruits, as is, of Artistotle bring rationality and progress. The Platonic influence taints and confuses.
Cultural identity, such as the Muslims and Arabs have, is the result of turning away from their remarkable progress after they met Aristotle's works and spread them afar. The Theocracy of the mullahs has killed their chances to live in our century. Everywhere they are marginalized by their philosophy. The West rubs their noses in it. So, they can only scream in agony at their religious refutation and destroy modernity to erase the proof their mysticism is cancerous to their well-being.
When religion fails it is because of the mystical element and philosophy of Plato looms in evidence.
When religion becomes almost logical and explicable (I said "almost") it approaches the systematic objectivity of Aristotle.
In any contest between food and poison; the poison always wins. In the interim the sickness grows.
LOL. From the above I wonder (not) where you got your ideas (pun intended) of Plato, Aristotle and their respective history of influence. Augustine was a neo-platonist to start with. Crediting worldwide mysticism to Plato and worldwide rationality to Aristotle is ridiculous -- unless you use those names as ideal types, which dispenses of studying what those men and their disciples really taught.
Anyway, the "Western mind" I was rambling about definitely includes Plato and Aristotle -- and many more. It is a specific, though elusive, "type of soul morphology" (now doesn't that sound Platonist?) to which both you and I belong, wish it or not...
Pole

:Just as you can't reduce the West to your idea of logic you can't reduce the East to this. In everyday life exclusive thinking ("either / or") applies everywhere in the world. Where people and cultures diverge is about the extent of its validity (ironically enough, it took contemporay Western science, namely 20th-century physics, to demonstrate that "either / or" is not a universally valid approach). Besides, non-exclusivistic logic is counter-intuitive everywhere -- that's why it had to be taught (albeit paradoxically), even in the East.
Physics is probably the most celebrated example, but also in cognitive sciences the Aristotalian system of categorization has been largely abandoned. It just doesn't desctibe the world and the mid as well as we may have thought.
So the Aristotelian "either or" is not the only Western way of staying clear of mysticism.
Just my 2 cents.
Pole
Golf

The late Will Rogers once said, "The more I travel, the more I realize how little I know."

Golf

Religious / philosophical exotism and cultural identity

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