www.joeuser.com/articles.asp?c=1&AID=100703
Most racists I encounter fall into two groups: Group 1: People who are indoctrinated to be racists. They grow up around racist people and become racist themselves. These are the people who will go to ridiculous lengths to "prove" that one race is "better" than another. They'll say "Look at all those <insert racial group here> doing that? Perhaps a product of their culture but not of their genetic code. To use an analogy, ones race is like the hardware of a person. And while there are certainly minute differences between one race and another due to the pressures of natural selection over the past 100,000 years, those differences are not very significant. For example, if you take two identical personal computers and install two different operating systems on them, they will behave remarkably different. And on that point, I won't cower to political correctness and try to say all cultures are equal. A culture's ability to produce happy, well adjusted people who live a long productive life has some subjectivity to it but not a lot. If someone reading this wants to say "Well maybe misery and suffering is 'good' to some people? Who is to say that happiness, joy, physical health, and longevity are 'better'?" And indeed, it gets hard to say that one is "better" in all ways than another. But in the case of human culture, I don't think it's a MacOS vs. some machine whose running an OS that requires people to flip switches and put in punch cards. The differences between some human cultures is so vast that it's pretty obvious that it's not geography or bad luck that caused the discrepancies. Some cultures simply fail, utterly, to produce happy, healthy, prosperous, productive people. When I see the behavior of the Islamic world, I don't think "Damn Arabs." I don't think there's any significant genetic difference. But I think at this point we can say that the Islamic culture, as a whole, has some serious problems. There are several different major cultures on our planet: * American liberalism * European socialism * Japanese * Chinese * Indian * Russian Orthodox * Latin American * Islamic These are just the largest ones that come to mind that have a specific identity. African-Americanism, Latin American Socialism, Sub-Sahara African cultures, Eastern Europe Orthodoxy/Slavic which is quite different than European Socialism, Australian liberalism. And even within these various groups, there are different modest differences. I'm just pointing this out before someone jumps in with semantics and wants to list off the ones I mised. Most of the major cultures have their pros and cons to them. Just as we might debate whether MacOS is better than Windows XP, we can debate whether American liberalism, with its consumerism is better than European socialism with its economic stagnation. So for the most part, debating the various major cultures is like trying to debate Windows vs. But it seems to me that the Islamic culture stands out amongst them all as being the most problematic. I can't remember a time in my 34 years of life where the Islamic World wasn't blowing up something, murdering innocencts, or lashing out at something. There are lots of theories as to why there are Muslim extremists who have a pattern of doing this kind of thing. I can't think of any other cultures that so routinely and consistently use their people as ordinance. Muslims can't even claim to have suffered particularly harshly compared to other cultures. My personal theory is that at some level, Muslims know that there is something wrong with their culture. That it fails to produce happy, healthy, prosperous people at anywhere near the rate of other cultures. And rather than trying to adapt (borrow features from) other cultures, it simply blames other cultures and lashes out. The Muslim riots over the pictures of their prophet being in a Danish newspaper come across as more than just violent. A big temper tantrum from a culture that routinely cuts the heads off people, sets fire to the religious and national symbols of other cultures and nations, and intentionally murders women and children whose crime is that they are from a different culture. If the Muslim world were an individual person, it would be a slow-witted spoiled brat child with psychotic tendancies. I personally think the world would be better off if Islamic culture were to disappear -- entirely. I definitely think that the human beings who inhabit the places that are dominated by that culture would be better off (the women definitely would be). I can't think of a single contribution to the world that the Islamic world has provided in the past 500 years. You have to go all the way back to the middle ages to find anything and how much of that was due to geography -- the Islamic world is centered around the fertile crescent where much of Indoeuropean civilization started from. But as a practical matter, people won't stand up and say the obvious: Some cultures are not as good as others. They won't say it because you'll have unscrupulous politicians and opportunists tag those who say it as "Racist" even though race and culture are unrelated. And because people won't say the obvious, they cannot move people to action. A worldwide movement to put pressure on the Islamic world to knock it off and grow up would probably do some good. While the other cultures continue to evolve and improve themselves, the Islamic culture stagnates and revels in hatred and violence. I define "Better" in terms that I think are pretty universal for human kind.
Texas Wahine Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2006 If it would even matter at all, I'd give you an insightful. I think what you're saying has a lot of validity, and you've chosen a very clear, understandable, (and unique) analogy to illustrate it.
Andrew J Brehm Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2006 Very true. There are no differences between different races or colours or whatever else a man is born with; Socialism (and communism) used to be about creating a better society, a better culture. It was argued that communism was a superior culture to capitalism and feudalism and what not. But the idea that some cultures are better than others is right. I seriously believe that an English-speaking man in a suit who drinks tea is better, culturally, than other people. I believe that everybody can become an English-speaking man in a suit and drink tea. You forgot the British culture, which is between the American and the European. It spans the British isles (including Ireland), Canada, Australia, and New-Zealand as well as some other countries and islands. The differences between the British (including the Irish) and the French are bigger than the differences between the Germans, the Italians, and the French. It is difficult for me to think of an American culture, as it is an off-shoot of the British culture, which I now define as a mixture between American and European. It is a mixture not because of American influences (although there are now many), but because of where the American culture comes from. European, British, and American culture are, of course, also related and owe a lot to Jewish culture, which is, again, now a mixture between the three (specifically German) and the Islamic (specifically Arabic) culture.
BenUser Posted: Sunday, February 12, 2006 Cultures based on religion are generally problematic and often result in hatred and violence. We see that happening throughout the Middle East and Europe with the Islamic culture, but the Christian culture also has a history of hatred and violence. Christian fundamentalists have committed murder in the name of God for nearly 2000 years. The Crusades, The Reformation, The Inquisition, the actions of the KKK, and the murders of doctors who performed abortions are a few of the worst atrocities, not to mention the numerous wars that were fought between various Christian sects. Some of the cultures in your list are probably not really cultures. You find liberals in all walks of life just like you find conservatives, although liberals are definitely better looking.
European socialism is a form of government, not a culture. The United States is made up of many d...
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