| Author: | Rahul M [ 12 Dec 2008 06:14 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
this is wrt brihaspati ji's post in the elections thread. viewtopic.php?f=1&p=585906#p585906 from an email discussing if Indian society is already pluralistic in nature. the reference to european countries is, I believe, relevant. Quote: exclusivity is usually a manifestation of insecurities of an individual or in case of a society, of the collective consciousness. pluralism in such societies are forced from the top to serve the larger interests of the native population, usually those related to trade and manpower shortages and occasionally politics. if europe finds pluralism is not serving its interests(not necessarily causing any harm !) it will only be too happy to go back to exclusivity. it doesn't help if the religious doctrines followed in these lands get shaped by similar exclusivist mentality. One reason for this psyche is the history of ancient and medieval europe. A land which can hardly support its occupants does not encourage people to welcome 'others'. In this backdrop it is not surprising that europe saw as many wars as it did and that it is still, essentially a fragmented continent. given its small size, it is surprising that it has so many political entities if we consider say, India as the norm. on the other hand India is surprising if europe is the norm ! Here is why I think this happened. Inspite of some common heritage from greco-roman times, mainly due to roman occupation, the only common point europeans identified themselves around happened to be the fact that they were fighting for the same lands outside europe and winning against the natives ! with it came a bit of shared racial superiority complex but not much more. the european identity asserted itself only when there was consistent interaction of a large part of european masses with non-whites elsewhere, something which started in the 15th century but picked up pace with the industrial revolution. and even this didn't stop them from continuing to fight tooth and nail among themselves, resulting in a number of bloody wars amongst themselves. another interesting point is the fact that virtually all european nation states started out as city-states and expanded outwards. starting from rome which was always at war with cities of northern italy and the greek cities which were fighting among themselves european history is basically the history of its city-states and NOT of the political entities we call nations today. therefore, we find that nationhood does not come to europe naturally, the states we see today are basically a forced grouping of city-states overcoming their distrust of each other(as the outsider) in order to protect themselves against the 'alien' (a worse kind of outsider). a glimpse at the age of these entities gives ample proof of this fact. the places we call italy or germany today are essentially artificial constructs borne out of a reaction to the 'outsiders' threat. (it is of course a credit to the rulers that they have successfully removed the internal friction systematically over a few decades) is it any wonder that the populace there find it difficult to imbibe the values of pluralism ?? USA is a slightly different case as the various europeans who landed there had to work together to defend against (what else ?) the outsider threat ! in the end, the cities did become a melting pot, for whites at least. I suppose the situation is changing now. US cities are more pluralistic because they have more experience of bringing people outside to do the job, the last major example being the manhattan project. they know the benefit outsiders bring to the country and hence put up with them. europe will also go the same way if it reaps similar benefits. But I doubt they will, for one, they don't have as much money and two, they are late to the party ! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- in India, you will find that even the smaller states were much more organic in nature. it is not a case of city-states giving rise to larger states but large chunks of the subcontinent forming states. e.g the maurya empire started as the magadha empire and not as one based in pataliputra. indeed, the capital of magadha was moved from rajgir to pataliputra from the times of the earlier magadha kingdoms without any substantial alteration in the nature of the empire. essentially, what this means is that Indian states drew their identity from the villages and the common people, in that their roots went much deeper and wider than an alliance forged by a city-state would. the smaller states were almost always divided by geographical features and not by cultural ones -- a river, a mountain range, an extensive forest. cultural differences arose later, as an effect of this divison. the Indian state was thus by design more inclusive in nature, in spite of the likeliness that one geographical area probably had more dialects spoken than all of europe ! (please see NOTE) In India, unbelievably, throughout this vast and diverse landscape, people still found enough common ground to proclaim themselves as belonging to a shared nationhood of aryavarta. It is this that prevented the kings from unleashing horrors and rapine on the populace of conquered states -- they may be under an enemy king but they themselves were not enemy. All this has perhaps to do with the fact that the original blueprint of the glue i.e SD spread from one small geographical area to the whole sub-continent, taking the local hues and colours as it went and emerging all the more richer out of it. is it pluralism as the west defines it ? I don't think so. Indians are essentially one people with similar defining characteristics who have certain perturbations from the mean and people who are one nation living together can't be considered pluralism, can it ? In the Indian context, pluralism check can only be carried out in the instances when foreigners outside of India came into this country. due to the tolerant ethos of the native creed people who didn't come with ill-will were always accepted into the fold. that, may be called pluralism ! Have I answered any of your questions or is it all gibberish ? regards. NOTE.1) the more fertile and/or habitable a place is larger the no of languages. equatorial africa has the highest # of spoken languages/sq. km in the world. this happens because communities tend to be self-sufficient w/o much interaction. That, is just a facet of human evolution. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 12 Dec 2008 09:38 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
surinder wrote: There was an interesting program on Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on PBS TV last night. Chavez has a weekly TV show on which journalists come too. A British journalist asked him why Chavez has tried to get the governers elected, but increase his tem limit. Chavez took him to town. Mocked him and cynically mocked the Europe's contempt for those "barbaric Indians, Blacks of S. America". He asked the journalist you have a queen, is she elected? The journalists just looked crushed. All he said was he was Irish and a republican. Which still did not answer why The Guardian (he was from this newspaper) would ask a Venezualan why his term is longer than that of governers, but why not ask the Queen why she is never elected? How did the Guardian or Times etc reporters dare question his CEOness General President Musharraf's LFO? The monarchy doesnt rule Britain. There would certainly be hell to pay if it tried to. The last time monarchy and the parliament got in to an argument it was three and a half centuries ago, somebody lost their head, and it wasnt anyone from parliament. How many people inside or outside the UK think democracy there is under threat? The president rules Venezuela, and Chavez has repeatedly attempted to drastically alter its constitution, and the existing system of checks and balances. The Guardian routinely prints matter critical of the UK's monarchy, which the monarchy always responds to. It has to since it only exists through public forbearance. In Chavez's case his only defence is denunciations of imperialism and racism, and whatever other distraction he can muster. Mugabe did the same thing for a few years - try to turn an issue about dictatorship in to an anti-colonial issue. It only works if you have the genuine support of the majority of your public. That means delivering results, year after year all along Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Dictatorship can never do that. Mugabe instead turned Zimbabwe, one of the wealthiest African countries in to one of its poorest. Chavez has not been given the same initial free hand by the Venezuelan public, so he hasnt succeeded in ruining Venezuela yet. And if he ever succeeds, foreigners who defended him will feel just as embarassed about the results as those who defended Mugabe or Musharraf. Dictators are dictators, regardless of race or ideology, or the race or the ideology of the people who point out what they are. | |
| Author: | durgesh [ 14 Dec 2008 06:16 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Collection of World’s best quotes on Vedic Culture and Hinduism “Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries” - Robert Oppenheimer, Father of Modern Atomic Bomb The juxtaposition of Western civilization’s most terrifying scientific achievement with the most dazzling description of the mystical experience is given to us by the Bhagavad Gita, India’s greatest literary monument. - Robert Oppenheimer, referring to the description of atomic bomb in Bhagavadgita When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous. - Albert Einstein The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still. - Carl Sagan, Well known Astrophysicist I go into the Upanishads to ask questions. - Niels Bohr, Well known Quantum Physicist The apparent multiplication of gods is bewildering at the first glance, but you soon discover that they are the same GOD. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible gods. In fact Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the most profound Methodist, and crudest idolater, are equally at home with it - George Bernard Shaw This life of yours which you are living is not merely apiece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance. This, as we know, is what the Brahmins express in that sacred, mystic formula which is yet really so simple and so clear; tat tvam asi, this is you. Or, again, in such words as “I am in the east and the west, I am above and below, I am this entire world.” - Erwin Schrodinger, Well known Quantum Physicist A millennium before Europeans were wiling to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions and the Hindus billions. - Carl Sagan, Well known Astrophysicist The Vedas compare creation to a spider’s web, that the spider creates and then lies within. God is both the container of the universe and what is contained in it. - Ramakrishna The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. In 1925, the world view of physics was a model of a great machine composed of separable interacting material particles. During the next few years, Schrodinger and Heisenberg and their followers created a universe based on super imposed inseparable waves of probability amplitudes. This new view would be entirely consistent with the Vedantic concept of All in One. - Erwin Schrodinger, Well known Quantum Physicist The true Vedantic spirit does not start out with a system of preconceived ideas. It possesses absolute liberty and unrivalled courage among religions with regard to the facts to be observed and the diverse hypotheses it has laid down for their coordination. Never having been hampered by a priestly order, each man has been entirely free to search wherever he pleased for the spiritual explanation of the spectacle of the universe. -Romain Rolland “Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity within by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy: by one, or more, or all of these — and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.” -Swami Vivekananda Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves. - Erwin Schrodinger, Well known Quantum Physicist “The Hindu believes that he is a spirit. Him the sword cannot pierce; him the fire cannot burn; him the water cannot melt; him the air cannot dry. The Hindu believes that every soul is a circle whose circumference is nowhere, but whose center is located in the body, and that death means the change of this center from body to body“ -Swami Vivekananda “I had practiced Hinduism from early childhood. My nurse had taught me to invoke Rama when I feared evil spirits. Later on I had came in contact with Christians, Muslims and others, and after making a fair study of other religions, had stuck to Hinduism. I am as firm in my faith today as in my early childhood.” -Mahatma Gandhi I am a Hindu hence I Love not only human beings, but all living beings. Hinduism insists on the brotherhood of not only all mankind but of all that lives. -Mahatma Gandhi Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach, but there are always scrupulously careful to take into consideration the possibility that by reason both the agnostic and atheist may attain truth in their own way. Such tolerance may be surprising to religious believers in the West, but it is an integral part of Vedantic belief. - Romain Rolland It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in human history , the only way of salvation is the ancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude and spirit that can make it possible for the human race to grow together in to a single family. - Dr. Arnold J. Toynbee - British Historian Benares (A Hindu holy place in India on the banks of river Ganges) is holy. Europe, grown superficial, hardly understands such truths anymore…..I feel nearer here than I have ever done to the heart of the world; here I feel everyday as if soon, perhaps even today, I would receive the grace of supreme revelation…The atmosphere of devotion which hangs above the river is improbable in strength; stronger than in any church that I have ever visited. Every would be Christian priest would do well to sacrifice a year of his theological studies in order to spend his time on the Ganges; here he would discover what piety means. - Count Hermann Keyserling - philosopher Amid all the beliefs of Europe, and of Asia, that of the Indian Brahmins seems to me infinitely the most alluring. And the reason why I love the Brahmin more than the other schools of Asiatic thought is because it seems to me to contain them all. Greater than all European philosophies, it is even capable of adjusting itself to the vast hypotheses of modern science. Our Christian religions have tried in vain, when there were no other choice open to them, to adapt themselves to the progress of science. But after having allowed myself to be swept away by the powerful rhythm of Brahmin thought, along the curve or life, with its movement of alternating ascent and return, I come back to my own century, and while finding therein the immense projections of a new cosmogony, offspring of the genius of Einstein, or deriving freely from the discoveries, I yet do not feel that I enter a strange land. I yet can hear resounding still the cosmic symphony of all those planets which forever succeed each other, are extinguished and once more illumined, with their living souls, their humanities, their gods – according to the laws of the eternal To Become, the Brahmin Samsara – I hear Siva dancing, dancing in the heart of the world, in my own heart. - Romain Rolland | |
| Author: | ramana [ 16 Dec 2008 04:30 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Thanks for those quotes on Vedic Culture and Hinduism... X-posted... Deccan Chronicle, 15 Dec., 2008 Quote: ‘Circling’ pig critical Penugonda, Dec. 15: The white piglet that began circumambulating the dhwaja sthambham of the Venkateswara Swamy temple on Sunday, collapsed at about for 4.30 pm on Monday. Thousands of people had watched the piglet which circumambuled the pillar well into the second day at Sidhantham village in Penugonda mandal in the West Godavari. The piglet had been continuously circling the dhwaja sthambham with occasional breaks, without accepting any food A veterinarian found that the animal had become weak and its pulse rate had fallen. As the piglet lay on the floor, devotees offered it dry grass, shifted it on to a gunny bag and covered it with a cloth. Devotees, temple staff and a veterinary doctor are keeping an eye on the animal, whose condition is critical. Prominent vedic pandit Chirravuri Krishna Somayajulu said, "The piglet has taken up deeksha by observing fast in the presence of Venkateswara Swamy. On December 16, Dhanur Masam will begin and the doors of Vaikuntam will be opened." Devotees fear it may not survive that long. Strange are the ways of Vishnu. Only in India can such an incident happen. In Islamic lands the piglet would be killed. In Enlightened lands he would be taken to a farm and then killed after he grows. May he get moksha and breakout of this cycle of life and death! --------- I dont know the follow-up story. If Andhra Pradesh members find out please post the follw-up. Thanks, ramana | |
| Author: | gandharva [ 17 Dec 2008 05:48 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: I dont know the follow-up story. If Andhra Pradesh members find out please post the follw-up. Piglet receives medical care Tanuku, Dec. 16: The white piglet, which fell unconscious after circling the Dwaja Sthambham at Venkateswaraswamy temple at Siddantham of Penugonda mandal in West Godavari in the last two days was shifted to a veterinary clinic for medical treatment on Tuesday. The animal, which slipped into a coma was examined by the veterinary doctors and was given a dose of saline. Its blood samples were collected and sent for analysis to a lab at Eluru. Veterinary doctor V. Prasad said that if necessary they would send the blood samples to Hyderabad for examination. He suspected that the animal might have been infected with brain related disease resulting in the animal going in circles at the temple. http://www.deccanchronicle.com/City/Cit ... cal%20care | |
| Author: | R Vaidya [ 18 Dec 2008 03:20 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Government Gifts Rs. 23 crore to Harvard When Indian Institutions are starved http://www.dnaindia.com/dnaprint.asp?newsid=1214632 R.vaidya | |
| Author: | ramana [ 09 Jan 2009 11:05 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Pay attention to the boled part. ramana wrote: op-ed Pioneer, 31 oct., 2008 Quote: Art of looking the other way Francois Gautier Those who select the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize suffer from selective amnesia about India and its ancient knowledge and traditions. Hence the winner is not an Indian In a remarkable book, L'oubli de l'Inde (Amnesia of India), French philosopher and journalist Roger-Pol Droit recounts how till the 19th century Europe's admiration for Indian philosophy and spirituality was boundless, particularly in France and Germany, both terra franca of philosophical thought. He explains how, for instance, French philosopher Pierre Sonnerat had written in the 18th century: "Ancient India gave to the world its religions and philosophies: Egypt and Greece owe India their wisdom and it is known that Pythagoras went to India to study under Brahmins, who were the most enlightened of human beings." Or how German philosophers, such as Friedrich Schlegel, have said: "There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit." Nietzsche had read the Vedas, which he admired profoundly and thought that "Buddhism and Brahmanism are a hundred times deeper and more objective than Christianity". It was not only in the realm of philosophy that Europe admired India. American mathematician A Seindenberg wrote: "Arithmetic equations were used in the observation of the triangle by the Babylonians and the theory of contraries and of inexactitude in arithmetic methods, discovered by Hindus inspired Pythagorean mathematics". Seventeenth century French astronomer Jean-Claude Bailly had already noticed that "the Hindu astronomic systems were much more ancient than those of the Greeks or even the Egyptians and the movement of stars which was calculated by the Hindus 4,500 years ago, does not differ from those used today by even one minute". When Nietzsche died in January 1889, the India of philosophy, of the Vedas and spirituality seemed to have disappeared with him from the consciousness of Europeans. Since then, Europe (and the United States) believe in what Droit calls "Helleno-Centrism", that all philosophical systems started with Greece and there was nothing worth the name before the Greeks. The two main culprits for this amnesia of India in Europe, thinks Pol Droit, are the British colonisers and the Christian missionaries. How could the English, they who had come to civilise the 'heathens', admit that their culture was derived from these very savages? And how could the missionaries, they who had come to bring the 'true god' to the Pagans, acknowledge that their own religion may have been influenced by the latter, as Jesus Christ is supposed to have come to India to study Hinduism and Buddhism? What has this got to do with the Nobel Peace Prize, you may ask? Well, first, one has to understand the minds of the Nobel Peace Prize committee members: When they award prizes, they are necessarily influenced by a Christian vision of the world. For, as most Europeans, they have been brought-up in the belief that democracy and philosophy started with Greece and that a humane civilisation began with Jesus Christ. And, of course, they have a covert -- or at best unconscious -- suspicion, if not of India at least of Hindus, who for them remain Pagans, which the missionaries of yesteryears, and unfortunately those of today too, have created in the minds of many Westerners. How can they then give Peace Prize to a Hindu? Among those Indians most nominated in the last few years is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living. Sri Sri is not only involved with charity in India's villages, he also promotes pesticide and fertiliser-free farming, takes orphans from Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East into his ashram, and his volunteers do relief work, both at the physical and psychological level -- whether in Bihar during the floods, in Iraq or in the US during the recent cyclone. Sri Sri is also trying to revive the ancient Vedic tradition by training young priests in a gurukul, which blends ancient knowledge with modern thought, while promoting ayurveda as the medicine of the 21st century. There is only one problem: Sri Sri is a Hindu. In the same way the Nobel judges ignored Sri Aurobindo, India's extraordinary yogi, poet, revolutionary, and philosopher and France is yet to acknowledge that one of the great figures of the 20th century was his spiritual companion, Mira Alfassa, the 'Mother'. Will Sri Sri ever get the Nobel then? Maybe his manifold work confuses the judges. For, if you analyse all recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients, you will see that they were crowned for their work which carries only one label. Sri Sri is not bothered and goes on with his work. As he gains fame in the West, he helps erase the amnesia about India and revive admiration and thirst for Sri Sri's knowledge. | |
| Author: | Karna_A [ 10 Jan 2009 01:18 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
There are 2 types of Nobel prize winners. One that increase their own prestige after winning the award and others that increase the prestige of the award itself by winning it. Most who won are in first category. The ones in the story would have been in the 2nd category had they won. ramana wrote: Pay attention to the boled part. ramana wrote: op-ed Pioneer, 31 oct., 2008 Quote: Art of looking the other way Francois Gautier Those who select the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize suffer from selective amnesia about India and its ancient knowledge and traditions. Hence the winner is not an Indian In a remarkable book, L'oubli de l'Inde (Amnesia of India), French philosopher and journalist Roger-Pol Droit recounts how till the 19th century Europe's admiration for Indian philosophy and spirituality was boundless, particularly in France and Germany, both terra franca of philosophical thought. He explains how, for instance, French philosopher Pierre Sonnerat had written in the 18th century: "Ancient India gave to the world its religions and philosophies: Egypt and Greece owe India their wisdom and it is known that Pythagoras went to India to study under Brahmins, who were the most enlightened of human beings." Or how German philosophers, such as Friedrich Schlegel, have said: "There is no language in the world, even Greek, which has the clarity and the philosophical precision of Sanskrit." Nietzsche had read the Vedas, which he admired profoundly and thought that "Buddhism and Brahmanism are a hundred times deeper and more objective than Christianity". It was not only in the realm of philosophy that Europe admired India. American mathematician A Seindenberg wrote: "Arithmetic equations were used in the observation of the triangle by the Babylonians and the theory of contraries and of inexactitude in arithmetic methods, discovered by Hindus inspired Pythagorean mathematics". Seventeenth century French astronomer Jean-Claude Bailly had already noticed that "the Hindu astronomic systems were much more ancient than those of the Greeks or even the Egyptians and the movement of stars which was calculated by the Hindus 4,500 years ago, does not differ from those used today by even one minute". When Nietzsche died in January 1889, the India of philosophy, of the Vedas and spirituality seemed to have disappeared with him from the consciousness of Europeans. Since then, Europe (and the United States) believe in what Droit calls "Helleno-Centrism", that all philosophical systems started with Greece and there was nothing worth the name before the Greeks. The two main culprits for this amnesia of India in Europe, thinks Pol Droit, are the British colonisers and the Christian missionaries. How could the English, they who had come to civilise the 'heathens', admit that their culture was derived from these very savages? And how could the missionaries, they who had come to bring the 'true god' to the Pagans, acknowledge that their own religion may have been influenced by the latter, as Jesus Christ is supposed to have come to India to study Hinduism and Buddhism? What has this got to do with the Nobel Peace Prize, you may ask? Well, first, one has to understand the minds of the Nobel Peace Prize committee members: When they award prizes, they are necessarily influenced by a Christian vision of the world. For, as most Europeans, they have been brought-up in the belief that democracy and philosophy started with Greece and that a humane civilisation began with Jesus Christ. And, of course, they have a covert -- or at best unconscious -- suspicion, if not of India at least of Hindus, who for them remain Pagans, which the missionaries of yesteryears, and unfortunately those of today too, have created in the minds of many Westerners. How can they then give Peace Prize to a Hindu? Among those Indians most nominated in the last few years is Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living. Sri Sri is not only involved with charity in India's villages, he also promotes pesticide and fertiliser-free farming, takes orphans from Jammu & Kashmir and the North-East into his ashram, and his volunteers do relief work, both at the physical and psychological level -- whether in Bihar during the floods, in Iraq or in the US during the recent cyclone. Sri Sri is also trying to revive the ancient Vedic tradition by training young priests in a gurukul, which blends ancient knowledge with modern thought, while promoting ayurveda as the medicine of the 21st century. There is only one problem: Sri Sri is a Hindu. In the same way the Nobel judges ignored Sri Aurobindo, India's extraordinary yogi, poet, revolutionary, and philosopher and France is yet to acknowledge that one of the great figures of the 20th century was his spiritual companion, Mira Alfassa, the 'Mother'. Will Sri Sri ever get the Nobel then? Maybe his manifold work confuses the judges. For, if you analyse all recent Nobel Peace Prize recipients, you will see that they were crowned for their work which carries only one label. Sri Sri is not bothered and goes on with his work. As he gains fame in the West, he helps erase the amnesia about India and revive admiration and thirst for Sri Sri's knowledge. | |
| Author: | sureshm [ 11 Jan 2009 07:19 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The problem with a non-western view is NOT that there aren't people willing to present such views. Those who do often present ridiculous views, so ridiculous that even a non-westerner would be ashamed. Take Hindus, for instance. They keep complaining that western view is dominant, we judge ourselves through their school of thought etc. etc., but the ideas they present are so silly and outdated that they've become the laughing stock of the world. I think Elst has written something about this. He's alleged that while westerners produce mountains of literature covering practically every area of life, Hindus like Golwakar, Gandhi etc. come up with poorly written works like Bunch of thoughts, Experiments with truth, and books which have absolutely no intellectual content, whatsoever. They're simply ramblings and nothing more. There's no vision, no intellectual analysis, nothing, simply vague, irrelevant, jingoistic stuff with zero objectivity/rationalism. No wonder western school still remains dominant, they've earned it with painstaking efforts. Contrast this with books written by Hindus, and you'll see too much emotionalism, zero intellectualism, too much patriotism, zero rationalism, no scientific analysis of a given situation, be it economics or politics or whatever, simply vague, mystical stuff about yoga, meditation, and things that are completely irrelevant to the real world. No wonder non-western views aren't taken seriously. Unless Hindus become more realistic and materialistic, and less mystical, they're gonna be treated this way. | |
| Author: | Eshwar [ 12 Jan 2009 04:47 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
sureshm, The western masters have spoken thus about Swami Vivekananda, "I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of this book at thirty distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shock, what transport, must have been produced when, in burning words, they issued from the lips of the hero! " - Romain Rolland ( French Nobel Laureate ) Hope this will help in removing ones prejudices. Or does one require more praises from the western masters to convince someone. | |
| Author: | sureshm [ 12 Jan 2009 07:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Eshwar wrote: sureshm, The western masters have spoken thus about Swami Vivekananda, "I cannot touch these sayings of his, scattered as they are through the pages of this book at thirty distance, without receiving a thrill through my body like an electric shock. And what shock, what transport, must have been produced when, in burning words, they issued from the lips of the hero! " - Romain Rolland ( French Nobel Laureate ) Hope this will help in removing ones prejudices. Or does one require more praises from the western masters to convince someone. Agreed, but two points must be considered. People like V are few and far between. Besides, we don't have such personalities in fields other than religion, such as in politics, economics etc. Contrast this with the vast amounts of literature in the west, where they try to analyze everything under the sun from a western perspective. Whereas, in India, Hindu nationalists often come up with vague ideas on cow protection, whether or not to wear a bindi, the evils of Valentine's Day...all this makes Hindu intellectuals look like buffoons. And yet, they complain they aren't taken seriously! | |
| Author: | ramana [ 12 Jan 2009 07:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
This thread is not to discuss Hindu point of view only. Please take it elsewhere as you are critiquing something not in the thread topic. Thanks, ramana | |
| Author: | sureshm [ 12 Jan 2009 08:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: This thread is not to discuss Hindu point of view only. Please take it elsewhere as you are critiquing something not in the thread topic. Thanks, ramana Non-western includes Hindu viewpoint. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 12 Jan 2009 08:55 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I have spent seven years nurturing this idea so that it has a thread of its own and dont want it destroyed. So please heed my request. moreover I have the whine thread for complaints about other things. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 22 Jan 2009 04:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-posted... abhischekcc wrote: The actual roots of this crisis are very simple to understand - the west is addicted to "luxury without work". Or more precisely, the goods they produce are worth less than the goods they consume. They made up the difference by issuing debt. The scam, as SS-Roy said, has been going on since the 70s. However, the (non-caucasian) world lapped up western debt because of the so called 'quality' of western institutions. Better governance equals lower risk equals lower cost of capital equals higher standard of living - or so we were told. Now, with all the scams breaking out, especially those of rating services, we know how false the 'quality' of western institutions really is. It was all a big ponzi scheme - it had to end badly. Recall that Madoff, accused of running the 'biggest ponzi scheme' in the world is a former Nasdaq Chairman. What he was doing was essentially what the western financial system does. The west itself is the biggest ponzi scheme in the world - and it is payback time. ------------ Sometime ago, I noted that the collapse of the financial system will challenge not only the ruling financial philosophy (free market), but also democracy itself, because they are both based on the same principle - invisible hand, or the notion that private profit can produce public good. With hind sight we can now say ha bloody ha to all this, but there was a time when I really believed in this. Imagine, the west did not last half a generation in the post soviet state. -------------- The real big idea to watch for, going forward, will be - how much of this system will they be able to preserve. I mean, this has been a really profitable con for the west, right? If they try to create a new con (neo-con?  ), and that too when the non-west is more powerful than it has been since the industrial revolution, it might not work.So, the main thrust of their attempts will be to preserve as much of the system as they can. A series of western sovereign defaults is the most damaging possibility to the system. It even creates the possibility of old style protectionism, some thing I discounted just a few days ago. ------------ Another interesting possibility to watch for is the rise of religion in the west. It won't be 'Asian' religions like Hinduism or Buddhism. It will be fundamentalist Christianity and will fight neo-pagans like wicca/gaia/whatever. A severe cultural paralysis in the west now looms in the background. These are the most interesting times in this !@#$%^&*( world. and Singha wrote: when the Day of the Dog dawns my friend, it will be found the western citizenry is the most heavily armed in history - us, canada, italy, spain, greece, switzerland, nordics, rural france and rural england probably have heavy gun ownership. the militias would look to hang and burn the "culprits" whether it be Big Govt, yahudis, moslems and what not. the Far right parties, backed by support of EJs could win big going fwd. and abhischekcc wrote: Singha, you should not be watching mad max type thrillers  What I am trying to say is - it took nearly 3 centuries of post-renaissance for enlightenment to become the dominant religion of west. You can recognize enlightenment as liberalism. Look at all the genocidal wars in Europe during that time (accd to my definition - Hitler was a liberal  )It took all that fighting for enlightement to displace Christianity. Now enlightenment is threatened again. At any rate, the next theater of engagement for the U.S. Army is going to be ............. drumbeats ............. Mexico. The drug war in Mexico threatens to make Mexico a failed state. And this is one war that the US cannot get out of - because the contiguous Mexican population in the two countries will ensure that the reverberations from that country will shake US society as well. I honestly don't expect the armed US civilian militias to do anything except provide target practice opportunities for the crazies. ---------------------- my comments: In the immediate years after the collapse of Soviet Union there were many anxious articles and papers about the future of the West. Historically the victor of an existential struggle between two powers eg Rome and Carthage, Cholas and the Srivijaya, and so on itself collapsed or got transformed within 100 ~ 150 years. So the savants were wondering what would the future be like. Many of those studies were classified. I think the end of SU allowed the rise of Clinton and then Obama as a symbol of the changes in US society. ------------------------- The financial collapse is most intriguing that the toxicity in the systme was introduced as a way to defeat the SU during the 1907s but those who introduced the virus forgot about it after the SU collpase as they wanted to contiune and erase the National debt. -------- The UK with a population of ~60M has bigger bailout packages(850B Sterling) then the US which shows how shallow its eminence after WWII was. IK Gujral was before his time when the called UK a third rate power. --------- BTW has anyone coaught on to the transformation of the imagination of the West? The popularity of Harry Potter and LOTR genre etc. I think they are reaching deep into the pagan past as their mythology is non-existent in the post christian/post englightnement/Post modern society. A society without mythology will cease to continue. | |
| Author: | Neela [ 22 Jan 2009 05:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Follow up to ramana's X-post Neela wrote: ramana wrote: my comments: BTW has anyone coaught on to the transformation of the imagination of the West? The popularity of Harry Potter and LOTR genre etc. I think they are reaching deep into the pagan past as their mythology is non-existent in the post christian/post englightnement/Post modern society. A society without mythology will cease to continue. Interesting point. It has always baffled me as to why the West clung on to Christianity. In fact, that is a pan-human question. Note that even in India, all kingdoms and kings always claim that they are the lineage of some Solar or other dynasty. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 22 Jan 2009 05:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The west is a young civilization, and it has only recently managed to see what the zenith of prosperity means. This is the "saturation stage". Either you need a new driving passion, or you take the ancient Indian route - get bored with achievement and think of "something larger" something not connected to all that you have acheived, material or otherwise, something more timeless and abstract and detached that gives you a sense of greatness, over and above that what you have. I think two things have gone wrong in the west : (a) the political need for self delusion : their initial pre-colonial extreme poverty compared to South and east Asia, that made them break out and explore and colonize and extract capital. The corresponding need to be independent of and overcome the colonized economies, as well as shortage of skilled labour, leads to mechanization and development of exact sciences, with a great deal of contribution from borrowed and copied ideas from accumulated knowledge in the colonized countries. However memory of this early brutal exploitation, both its own populations as well as colonized ones, slave labour and slave trade, looting, and asymmetric trade, as well as the hard pursuit of knowledge and skills - have to be suppressed in modern western generations, so that the culture can get rid of its collective guilt. All the more necessary because the talents and potential of hitherto "subhumans" who needed "salvation" come close to native western populations out of necessity of shortage of skill. But this suppression of the real roots of prosperity and power of the west, gives rise to lack of understanding of the real mechanisms of economy and power - skills, knowledge, hard work, drive, and ability to dominate militarily. So education suffers, pursuit of excellence in knowledge suffers, populations take their levels of comfort granted without upgrading effort. (b) stemming partly from (a) and partly from the needs of imeprialism - the imposition of monotheistic, rule based belief systems. One the one hand these homogenize people and make them easier to mobilize for common purposes. On the other hand the very reason for their success, the simplification of the cognitive and decision making load on the brain, reduces the need/experience/capacity to tackle increasing complexity. Long subservience to simplified, rule based living and world view has fossilized the natural human urge to explore and face challenging ideas, and innovate, or even cope with increasing knowledge complexity. They yearn for a return to certainty, simplicity, for that would be much less taxing to the brain. This is why some take to fundamental Christianity, and others look for it in even older pre-christian motifs and roots. To a certain extent, I do find, that what saved India is largely its insistence on maintaining complexity - in language, mathematics, music - that just keeps the collective brain sharp on the grinding stone. | |
| Author: | sanjaykumar [ 22 Jan 2009 06:03 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
You seem to be making, in inverse, the same mistake that Western societies make- that is compare the Orissa slumdweller as representive of the non-Western world in comparasion to a nebulous virtual amalgam of cary Grant/Einstein/Albert Schweitzer as the Western prototype. Why is it any more sensible to compare Indian classical mathematicians with the common consumption unit (ccu or western everyman)? Why not use a more appropriate comparator? | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 22 Jan 2009 06:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: Why is it any more sensible to compare Indian classical mathematicians with the common consumption unit (ccu or western everyman)? Why not use a more appropriate comparator? From the part of India I hail from, quite complicated arithmetic of the "deshi" kind used to be imparted to tiny tots in traditional rural schools - way before the age western kids are allowed to get out of their play-schools. Some of these calculatiosn were based on non-decimal arithmetic. Level for level, India will still outperform. I did not have the classical Indian mathematician in mind - and to truly compare I would have to compare them with mathematicians of the same period from the west - unfortunately I would not be able to find one, so would not think of such comparisons. Just a pointer, slums exist in many other places than Orissa. Slums should make us all feel ashamed of ourselves, that our fellow countrymen have to live under such circumstances. Just because they are slum-dwellers, does not mean they lack intelligence, and hopefully you did not mean the "condition" as synonymous iwth "mentally challenged" - I have actual personal experience of leading night schools for some of these "slum dwellers" - and I have the unfortunate experience of teaching the "brightest kids" in the west, so am in quite good position to compare. | |
| Author: | sanjaykumar [ 22 Jan 2009 07:18 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The Western trailer court denizen has no interest in the slumdweller's native intelligence and sees him as only an extension of his surroundings. I have actual personal experience of leading night schools for some of these "slum dwellers" - and I have the unfortunate experience of teaching the "brightest kids" in the west, so am in quite good position to compare. This hints at something interesting if you care to develop it further. | |
| Author: | gandharva [ 27 Jan 2009 10:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Rethinking political thought in modern India (2009) http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... DE3&page=1 Description: Prof. Balagangadhara, Dr. Jakob De Roover, Dr. Vivek Dhareshwar and Prof. G. Shivaramakrishnan discuss the future of political thought. Recorded at the Fourth Dharma & Ethics Conference (Rethinking Political Thought in Modern India, 18-19 Jan. 2009), Kuvempu University, India [Audio Rec.]. | |
| Author: | nsriram [ 28 Jan 2009 02:52 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
gandharva wrote: Rethinking political thought in modern India (2009) http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... DE3&page=1 Description: Prof. Balagangadhara, Dr. Jakob De Roover, Dr. Vivek Dhareshwar and Prof. G. Shivaramakrishnan discuss the future of political thought. Recorded at the Fourth Dharma & Ethics Conference (Rethinking Political Thought in Modern India, 18-19 Jan. 2009), Kuvempu University, India [Audio Rec.]. Balu has a series of 8 videos on youtube. Highly recommended. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 25 Feb 2009 05:54 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Any one read the book by Jospeh Yahuda "Hebrew is Greek"? Puts the whole AIT on its head. | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 26 Feb 2009 10:43 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
This planet needs Hindu ethos Quote: It's the so-called secular flabbiness of the neo-rich and subjugated colonised English-speaking elite that has taken up the place left vacant by British sergeants and colonial masters. Hate Hindu- is their new professional slogan. Anything Hindu is despicable and arrogantly dismissible. Destroy Ram Sethu, arrest Kanchi Shankaracharya on Diwali night, ignore the brutal killing of an 80-year-old monk on Krishna Janmashtami night in Kandhamal, simply delete the memory of Godhra and never answer why 59 men, women and little kids were burnt to death in a steel compartment, on February 27 seven years ago, never ever mention the 290 Hindus murdered during what is known as Gujarat riots, never discuss the forced exodus of five lakh Kashmiri Hindus after their women were raped and children killed by 'brave' Nizam-e-Mustafa' Ghazis. Quote: Against such elements of hate, the Saffron is fighting a democratic battle through a new generation of IT-savvy saffronite youths. In the blog world, Facebook, internet battles, the Saffron is reigning high and the way we get their responses from California to Bangalore and Kolkata to Chennai via Santa Fe, it's simply bewildering and a great morale booster. | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 27 Feb 2009 01:49 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Brihaspati - My history teacher summed up European expansionism during the late Renaissance as the three Gs - God, Gold, and Glory. There was a time, literally, when the Pope in Rome took a map of the world, having never stepped out of the Vatican and drew lines on it to denote which parts of the world would be preserved for each European nation. That's how crazy it gets. Gold is an obvious one, but resources are an entirely different matter. It's the reason the shopkeepers took absolute dominance instead of Spain who before them were well reknowned (as I'm sure you know) for their famed "Spanish Armada". Naval control of the seas provided them with rich resources, but they made one vital mistake - they got complacent. The Spanish failed on two accounts. Once they found South and Central America, they settled down and became content with civilizing the natives in this area and moved on to great settlements, disregarding Africa and Asia. "Necessity is the mother of all invention" is the key idea here. People don't realize just how impovershed the English were just prior to their expansion. The Spanish literally blockaded their tiny, rained out, island for years before the natives decided to fight back. In the waning days of the Armada, the English took advantage, creating lighter craft to tackle lumberous Spanish warships. Driven to poverty, hunger, and thirst, the English began their world domination through insane desperation for basic necessities. It could certainly be argued in that line. India, on the other hand, was always a land of plenty. It had no reason to go anywhere else. In the "Distorted history.." thread, many were looking into droughts and rain levels during different parts of Indian history. It might be worth looking at those levels during the time of the Cholas and the Pandyas to explain their dominance of Southeast and East Asia. One might argue that Hinduism stemmed vast greed in the average person but one only needs to see Indian kings to see that not everyone was so humble. | |
| Author: | Yogi_G [ 27 Feb 2009 06:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
A very sane and well written article, I must say... India continues to be seen through Western eyes | |
| Author: | Neela [ 27 Feb 2009 07:12 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav , the pope thing drawing lines is mentioned in the book, The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin. | |
| Author: | Rudradev [ 27 Feb 2009 07:32 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: "Necessity is the mother of all invention" is the key idea here. People don't realize just how impovershed the English were just prior to their expansion. The Spanish literally blockaded their tiny, rained out, island for years before the natives decided to fight back. In the waning days of the Armada, the English took advantage, creating lighter craft to tackle lumberous Spanish warships. Driven to poverty, hunger, and thirst, the English began their world domination through insane desperation for basic necessities. It could certainly be argued in that line. Actually, many people DO realize this, and it's rarely advisable to assume that one knows more than everybody else Nonetheless, it isn't alluded to very often, and is an important perspective to bring up in the context of this discussion. It could very well have been the momentum of a desperate drive out of isolation and impoverishment that carried the British to global superpowerdom. I have often wondered if a similar dynamic may apply to the Chinese in the 20th century. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 27 Feb 2009 08:33 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The British probably simply happened to be on the Atlantic sea-board at a time when Europe's demand for Asian products was not being met due to specific geo-strategic disruptions to previous trade-supply routes. The main transition takes place with the expansion of the Islamic regimes across Central Asia, Levant, Near-middle east and North Africa, between 900 -1300. A lot is made out of the drive for trade goods from the East, but we then usually overlook that such goods must have had a market in Europe, which in turn implies that Europe was producing sufficient surplus to be exchanged for such exotic and expensive imports. The final straw was perhaps the complete collapse of the Byzantines and of the Venetian League. The fall of Moorish Spain, and of Byzantines is suspected by some to have contributed to the dissemination of stored knowledge of the Islamic and Eastern Christian libraries (which were again Arab transliterations as well as Greek and Latin sources of older Classic Europe as well as the knowledge stolen by the Arabs from India or China) into the European nations. A part of this could have renewed fresh blood into navigational and geographical knowledge in European powers. The loss of control over land access to the eastern goods, could be a prompting to find alternative sea-routes, which again could have been helped by the new geographical knowledge. All the early maritime enterprises appear to have targeted to reach India, to get exotic Indian products, which were high value products in the European markets. But then this also means that the European economies were producing sufficient surplus in a sustained manner to make such enterprises lucrative enough to risk so much. Britiain simply could have been the beneficiary of this maritime enterprise because of its position, its already bloody and ruthless unification under autocrats who again happened to be quite enterprising in boosting the economy of the country by undertaking militant expansion overseas. (Some of the technological advancements happened becuase of specific circumstances - lilke the use of iron for artillery instead of the traditional brass and puttin iron cannons on ships, etc). The first British venture significantly was the triangular Atlantic slave trade, and the profits from this trade fuelling the initial industrialization, and capital formation, which was used to gradually take over control of the Atlantic sea-lanes and stifle the Atlantic alternative curve down around Africa to India. My take on why the British proved too strong for Indians to resist ultimately, is that almost a 1000 years of continuous extraction and export of capital away from India by Muslim regimes, and their deliberate ruining of the basic economy weakened India so much that the non-Muslim revivalist states did not have sufficient time to resusciate the economy as a whole. This weakened state had not allowed upgrading of the military hardware and capabilities, and most importantly control of the sea-lanes to India. In the Indian Ocean, whichever power's navy controlled the western part ultimately took over India. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 27 Feb 2009 08:41 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
English state consolidation happened after the debilititous Hundred years war and fall of Plantagenet/Angevin dynasties and rise of the Tudors. Their internal squabbles were settled in favor of Tudor monarchy and the population rise ~100 years after the Black Death gave them surplus manpower. Their true potential was reached once the Dutch refugees/settlers amalgamated into the English society. | |
| Author: | Igorr [ 28 Feb 2009 06:44 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Yogi_G wrote: I have seen this cinema Slumdog Millionaire and must say it's really anti-Indian psyop kinda of that used against USSR. Also they try to canalize the west directed muslim agression to the Indian direction , by incitement of anti-hindutva sentiments in the Islamic world. Very poisoning film... | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 01 Mar 2009 12:53 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Igorr wrote: Yogi_G wrote: Also they try to canalize the west directed muslim agression to the Indian direction , by incitement of anti-hindutva sentiments in the Islamic world. Very poisoning film... I didn't know the RSS had a foothold in Moscow. The Kremlin is watching Igorr. Better be careful. | |
| Author: | SriKumar [ 01 Mar 2009 01:10 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: Igorr wrote: Also they try to canalize the west directed muslim agression to the Indian direction , by incitement of anti-hindutva sentiments in the Islamic world. Very poisoning film... Quote: I didn't know the RSS had a foothold in Moscow. Someone criticizes Slumdog and they get labeled RSS.  What about 'art for art's sake'? Art should be open to any and all forms of criticism, should it not? | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 01 Mar 2009 02:10 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
SriKumar wrote: Someone criticizes Slumdog and they get labeled RSS. What about 'art for art's sake'? Art should be open to any and all forms of criticism, should it not?By the Gods, it was a joke. I just thought it was funny that Igorr sounded exactly the same as any person in India who would have criticized the film. Then, I pushed it a little further for comic effect. That's all. Hindus are losing their sense of humor. I fully agree with the idea of "art for art's sake". I don't think enough people the statement seriously, though. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 01 Mar 2009 02:27 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Neela wrote: Follow up to ramana's X-post ramana wrote: my comments: BTW has anyone coaught on to the transformation of the imagination of the West? The popularity of Harry Potter and LOTR genre etc. I think they are reaching deep into the pagan past as their mythology is non-existent in the post christian/post englightnement/Post modern society. A society without mythology will cease to continue. Interesting point. It has always baffled me as to why the West clung on to Christianity. In fact, that is a pan-human question. Note that even in India, all kingdoms and kings always claim that they are the lineage of some Solar or other dynasty.[/quote] I have come to realize that modern Westerners cling to Science fiction and fantasy instead of mythology which is a pre-modern tradition. I now realize the importance of Bollywood movies like "Krissh" and "2050" genre for they are small steps in similar vein. | |
| Author: | SriKumar [ 01 Mar 2009 04:04 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: SriKumar wrote: Someone criticizes Slumdog and they get labeled RSS. Hindus are losing their sense of humor. What about 'art for art's sake'? Art should be open to any and all forms of criticism, should it not? | |
| Author: | Igorr [ 01 Mar 2009 09:47 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: I didn't know the RSS had a foothold in Moscow. The Kremlin is watching Igorr. Better be careful. Do you mean Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh? No, I dont think it is. But many of Russians are interested in pre-christian Russian religeon cult. As it's well known most close to Iranian Avestism and Induism. THere are many groups trying to revive these cults in Russia. Many peoples in Russia are keeping the national religeon in parallel with Abrahamit one. Ossetians, Finn and Ugric tribe in the European Russia North and Siberia etc. The Russian tradition religeon and Hinduism have common Indo-European root while Slavs are the most close to Indo-Aryan in linguistic aspect. I 'll give you a number of parallels in Russian and Sanskrit to feel the closeness. Only a note: sometimes pra-indoeuropean 'L' transformed to 'R' in sanskrit, 'n-' to 'a-', g' to 'h' or 'j', 's' to 'h'. Where Sanskrit has 'a' , Russian has 'o', 'vo' or 'e', 'ye': Gati - Gat' (road ), 'Patha - Put' (way) Pathika - Putnik (Putin - that of who on the way) Ad - Ad (Hell - it's 'eating people) Jusha - Jushka, (soup) Ada (adana) - Eda (food) Mansa, mas - Mjaso (meat) Pi, pa - Pit' (drink) Pachana - Pechen'e (cookie) Pitu - Napitok (drink) Pitar - Pitatel' (that who gives food) Pitva-- Pivshij (who has drunk) Pivan -- Polnyj (ru), Povnyj (ukr) plump Piva - Pivo (beer) Hirana - Zerno , granule Roh- Ros, Rasti grow Sola - Solenyj, salt Bhu - Byt' be Bhavanija - Byvanie, being Bul - Bul'kat' gurgle Budh Budit' to wake Vad - Vodit' lead Vari (water) - Varit' boil Vah- Vozit' travel Va - Vejat' blow Vrit - Vertet' revolve Lih - Lizat' lick Paravrit - Perevernut' roll Para - Pere (prefix) Parada - Peredat' transfer Bhri - Brat' take Ish - Iskat' to seek, Dhri - Derzhat' to take Dri - Drat' to tear Dra -- Udirat', run away Tur - Turit', drive out Tan - Tjanut' drag Trut - Teret' rub Tik - Tech', flow Tras - Trjastis', shake Sik, sich- Sochit', effuse Svap - Spat' sleep Da, daj- Dat' to give Davan - Davan'e giving Dana Dan', tribute Dadi - Dajushij , who tributes Udda - Otdat' , to give back Uddal - Otdelit', to set apart Hva, hve- Zvat' to call Hvana - Zov, zvan'e call Stha - Stat', stanovit'sja , to stay Nishpad- Nispadat' , to come down Pad - Padat' to fall Sad - Sadit', sidet' , to plant, to sit Upastha - Postojat' , to stand Li - Lezhat' , to lay down Lip - Lepit', to model Lup - Lupit', to beat Lepa - Lepka, modeling Lap - Lopotat', babble Tap - Teplit', utepljat', to warm Tapa(s) - Teplota, warm Hlad - Holodit', to cold Hladaka - Hlad, holod, cool Plavana - Plavanie swiming Plush ---- Pleskat' splash Paraplavate - Pereplyvat', to cross river or something water Kupaka -- Kopanka, pond Kup - Kopat' to dig Siv - Shit', sshivat' to sew Chhup - Shchupat' , to touch, to feel by touch Krish - Kroshit' to crumb Shush - Sushit' to dry Shushka - Sushka drying Much - Mochit' to wet Mok - Moknut' to get wet Duh to suck - Dudit', to play the pipe Dhu - Dut', razduvat' to blow up Pad - Padat' to fall Nud- Nudit' Utchal - Otchalivat', to move off Rush - Rushit' husk Grabh- Grabit' rob Kshi - Kysh! to send away Ghna to beat - Gnat', to expell Gan - Gonoshit' save up Dzhnu- Gnut' bend Hri, hra - Hranit', to hide Chi- Chinit', uchinjat' to make Utkrita - Otkryta is open Utkri - Otkryt', vskryt' to open Kri - Kryt', kroit' to cover, to shape Klrip - Krepit' strenghten Vartana- Vorot, povorot turn Stambh, stabh- Stolb , column Vara fence - Varok fence for cattle Kila- Klin, kol, chock Khila - Kol, perch Sphiya - Soha plow Kucha - Kucha hill heap Val - Val swell Vali- Valik little swell Dvar - Dver' door Dam -- Dom house Shala - Shalash, cover, hower Kanduka - Kadka pail Pach - Pech' bake Dhuma-- Dym fume Dagdha - Degot' oil tar Mekshana - Meshalka blender Uta - Utok woof Gharma - Zhar warmth Vish - Ves' hamlet Sthana - Stan, stojanka stay Stha- Stojat' to stay Nagna - Nagoj nude Bhadra - Bodryj buoyant Tanuka - Tonkij thin Tunga - Tugoj tight Laghu - Legkij light Liptaka - Lipkij sticky Kruncha - Kruchennyj spun Krunch - Krjuchit', to bend to spin Kurcha curl - Kurchavyj curly Juna - Junyj yung Nava - Novyj new Navina - Novina news Shajja - Sijanie shine Vranin - Ranenyj wounded Rana - Bran' battle Vrana - Rana wound Tomo - Temno darkness Suha - Suho dryiness Shveta - Svetlyj bright Drava - Derevo, drova, tree wood Valika - Valik roll Stupa - Stupa mortar Phena - Pena foam Prapiti - Propit' drink away Madhu - Med honey Chashaka - Chashka cap Chula - Chulan cupboard Nit'ja - Nit' thread Dara - Dyra, hole Drika - Dyrka, hole Kosha - Koshel' burse Mashaka - Meshok bag Ambaradzhami I'm save up - Ambar barn Vrika - Volk wolf Udra - Vydra otter Hansa - Gus' goose Kur - Kuritsa hen Kulika - Kulik sandpiper Mushka - Myshka mouse Avika - Ovca ship Psa - Pes dog Jadzhna sacrifice - Jagnja, lamb Dzhal - Zhalo dart Shira - Shilo awl Mesha - Meh, fur Pash - Pasti to graze Rava(rav) - Rev roar Bhurana - Brov' brow Vala(valin) - Volos hair Gala - Gorlo throat Hrid - Grud' chest Krika throat - Krik, cry Kulaka - Kulak fist Kesha - Kosa lock of hair Griva - Griva, zagrivok mane scruff Murti, murdhan- Morda phisiognomy Nakha - Nogot' nail Aksha - Oko , oculus Hridaja - Serdce, cor Ostha - Usta, mouth Sampadana - Sovpadenie coincidence Bhri - Bereginja - to nurse, nurse Shishumara - Kikimora, shishimora hobgoblin Moksha - Makosh', Mokosh-diva, Mokasha a goddess of Eastern slavs Khala sun - Hors , the god of Sun Jaga, jadzhna sacrifice - Baba-Jaga, woman taking part in sacrifice Abhimana, cheat – Obman deceit Abhra, centr – Oblast' , region Abhasa – Obraz image Aaprashch – Proshchat'sja to tell good buy Aapad, – beda misfortune Abhram – Oblako cloud Abh'jasena, praxis – Ob'jasnenie explanation Aval, turn – Oval oval Avalok, attention – Uvlechenie interest Avahita, attentive – Uvazhitel'nyj attentive valid Avesh'ja, is fixing – Ovesh'estvl'aja by objectifying Avid'ja – Nevedenie ignorance - As you could see, Russian is much closer to Indic languages then English or any other European language groop (with exepting may be Lithuanian). So our interest in antique Indian civilisation is stemed from the certain culture proximity. | |
| Author: | Yogi_G [ 01 Mar 2009 02:32 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I have been in a war of words with my colleagues...Most of them are positively inclined towards this film and in some cases even very proud of it. I question the motive behind the movie and I am branded as contrarian and Hindutvavaadi. The common question is "then why are you here in US then?"  Though my colleagues are extremely intellectual, eclectic and well-meaning, you just cant miss the effect of colonial hangover, the need to be recognized by the west... Personally I feel that every "influenced" culture has a critical mass. Influenced as in Christian Europe or Islamic Iran, critical mass as in events world-wide and unravelling of some skeletons in closet for the "influencing" culture. Here in India we are extremely influenced by the West (British to be specific) and the Abrahammic religions, given the world-wide debate currently on, further fueled by the info on the internet, the pride for the Indian culture is only increasing. Similar is the trend in Greece where the original Greek religion is making inroads and also in Russia as Igorr has mentioned.... | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 01 Mar 2009 07:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Yogi_Gji, ask your colleagues about what they think of the US society's various "liberal" social practices, and how far they would themselves participate in such practices. What about their own expectations from their spouses? I see this all the time, and I cut myself off from expat Indian society a decade ago - simply because I got tired of hearing how "bad" the "whites" are in social norms - how Indian women appear best in traditional Indian clothes on ceremonial gatherings, etc., while at the same time lambasting the Indic itself for every reported "dismal" picture of Indian society represented in the western media. I would hazard a guess - you are among colleagues who intensively studied for engineering or sciences, their parents ensuring that their whole life revolved around doing well in exams and going abroad, almost as if the home country was a leper which had to be left at the earliest opportunity. They were never forced to or their interests encouraged to know about the real history and culture of their country, never encouraged to query and investigate independent of dogma fed by school as to how things came to be as they appear to be, never really forced to interact with society at large and across social hierarchies, never worked in large social or political organizations that cut across social boundaries. They are simply "lost" Indian souls who never realize that they are lost. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 01 Mar 2009 07:37 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Yogi_G and brihaspatiji, A gentle reminder. This thread is the Indic looking at the West and not at the Indic. So please be restrained in this thread. Thanks, ramana | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 01 Mar 2009 08:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Igorr wrote: Do you mean Rashtriya Svayamsevak Sangh? It was a joke that didn't go to well with some of the other posters who forget that I coincidentally happen to be Indian and Hindu. Sorry about that. Quote: No, I dont think it is. But many of Russians are interested in pre-christian Russian religeon cult. As it's well known most close to Iranian Avestism and Induism. THere are many groups trying to revive these cults in Russia. Many peoples in Russia are keeping the national religeon in parallel with Abrahamit one. So they're mixing the Russian Orthodox Church with the old religions? Quote: Ossetians, Finn and Ugric tribe in the European Russia North and Siberia etc. The Russian tradition religeon and Hinduism have common Indo-European root while Slavs are the most close to Indo-Aryan in linguistic aspect. I 'll give you a number of parallels in Russian and Sanskrit to feel the closeness. Only a note: sometimes pra-indoeuropean 'L' transformed to 'R' in sanskrit, 'n-' to 'a-', g' to 'h' or 'j', 's' to 'h'. Where Sanskrit has 'a' , Russian has 'o', 'vo' or 'e', 'ye'. I can't confirm any of the Sanskrit words because I'm not priviliged enough to understand it  but I'd be interestd to know what the traditional Russian religion was. Do you have any links on it? Are there any aspects (festivals, holidays, rituals) that exist side by side with the ROC? For example, I've heard that Persians celebrate Zoroastrian holidays despite being Muslim. | |
| Author: | Yogi_G [ 01 Mar 2009 09:03 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Sorry Ramana garu for having gone OT... Brihaspati ji, as always, some good points made by you but let me respond to second para as that is about Indic view of West and more in line with this thread... One thing I have understood having spent 2 years in this country is that the West is just as fallible if not more than the "East"....When in India teachers, relatives and elders alike all kept telling stories about how punctual and clean people are in the West (they mean Goras and of course in US), how learned they are and how tolerant they are....I am sorry for the strong language but I realized that it is a load of bakwaas and hype....While it has to be accepted that in both factors the West is definitely better than the East, I still feel that it is not all rosy as is taught back home...Be it in the workplace or outside Western people are equipped with the same negative traits as is prevalent back home. Be it being late to a meeting or honouring a word or corruption or bending the rules or hoodwinking customers or lying politicians, people here in the States are just as suceptible for breaking rules as back home, only on a degree much lesser pronounced... I am not sure if I am the only guy with such a thought line, I could be wrong but am just penning down my thoughts here.... In hindsight all those hyped up stories of the West you hear back home of the super-efficient West is nothing but a hollow shell!! We need to fix that ahem stereotype. Again the culprit is the education system which always shows the West in good light (mostly) which again leads to the prevalence of super-efficient stereotypes of the West....this makes Indian audiences all the more receptive to movies and concepts such as SDM... Now I have my doubts about the Japanese, for both back home and here in the West tales of their super-efficient are abound JMT.... | |
| Author: | Yogi_G [ 01 Mar 2009 09:11 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: So they're mixing the Russian Orthodox Church with the old religions? Keshavji, a while back I had seen a program in Discovery where a western guy went deep into the Russian lands and was explaining the lifestyle there (I think the program was about re-tracing Jason's steps of golden fleece fame)...they showed a typical home in which you could see the images of Christ and nearby were some more Murtis of not sure who. THe guy then said that the local populace prayed to both Christ (Orthodox Church brand) and a "Pagan" god...sorry not sure which other religion was being prayed but I hope it anwers your question... | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 01 Mar 2009 09:37 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
In the remote parts of the Russian interior magic and "white witchraft" appears to have flourished even during the diehard days of Communism. Most organized religions have been unbale to completely wipe off older pagan practices in the west and Rus, and simply sometimes transformed and adopted within the canon. It is also possible, that the pagan practices were more in tune with nature and humanity of the geography concerned, rather than the Abrahamic traditions which carried stamps of abstraction and the different specific geography where they evolved. Once the state compulsion to impose these religious structures weaken, the people will revert to the more life celebratory and less guilt-driven ideologies. From the Indic viewpoint, we did manage to integrate the living world as a fundamental aspect of our spirituality which is derided as animism or magic or shamanism. The older Upanishadic form of Indic spirituality can give a great sense of liberation to the west. One aspect of the problem is that long getting used to centralized, micromanaging, rule based religions can create the need for a replacement by something similar that reduces the burden on the western brain - and the increasing danger of attraction for Islam. | |
| Author: | Igorr [ 02 Mar 2009 10:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: I'd be interestd to know what the traditional Russian religion was. Do you have any links on it? Are there any aspects (festivals, holidays, rituals) that exist side by side with the ROC? For example, I've heard that Persians celebrate Zoroastrian holidays despite being Muslim. For example, Russians celebrate a pagan holidays Maslenitsa between Feb.23-March.1 as they did it before Christianity. BTW, Ru-Church is recognising it. But last 15 years many Russians make efforts to revive traditioonal cults in more profounded maner. THey also try to be recognized as separated religeous community. For example this is Russian pagan calendar with all the pre-christian holidays, recommended for celebrating. 4 main holidays are for solstice (solncestoyanie) and equinox (ravno-denstvie) and others - for different gods. The name of the religeon in Russian is Rodnoverie. These are the volkhves (the priests) and the "jertva" (yajna). | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 02 Mar 2009 11:16 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Igorr have you read the "Nightwatch" series in original Russian? What do you think of it? What is the response in Russia? How accurate does it have a description of Russia and how influenced it is by existing and deep seated Russian thinking about world and the nature of good/bad duality in general? | |
| Author: | Igorr [ 02 Mar 2009 11:28 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Sanku wrote: Igorr have you read the "Nightwatch" series in original Russian? What do you think of it? What is the response in Russia? How accurate does it have a description of Russia and how influenced it is by existing and deep seated Russian thinking about world and the nature of good/bad duality in general? IMHO Russians are much more tolerant to different pluralistic thinking, then Europeans. Theya are more like Indians, Chinese or Japan. They more free can worship to more than one religeouse cult. THe Abrahamic religeouse monism and antagonism of 'white' and 'black' is rejected by Russian national mind. Russia never knew 'religeous war' in European mean of the word. Nightwatch' - is only one example of such complementation of 'good' and 'evil' in Russian mind. Indeed the Russian view is rather relativistic.Some more: the Russian pantheon | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 02 Mar 2009 12:12 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Thanks Igorr... Well actually I thought that Nightwatch was the series with most "grey" in it compared to most western Sci-Fi I have read. So I would actually think that it too is a example of what you said about Russians not seeing too much in black and white. I just wanted to know if it was an exception or as usual. So it seems Nightwatch is still not grey enough still though I really liked it BTW -- as I have liked most Russian Authors. | |
| Author: | Philip [ 03 Mar 2009 01:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Indian women of brilliance and grit By Jawed Naqvi Monday, 02 Mar, 2009 | 11:43 AM PST | Such is the magic of India, more so its women, that I want my friends from Pakistan to experience. - AP WHEN unforgivable events happen in India such as the demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 or the massacre of innocent Sikhs in 1984 and the Gujarat pogrom of Muslims in 2002, they fortify the ideological underpinnings behind religious separatism, which resulted, for example, in Pakistan. Of course Pakistan’s detractors in India, on the other hand, are only too happy to exude perverse glee at the catastrophic challenge it faces today from Muslim zealots. You wanted a country for Muslims, now take that, they say mockingly. I want to put light on a clutch of events from last week, all involving women of amazing brilliance and grit which made me miss some of my Pakistani friends – in the sense that I wished they were here in Delhi to share and savour the pleasures, the insights and the hope that ever so often spring up from the deep recesses of India. Let me start with a lecture on history and heritage Prof Romila Thapar gave on Saturday. You don’t get to hear Prof Thapar often these days, so it was a rare treat. She began with what is almost an invocation with her: Since the present is rooted in the past, the most reliable way to understand the present is by a better understanding of the past. She must have been very young when Gandhi and Jinnah and Nehru, all influenced by the rudimentary if erratic historiography available to them, had embarked on the interpretation of their past to decide the future of the subcontinent. Apart from the colonial nonsense about India’s past the leaders had inherited, Allama Iqbal too had promoted a static view of Indian civilisation, which Indian leaders have been parroting ever since. Greece, Egypt and Rome the great civilisations that they were had disappeared with the passage of time, the learned poet mused. But India was different. It had survived centuries of adversities. In a second Prof Thapar put the questioner at ease. The Harrappan civilisation had disappeared completely and so had others that once straddled southern or northern India. So what are we talking about? Moreover, the concept of civilisations is a relatively new entrant. I checked that out separately. Oddly enough the word ‘civilisation’ only came into existence in the 18th century. Is there for example an Indian civilisation? There are at least two essential Indias. One is humid, with copious rainfall, lakes, marshes, forests and jungles, aquatic plants and flowers the land of people with dark skins. In sharp contrast, is the other India. The India of the Indo-Gangetic plain, plus the Deccan plateau the home of the lighter skinned, many of them warlike. Gandhi is once supposed to have been asked what he thought of Western Civilisation. ‘It’s a very good idea,’ he retorted. Aside from the spurious or factual quotation, there is, in fact, no such thing as Western Civilisation. That notion or term is entirely a Cold War construct. Russia is as much a part of Western Civilisation as is Germany. East and West Germany were reunited, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye proving that East was also West. So next time when some corny peace delegation comes calling to celebrate the civilisational unity of India and Pakistan, or boasting that India and Pakistan are two separate civilisations, you know how to change the subject. There is an abiding commonality in the Punjab and Bengal, but if you stretch it to Balochistan and Nagaland, you are wasting your time. I do not know if Prof Thapar would agree with my perorations. She made a few other important points of vital use to those grappling with the dominant mythology of a golden period from our past but I have to move on to other events involving Indian women last week. A few years ago, anti-terrorist police killed two unarmed men in Delhi’s Ansal Plaza shopping complex. Last week I met Dr Hari Krishna, in his late 60s, who witnessed the encounter. He has slapped the police with a case of cold-blooded murder of unarmed, innocent men. Dr Krishna is a god-fearing Hindu and the men who were killed were Muslim. He is a homoeopath who treats cancer patients and claims good results. The police say he is a quack. But he was still a witness and that is what counts. The courts have accepted his plea to file the case. Dr Krishna is fighting the case alone. His wife is the only one standing by him. ‘They are like our children. They should have the protection of law,’ she told him encouragingly. I can tell you, India has no dearth of Dr Krishnas. You only have to seek them out. He was talking last week to a group of students at Jamia Milia Islamia in Delhi in the company of writer Arundhati Roy and Manisha Sethi, a woman teacher at the university who has helped prepare an independent report on what is known as the Batla House encounter, which took place not far from the campus. ‘When people asked me in America where do you live, I said I live near Jamia. They said ‘oh! that great Jamia University’. And here these people are trying to paint this campus as a den of terrorists,’ Dr Krishna said, wiping tears that just wouldn’t stop welling up. The Batla House encounter followed a spate of bomb blasts in Delhi in September last year. The police officer that led the assault, in which two Muslim students were killed, was also shot and there are questions about how that happened. Any way the policeman was decorated with a gallantry award. Manisha and Arundhati have punched holes in the police theory, as have scores of lawyers, journalists and teachers among others. But the government has so far refused to order a judicial probe. It’s not clear whether the report is now available on the web. It was the anniversary of the Gujarat violence on Saturday. Who all have been working hardest to expose the truth there and also to provide legal support to the victims? Dozens of women come to mind, not the least tenacious among them being Teesta Setalvad and Shabnam Hashmi. And now film actor Nandita Das tells me that her feature film ‘Firaaq’ about the Gujarat tragedy is finally due to be released on March 20. The courageous film has won several awards, a prestigious one being at the Kara Film Festival. It’s a complex story of Hindus and Muslims in Gujarat trying to get on with life after the traumatic events. I saw it at a private screening in Delhi. Dipti Naval’s portrayal of a Gujarati Hindu housewife has a haunting quality about it. Naseeruddin Shah plays an ageing Muslim musician who is besotted with the 14th century poetry of Wali Gujrati (also known as Wali Dakhani). He is so absorbed in his syncretic world that he refuses to accept the news of the violence that his servant regularly follows on TV. ‘Kucha-e-yaar ain Kaasi hai, Jogiy-e-dil wahin ka baasi hai’. (The sacred city of Kaashi is where my beloved lives. My grieving heart belongs there.) Wali’s lines recited by Naseeuruddin are pivotal in the movie. Nandita Das is half Gujrati. Urdu is not her mother tongue but you can’t tell that from the script. She has amazing grit and intellectual integrity. There was another aspect of India that I saw last week, and no Indian or Pakistani is likely to experience it ever again. You missed seeing more than a dozen Buddhist nuns from Ladakh in Delhi last week. Their singing of ancient chants in unison was truly magical. But anybody can go to Ladakh and, with a little bit of luck, see them singing there too. What I saw was truly unique. The Buddhist nuns were swaying to the music of the legendary Sufi singers of Allepo, an ensemble of musicians rooted in Islamic mysticism from Syria. They made the swirling dervish amidst them look passé. Such is the magic of India, more so its women, that I want my friends from Pakistan to experience. I consider them more rewarding than the seminars and discussions about peace that we have been having since time immemorial. jawednaqvi@gmail.com PS:He at least despite his bias (easily seen),recognises that Indian courts are better than Paki ones and how Indian women are emancipated and free,unlike their counterparts in the land of the pure.Perhaps Naqvi should return to Swat and preach his message there.It might be his last! | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 03 Mar 2009 01:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Philip, have you actually read what you have posted above?   Thats on par standard nonsense psy-ops, quoting know liars and intellectual **** like Romila Thapar (Harrapan civilization vanished -- yeah right) | |
| Author: | SRoy [ 03 Mar 2009 03:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Philip, The post of yours has rendered the entire thread useless. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 03 Mar 2009 04:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
So civilizations on India could vanish according to Thapar? Was this the only one to vanish on India or were there others? Then again if civilizations did not exist before the 18th century, how could they vanish when they did not exist? Some issues with the Ladakhi Sufi swaying - Tibetans and Ladakhis have a special form of spiritual gyrating dance form which has been there according to them long before Sufism was born. However the Sufi sect which gyrated as part of spiritual connection could have actually derived this from the extensive Silk Route connections that we know existed between Persia and Eastern ladakh as part of business and spiritual travels. Anyway, are we to consider this particular author's admiration for certain types of Indian women a part of non-western world view? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 03 Mar 2009 04:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-Posted.... harbans wrote: Some interesting points have been made here. My take on some for example..when we say we're thinking from a 'Western' or what i prefer 'Modern' moral perspective, is it unfair to ask how much of these modern moral perspectives have been influenced from Indian thought and literature. Indeed most Renaissance thinkers openly acknowledged most of the much debated schools of Western philosophy having 'Eastern' roots. Voltaire was most brazen and unashamed about it. Even as Europe colonized India, it's vast knowledge made available fired up the thoughts of some of Europes greatest thinkers that resulted in Modern perspectives and mores. When Europeans came in large numbers to India, it would seem surprising and strange that this land of Fakirs was indeed the source of much of their knowledge and humanity. Compare the Hindu code of War with the Geneva convention formed possibly 5 millenia after..the former is still more humane. Additionally the Europeans that made it into India started justifying Western morality as superior basically on Race issues. Justification took the course of exceptions being applied as rules for natives (e.g Sati) so 800 Sati deaths in few years was more for us, while 800 witch burning incidents in Europe was just an aberration. The moral distortion originates principally from a racial perspective and sought to be justified even till the present day, though in lot subtler terms by the Wendy Doningers and Mark Witzels. But a reason for our own sense of inferiority possibly lies in not comprehending how 'Western' morality was really developed through Upanashidic and Vedic shruti and thought even as we were being colonized. Looking at it this way helps also solve the dilemna, why of all British colonies India turns to Modern (and not Western) democratic tradition so much like a duck takes to water. Why India gravitates continuosly towards guaranteeing minority rights, valuing Human rights and other so called Western moral initiations to the savage world. One has to see how easy it is for those that move out of a village setup forget a so called deeply entrenched and discriminatory caste system, or how easily abhorred we are of a single case of Sati in a decade, or even in the 18th century how easy it was for the Arya Samaji's to propagate a rational system of thought amongst the 'pious Casteist Hindu'..while the Arthashastra would have had some verses on how it's ok for 25 year olds to marry 9 year olds, the marriage was essentially a social pledge and the book not exactly one that was implemented on a large scale before that era. Because it states so, it is solving some moral dilemna in a village type set up in that era and because it deems it Ok, it indeed was a moral problem of sorts even then. The point is not what a smriti said or what society started implementing after it was written, the point is today it is considered abhorrent very easily. It is not resisted. So while discrepencies might and had indeed creeped into our societies, the moral initiative to curb those always lay within the spiritual and philosophical framework of Hindu society. JMTs etc.. and harbans wrote: Just a little continuation from what i posted above..it was the protestent denominations that gathered the maximum from India..whether Germany or England or France. It were philosophers and thinkers from here that discovered Grammar as analyzed by Panini and then thought about analyzing their own languages in such detail. The interest of the Max Muellers in India originated essentially from the firing up of knowledge in Europe that was happening from large influx of Indian thought (though only to top level thinkers in Europe). And as mentioned racial motives to morality sought to be exemplified by Schopenhauer and implemented using contorted Hindu symbols by Hitler for example. However as society developed the protestent denominations did realize the folly in colonization and sought to rectify the same by implementing fairer laws within their own societies. A look at catholic countries such as dominated by Spain and Portugal shows a much lesser infiltration to Indian thought and thus lagging behind the present moral standards of the "West". One look at the South American continent confirms why democracy and human rights comes more easy to India than essentially catholic and European origin ruled states, while India does this steadily for 6 decades and more. Same with the Phillipines and other Catholic dominated countries. Democracy and rights issues don't come easy. The least influenced by Indian thought, philosophy are ofcourse the Arabs and Islamic countries. We know where they stand in the 'rights and morality department'. The third lot come are those countries of East and South East Asia (most were influenced over several centuries by Hindu/ Buddhist) thought. They've had trouble implementing democracy too as they did not imbibe philosophical influences like what protestent denominations did. India subtly passed the 'Morality' baton to the protestent denominations even while it was being colonized them and besieged by Muslim conquerors. A clever thing to do..coming to think. and harbans wrote: Shiv ji, appreciate the thums up on that from you. But in the continuing post, i did want to emphasize a linkage between those who prospered firstly through devouring knowledge and philosophy from here, then through wealth attained part by colonization and part by ethics that encouraged industriousness and hard work from here. Germans, French and the British are leaders in that and they subsequently dominated. Knowledge in Medieval Europe flowed from these centers more than from Greece unlike ancient times where Greeks again prospered and learnt from their links to India. Europe has always benefitted from India's amazing quest for knowledge and more, ancient as well as medieval times. Take China for example, they'll not say this open, but India is reverred as an elder brother. This countries quest for Truth is continual, and sometimes we do self flagellate more so than citizens of any other nation..precisely because we search deeper for Truth,. When large sections of our population were beseiged by onslaughts lasting more than a thousand years, it was prudent that knowledge be kept confined for fear that open bearers of the same would face the fate of the monks in Nalanda or Taxila, but it was prudent so too that it be transmitted. Like the ancients said about Knowledge..it would to the best future bearers of it,.with all their shortcomings and growth pangs, the protestent denominations of the Christian religion did do a fair enough job of revitalizing and translating texts to significant sections of their own population, even though through their own kind disseminating those views in hardly subtle different ways. The consequence of such was an enlightenment within their own societies that disengaged the Yoke of Islam from large parts of India and freed it not only of themselves but of Islamic rule. That was India's destiny and it achieved it with understatably some pain. The quest for truth remains alive on this forum, heartburn too in varying degrees, but it's all too visible. I've met too many Westerners and Chinese and Japanese who are simply too astonished at India's leap into the knowledge fold. It took them much too long to attain a society that prides a large part of it's GDP from a knowledge based economy. India did that easy. More stark is many of their knowledge based economies and tech shortages are propped up by a disproportionately large percent of Indians..coupled with the fact that Indians compromise the least percentage of people in their prisons or with criminal records of all other nationalist or religious denominations. (US maintains such records and available on adherents.com). Thus this is not just a fluke as some make it out to be. Or a result of British influence..it runs much deeper and it's something we've all carried within our souls for thousands of years and amongst the greatest trepidations. So while their may be exceptions to what i say, the general thrust is that ancient and medieval societies with max contact with India and it's culture were the biggest beneficieries of wealth and moral values. To think we're falling for 'Western' morals may be very incorrect to assume in case we look at things this way. JMT though think their is much value and truth to this POV IMHO. | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 04 Mar 2009 12:07 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
SRoy wrote: Philip, The post of yours has rendered the entire thread useless. Let's cut Philip some slack. He's not trying to provoke anything and although the article itself had no point (it really didn't), Philip understands the bias inherent in it. | |
| Author: | R Vaidya [ 04 Mar 2009 12:38 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Time to Get Back Black money in Swiss accounts http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?news ... 5&pageid=0 Note: The expression DDM has been used in an MSM RVaidya | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 04 Mar 2009 03:03 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
R Vaidya wrote: Time to Get Back Black money in Swiss accounts http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?news ... 5&pageid=0 Note: The expression DDM has been used in an MSM RVaidya The pop-culture importance of BRF, perhaps? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 05 Mar 2009 05:02 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
There is fatal flaw in Western society programming. Ever since the Greek City-states overcame their enemies in the Peloponnesian wars and in turn got conqured by the Macedonians to modern times- economic crisis, defeat of an existential enemy leads to the the own demise within a generation or two. Why is that? | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 05 Mar 2009 06:52 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Could be insufficient intellectual and material resources. It has only flourished when it could extract surplus from more productive areas outside its geo-political sphere. In trying to defeat existential enemies, it overspends its resources, and if these enemies are based in those productive areas whose exploitation is crucial for prosperity - then the very act of defeat also deliberately targets destruction of the means of such production, as a tactical step to weaken the enemy. This in turn then leads to subsequent impoverishment as the defeated areas are left bone-dry and Europes prosperity declines. This is basically a parasitic civilization, developed probably out of surviving in an extremely hostile environment right from the depths of the last ice-age. It is essentially a looting, marauding culture that models all others by itself - as potential looters and marauders of its "prosperity", and therefore stops enrichment (would not have been a problem if it was creative enough on its own) from others. This anxiety also makes it misrepresnt its own source of prosperity by robbing others, and reconstructs as legitimate and sourced from its own. This creates a problem for future generations as they are kept away from knowing about the real sources of their prosperity and do not grow up to extract resources form others. After a time this creates a crisis, and then they have to rediscover their actual basis of prosperity and then they go out again - to latch on to parasitic extraction from outside - and the cycle repeats. | |
| Author: | abhischekcc [ 07 Mar 2009 11:16 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I think west needs an 'other' to stay united. Just like the Church needs Satan to justify its presence. The deeper reason may be that western 'ethics' are based on individualism, which is simply a politically correct way of saying 'selfishness'. Selfishness does not create the glue that holds society together. Mutual self sacrifice, something like the caste system, can and does hold society together. The lack of an altruistic foundation of society is their biggest weakness. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 07 Mar 2009 06:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The synthesis of individualism and communal responsibility was the idea of citizenship, being a full stakeholder in the overall success of the state and society. Citizens started out as an elite minority, the counterbalance to royal power, but expanded over time, until in the 20th century it came to embrace almost everyone in society. The other trend in the West from the Alexander's Hellenisation project onwards has been homogenisation of political-cultural identity. When you identify with the people around you, and you believe the survival of the state is in your benefit, people are willing to go to great lengths. Isnt that why nationalism, a relatively new way of thinking caught on so quickly all around the world? Quote: Ever since the Greek City-states overcame their enemies in the Peloponnesian wars and in turn got conqured by the Macedonians to modern times- economic crisis, defeat of an existential enemy leads to the the own demise within a generation or two. Why is that? Depends on what you mean by demise. States that overcome challenges grow and confront new challenges - if they cant handle them they fail. However the Macedonians themselves ended up being Hellenised by the people they conquered, and up propagating Hellenic culture and people far and wide. There were for example some very interesting interactions between Buddhism, Greek culture, Nestorian Christianity and Zoroastrian thought in the Greco-Bactrian kingdoms which I'm still trying to understand, but which seems to have given Buddhism a particular flavour - the use of missionaries, a close association with state patronage, a neoplatonic kind of philosophica outlook, etc. The same thing with the Romans - the outlines of Europe are roughly of those people who retained a sense of identification with the heritage of the Roman Empire (which itself became largely Greek in the eastern half). It has come to include the people such as the Germans for example who played a very large part in defeating and then bringing down the Roman Empire. While Russia identifies with the Greek rather than the Latin half of the Roman Empire, it has nonetheless as a self-conscious heir 'Romanised' peoples all the way to the Pacific. I think we have to distinguish between states, cultures and civilisations. Quote: This is basically a parasitic civilization, developed probably out of surviving in an extremely hostile environment right from the depths of the last ice-age. It is essentially a looting, marauding culture that models all others by itself - as potential looters and marauders of its "prosperity", and therefore stops enrichment (would not have been a problem if it was creative enough on its own) from others. This anxiety also makes it misrepresnt its own source of prosperity by robbing others Europe's history can not be reduced to a history of the colonial period. It is the surpluses in *European* population and capital that financed the initial stages of colonialism - they were very much venture capital enterprises, high risk, high outlay. How were those surpluses accumulated? There's been a great deal of work done on the growth rates of medieval Europe, which were extremely high at a time when the Islamic world and the tough nomadic cultures of the steppes hemmed it in, when there was not much more than the ruins of the Roman Empire to build on. How had Europe come so far? The world has had no shortage of nomadic peoples who conquered settled peoples thanks to the mobility of livestock, and a warrior culture. Arabs, Turks, Mongols, etc. The pre-conquest surpluses of these societies are not created by manipulating the environment itself, or development of the same range of technologies and modes of production. The Europeans werent the world's greatest horsemen or camel riders by a very, very long way. European growth rates were built on repeated, dramatic productivity gains in agriculture, usually from metallurgy and crafting - first the iron age which allowed heavily forested land to be cleared and cultivated, and then innovations with yokes,plows and crop rotation within Europe, steadily increasing use of wind and water energy based on imported, and then improved technology. The emergence of a strong mercantile class magnified capital accumulation. Intellectually too there was a real dynamism that proved stronger than orthodox Greco-semitic religious dogma - investments in higher education, curiosity about the past, about other cultures paved the way for the scientific revolution that preceded the industrial revolution. Without the synergy from economic, social, technological, intellectual, and yes military dynamism Europe would have remained a shrinking area filled with poor, cold, wet farmers waiting for the next raid by ever-expanding Arabs and Berbers. They would have fought of course, but why should they have won? Why should their horizons have expanded beyond what they were? | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 07 Mar 2009 10:52 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The Roman empire survived on African grain towards its latter days. Archaeological evidence suggests that the Roman state weakened suficiently to vastly deteriorate in its military kit for soldiers towards the latter days. Ultimately it could no longer hold its extended frontiers and withdrew towards the centre, split, unified for brief periods but essentially was overrun and lost power to various Germanic tribes. It was the Eastern Roman empire which survived throughout until falling before Ottomans right before the start of the colonial period. Even the eastern empire's territory continuously shrank. The growth rates typically quoted are relative to the earlier lesser known transition period between fall of the western Roman empire to the rise of the independent Christian kingdoms mostly dominated by the Germanic colonizing aristocracy. The earlier part of the "medieval" suffered from the "little ice age" when agriculture suffered in Europe. But this is also the period from which detailed surveys appear, and when the climate improved, agricultural production improved - pushing up growth rates dramtically. Moreover, trade with central Asia never really dried up or stopped completely, even through wars and competition from nomadic steppe empires. When low GDP economies begin to grow, growth rates appear fantastically high. A lot of work done on European growth cycles have deliberately focused on trying to show "indigenous" "endemic" growth possibly from a politcial consciousness of alternative attempts to show that Europes' growth kickstarted with extraction of profits from the triangular Atlantic trade, and which also involved the politically uncomfortable slave trade and its role in possible industrial revolution. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 08 Mar 2009 12:20 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: The earlier part of the "medieval" suffered from the "little ice age" when agriculture suffered in Europe. But this is also the period from which detailed surveys appear, and when the climate improved, agricultural production improved - pushing up growth rates dramtically. The little ice age is understood to have begun to have an impact on agriculture from the 14th century in the northernmost settled latitudes, waxing and waning until the 19th century. Its actually easier easier to argue that colonial expansion and slavery allowed Europeans to (a) compensate for reduced agricultural output (b) cut the middleman out, bypassing the Muslim world's highly profitable control of all trade in and out of Europe. Yet which colonies will explain Leonardo Da Vinci and Michaelangelo, or Francis Bacon and Shakespeare? As a side note, written records are available for a number of areas in Europe going back to the 7th century - births, deaths, harvests, etc, plus of course architecture and archaeology tell us about material life, technology, nutrition, etc. Quote: work done on European growth cycles have deliberately focused on trying to show "indigenous" "endemic" growth possibly from a politcial consciousness of alternative attempts to show that Europes' growth kickstarted with extraction of profits from the triangular Atlantic trade, and which also involved the politically uncomfortable slave trade and its role in possible industrial revolution. The slave trade can not explain the intellectual revolution of the renaissance ocurring within Europe that predates the scientific revolution, which in turn predates the industrial revolution. The slave trade began in the 16th century with the colonisation of the Americas by first the Spanish and Portuguese, who did *not* contribute greatly to the renaissance. Why should a backwards, dogmatic, bloodthirsty bunch of savages go on a university building spree in the 13th century? Why is it that despite calamities like the black death wiping out as many one in three in many communities, that investment in trade and education does not reduce, but actually accelarates? How was Gutenberg's printing press developed and why take off in such a big way in Europe? How did these kill-happy barbarians end up building mechanical clocks? Why were watermills, windmills, etc used more intensively per capita than any other place in the world. Europe has a history of ruthlesness, but they have had a very, very long history of appreciating the practical power and value of knowledge, and a relatively lower threshhold fear of the social and poltical upheaval that profound technological and philosophical changes can cause. There is a pattern of energetically borrowing and developing both knowledge and technology, and using it to energetically transform every facet of life, whether trade, agriculture, warfare, politics or social structures. Without productivity and capacity (and that includes management capacity) expanded to the maximum extent possible, long term growth can never be sustained. Is Europe the only part of the world that can do this? Of course not. No one likes to be kicked around. That would be ridiculous, but it is the kind of conceit that 19th and early 20th century West was full of until the Japanese started to sober them up in 1905, but its still taken time for the message to penetrate in to general awareness in the West. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 08 Mar 2009 01:31 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The intellectual flourishing could possibly have been helped by the absorption of knowledge from Islamic sources from Moorish Spain, which also is supposed to have accelerated after the fall of the Islamic regime, and the absorption from emigrating scholars or "libraries" from the Byzantine as well as North African or other Islamic sources, with the Byzantine one probably again accelerating after the fall of Constantinople. Contact with the Islamic world during the Crusades also sits squarely in the middle of the "medieval" period. The Ventian fleet definitely carried on a thriving business with regimes definitely under Islamic control. The Islamic scholars had translated and preserved classical European works and reintroduced them to Europe in the late middle period. So the two "falls" - one of the Moorish Spain (whose fall began centuries earlier than the final expulsion) and the other of Constantinople could be catalytic factors in the intellectual "flowering". By records I meant, records of the order of the Domesday Books, or the French survey of 1328, etc. But these again are snapshots although extensive. Manorial records, lease agreements, deeds, heriots, records of sales and rents all make up a huge supplementary record, yes, but these are less frequent for the early period compared to the later ones. Chronicler records are used but also looked at sceptically because of possibility of exaggaration. The so-called "Dark ages" used to be called so essentially because there were less surviving records available. Yes there was a 1000-1200 "warm period" which could have promoted agricultural growth, but this did not suffice to protect the population from the plague, as well as indications of stagnation. | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 09 Mar 2009 06:14 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Johann wrote: The little ice age is understood to have begun to have an impact on agriculture from the 14th century in the northernmost settled latitudes, waxing and waning until the 19th century. It certainly waned by the late 1700s when the agricultural revolution took place, introducing new, hardy vegetables such as potato and cabbage which lead to a greater population and lead almost directly into the industrial revolution. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 13 Mar 2009 06:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The history of these people needs to be understood for they had a great impact on the ancient world both Westward (Mediterranean) and Eastward(India) and later under Islam they continued to have an impact on history to date. Currently Arab vs Iranian or Sunni vs Shia. And under the Achemenids they were the ones who freed the Jews and sent them back to Jerusalem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthia | |
| Author: | Yogi_G [ 14 Mar 2009 02:53 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Sorry, cudnt figure out which other thread could best accomodate this post, I was wondering today on which power/empire mis-behaved the most during its heyday. Misbehave as in sorround its diplomacy/dealings/perceptions/analysis with a veil of arrogance and degrade/invade other peoples and cultures. Take for example the current Western world (for now US and UK onleee)... 1. Most recent, slumdog millionaire, no not the movie but the concept behind it and the intentions 2. The terms third world and cheap labour 3. Evangelical Christinity (the notion of civilizing pagan savage natives) 4. Imperialism (well every power @ some point is guilt of it) 5. Racism 6. Euro-centricism 7. Pre-emptive strikes (notion of my security is first in world at the cost of introducing regional chaos) 8. Lord Macaluay 9. Witzel 10. McArthur (careless talk of nuking other countries) etc etc etc etc etc etc...reading the above points I was for a minute alarmed that I sound like a leftist list of greviances against the evil capitalists but believe me, no such leanings but what I have done is list some of the points by which the West has mis-behaved. Like the current day West, many other great powers/empires have mis-behaved like the Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Indians (well relatively less) , the Caliphates, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Russians/Soviets etc etc. Indians have to an extent exhibited such traits (the term Mleccha for example but again its a moot point) but it was never built into our genes as it has been in the west. In our best days miltrarily and financially we never mis-used the chance by invading another country or culture (bar the Cholas)...we never practised racism or imperialism... So in your opinion, which do you think is the most mis-behaved power/country/empire in history? I know kigdoms and empires by instinct tend to be imperialist, am not disputing that, but the arrogance factor and its resulting harm is what I am looking at...your thoughts please... | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 14 Mar 2009 03:00 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
"Misbehave" implies there exists a preferred list of "acceptable behaviours". Now what is that list? Acceptable behaviour tends to vary in time place and people.  | |
| Author: | Yogi_G [ 14 Mar 2009 03:12 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
brihaspati wrote: "Misbehave" implies there exists a preferred list of "acceptable behaviours". Now what is that list? Acceptable behaviour tends to vary in time place and people. A good point Brihaspati ji. That is why I laid special emphasis on the word arrogance which in any day and age is frowned upon, pride is acceptable but arrogance and racism is not. I also resigned to the fact that imperialism was (and for some powers today is) acceptable for kings and emperor... | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 15 Mar 2009 07:54 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Yogi_Gji, thought about the arrogance aspect. But I am coming round to the conclusion that arrogance cannot be harmful in the long run, since over long exposure to such arrogance, some among those at the receiving end will develop a reverse "arrogance" and resistance, while some ofcourse will have collaborated and shared in the "imperialist arrogance". Depending on the inherent, pre-imperialism cultural and ideological strength the "defeated culture" can even revive and overthrow the "winners" in time, and the "arrogance" of the previous imperialist can ultimately lead to its demise. What appears to be more harmful is the deliberate and determined extermination of the centres of ideological resistance and continuity of the colonized or subjugated population. In India this project failed both in Islamic hands and British hands becuase they targeted the elite intellect they could see, and whom they thought of as the ideological leadership according to the models of their own society. However, the ideology of India was too complex and too ingrained into the mass psyche to be taken out by simply buying out or liquidating the "elite intellectuals". By this criterion, the Greeks appear to be more harmful than the Romans (except under Alexander - who alone seems to have tried to pursue a "pure" policy of imperialism subsuming racial/ideological arrigance - and got involved in quite a few conflicts with the "Greeks" because of this - as per his biographers). The Romans at least had no problem in acknowledging their admiration and debt for Greek philosophy, and they have not been that much known to have targeted specifically Greek intellectuals or philosophers for liquidation (unless as part of their generic liquidation campaigns against all of the population in a city or area). They even took on board Josephus, a member of the Jewish intellectual leadership all the while targeting the political ambitions of the Jews. But they still did intervene in the ideological life of subjugated peoples according to their persoanl or state political needs. Among the "Persians", only Cyrus appears to stand out and Cyrus will stand as less harmful than the Romans, since Cyrus actually restored and did not intervene in the "ideological life" (then the worship of native cults) of the conquered, and is not known to have targeted the intelectual leadership of the time - the priests of the cults. Not much is known about the deliberate ideological impact of Egyptians in their colonies in Nubia and the Levant, for Cnaanite cults appear to have retained their intellectual independence from Egyptian intervention. The Chinese were restricted to probably only the South and south western half of their current extent for most of their history, and historically they do not appear to have targeted intellectuals outside their territories when they conquered. They definitely took active interests in luring outsiders to enrich their ideological spectrum. The Japanaese were perhaps more arrogant in their imperialist phase but do not show signs of overt targeting of "other" intellectuals unless on Japanese soil - as part of the hated Gai Jin. I would plave them both as below the Greeks and Romans but above Cyrus. The British in their imperialist phase did not specifically target Indian intellect for liquidation, until the fag end of their career on Indian soil, when they saw that Indian nationalism was beginning to identify with "Bharatyia/Hindu" as its spring-well of strength - targeting individuals like Shyamaprasad Mukherjee (who conveniently passed away like so many of those brains the British hated - out of "natural" causes and in confinement). I would place them at par with the Romans remembering that some of them for their own purposes also helped restore/revive/res-exploration of Bharatyia material that the Indian non-Muslim had almost forgotten in the wider public discourse after centuries of Islamic repression. This would be comparable to how the Romans used Greek philosophy for their own purpose but still helped to continue or eulogize the Greek contribution. Russians are problematic. In different periods they have behaved differently. The Caliphate comes out at the top of the list for obvious reasons (in spite of indications that Indian intellectuals were probably carted off to the middle east - although for unknow or unspecified reasons - but probably to write down or provide input for the remarkable "Arabic" burst of Islamic scholarship on non-religious knowledge around the early Caliphate period). Islamic scholarship almost never acknowledges the Indic contribution except Al Beruni, and we know that their chroniclers claim specific targeted liquidation of Indian intellectuals and intellectual material. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 17 Mar 2009 05:24 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I ws watching Hisotry channel presentation on Ancient Technologies and one episode was on an Arab engineer/scientist Ismail Al-Jazari who lived in 1206. The interesting thing is he wrote and illustrated a book on "Knowldege" and documented about 50 inventions of all sorts. A copy exists in the Topkapi Museum now. Recall the Ottomons were savages about the time of Al Jazari. Dubai has a bunch of his descripotions made into working models-Elephant Clock etc. He had a neat anti shipping torpedo - a saucer with a rocket motor and two outriggers for stability which could take out a wooden ship at a thousand yards. GD would love it! My thought was that he was pioneer before Leonardo Da Vinci and his notebooks. Seeing the proximty of the Middle East and Italy, I wouldnt be surprised if Leonardo saw his book even if it wasnt translated. The styles are so similar it cant be coincidence. | |
| Author: | Singha [ 17 Mar 2009 05:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
thanks Ramana. Leonardo had a fertile and curious mind and could easily have picked it from folks like Zazari. Phd's always do "literature survey" in the field. the first submarine that was actually used had a really scary design and was man powered with oars with a keg of gunpowder attached on top to attack ships in harbour. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submarine) | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 17 Mar 2009 05:41 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Singha wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submarine) Not sure if you were joking or not but you linked to a non-existent article. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 17 Mar 2009 05:46 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
GD, Al Jazari's "torpedo" looked like a turtle! The underside provides a skimming surface. The two long out riggers provide stability. The head houses the charge which explodes with a delay fuse. A long tube on the top-side provides thrust to cover the standoff distance. Looked more like a anti-blocade weapon than a ship-borne weapon. Look at History Channel site. might have links. My point was DaVinci might have seen the book to get inspired. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 17 Mar 2009 05:58 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: Ramana wrote Recall the Ottomons were savages about the time of Al Jazari. Dubai has a bunch of his descripotions made into working models-Elephant Clock etc. He had a neat anti shipping torpedo - a saucer with a rocket motor and two outriggers for stability which could take out a wooden ship at a thousand yards. GD would love it! That description looks very close to something I saw about ancient Chinese naval warfare technology. I am not sure it was not a copy of a copy - for rockets were definitely used in China before the middle east and west-Asia. And Arbas had been sailing to Chinese ports from the earliest days of Islamic expansion, they also had a habit of patronizing Islamic scholars to go out and translate and copy texts from culture they knew were more knowledgeable than themselves - like Al Beruni. | |
| Author: | Sriman [ 17 Mar 2009 05:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: Singha wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submarine) Not sure if you were joking or not but you linked to a non-existent article. Just a malformed url. try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submarine) | |
| Author: | Johann [ 17 Mar 2009 11:22 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
brihaspati wrote: The intellectual flourishing could possibly have been helped by the absorption of knowledge from Islamic sources from Moorish Spain, which also is supposed to have accelerated after the fall of the Islamic regime, and the absorption from emigrating scholars or "libraries" from the Byzantine as well as North African or other Islamic sources, with the Byzantine one probably again accelerating after the fall of Constantinople. Contact with the Islamic world during the Crusades also sits squarely in the middle of the "medieval" period. The Ventian fleet definitely carried on a thriving business with regimes definitely under Islamic control. The Islamic scholars had translated and preserved classical European works and reintroduced them to Europe in the late middle period. So the two "falls" - one of the Moorish Spain (whose fall began centuries earlier than the final expulsion) and the other of Constantinople could be catalytic factors in the intellectual "flowering". Brihaspati, I think I've already pointed out that contact with both Byzantine and the Islamic world enabled Latin-Germanic Europe to recover from the 'dark ages'. But both South Korea and the Philippines were in contact with America since the late 19th century, and both experienced Japanese occupation. Can we really explain South Korea's growth, and the Philippenes lagging on that basis? Why shouldnt have the Ottoman Empire been the one that saw the explosive growth of philosophy, science, technology and commerce when Andalusia and Byzantine fell? There was certainly a great deal of absorption that took place, but quite simply the Ottoman Empire was not investing in higher education in the same way (for fundamentally religious reasons), nor did its political systems encourage the same degree of efficiency in land cultivation or trade. Agriculture and trade in Muslim lands in particular was also handicapped by inheritance laws which tended to fragment holdings - so typically wealthy families did not own land itself, only the right to tax land owned by the state. Tax farming does not invite investment in the land. Similarly with trade, the impossibility of creating the legal entity of a corporation meant that building private capital beyond a single generation (Islamic law demands that all partnerships are terminated at death) was very difficult. There were a whole range of financial instruments that developed that gave European merchants a competitive advantage over Muslims in terms of raising capital, absorbing risk and thus losses, etc. For example before the black death, England was approaching Egypt in GDP. By the 13th century the Muslim world was actually importing, rather than exporting textiles and cloth from Europe, especially England, the Netherlands and Italy, despite access to India and China. A trade reversal that took place as European manufacturing quality and volumes went up and its costs dropped. After the Black Death, with very high rates of mortality in both states, there should have been similar outcomes. In fact what hapened was that in England, grain prices dropped, and wages went up (since labour was scarcer) - the net result was that the average standard of living rose. In Egypt the opposite happened - grain prices skyrocketed, and purchasing power collapsed. Why the divergence? In England landlords though powerful were forced to bid competitively for labour. In Egypt the landlords stuck together and refused to pay more - the result was peasant starvation and flight from the countryside, reduction in grain production, and skyrocketing prices. This only reinforced Egyptian disinvestment in manufacturing, while the opposite was happening in key parts of Europe. Allowing labour mobility and bargaining power, encouraging responsible ownership of property (instead of rent collecting absentee landlordism), encouraging trade to grow, heavily investing in higher education, embracing and driving technological change - these are what turned around a very bleak European situation. Without those foundations, there could be no world-empire building, and no prosperity after empire ended. Force of arms, or force of arms combined with religious dogma, etc, etc are never enough. | |
| Author: | surinder [ 18 Mar 2009 05:53 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Yogi_G wrote: So in your opinion, which do you think is the most mis-behaved power/country/empire in history? I know kigdoms and empires by instinct tend to be imperialist, am not disputing that, but the arrogance factor and its resulting harm is what I am looking at...your thoughts please... I think the most destructive of all has been Great Britain. At its height, it occoupied 25% of the world, holding about 25% of the world population in its imperial iron hold. It has probably ended many dozens of dynasties all around the world (many ancient ones in India). It has caused genocide on the native poplations of South Africa, North America, Australia & NZ. It has caused many languages and cultures to go extinct. It has supplanted english in many nations at the cost their own languages. It has partitioned many nations setting the new neighbor up for perennial enmity and blood baths. Some historian should tall all the British imperial wars and add up all the casualties due to them: that would be an eye-opener, IMHO. I think the British win hands down. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 22 Mar 2009 11:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
What is the opinion on Nietzsche's critic of the western worldview - primarily western Christianity? Do we consider him "western"? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 07 Apr 2009 06:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
A very good book review x-posted... Acharya wrote: How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy (Author) # Hardcover: 560 pages # Publisher: Yale University Press (May 12, 2009) # Language: English # ISBN-10: 0300137192 # ISBN-13: 978-0300137194 Quote: In AD 200, the Roman Empire seemed unassailable. Its vast territory accounted for most of the known world. By the end of the fifth century, Roman rule had vanished in western Europe and much of northern Africa, and only a shrunken Eastern Empire remained. What accounts for this improbable decline? Here, Adrian Goldsworthy applies the scholarship, perspective, and narrative skill that defined his monumental Caesar to address perhaps the greatest of all historical questions—how Rome fell. It was a period of remarkable personalities, from the philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius to emperors like Diocletian, who portrayed themselves as tough, even brutal, soldiers. It was a time of revolutionary ideas, especially in religion, as Christianity went from persecuted sect to the religion of state and emperors. Goldsworthy pays particular attention to the willingness of Roman soldiers to fight and kill each other. Ultimately, this is the story of how an empire without a serious rival rotted from within, its rulers and institutions putting short-term ambition and personal survival over the wider good of the state. How Rome Fell is a brilliant successor to Goldsworthy's "monumental" (The Atlantic) Caesar. About the Author Adrian Goldsworthy is the author of many books about the ancient world including Caesar, The Roman Army at War, and In the Name of Rome. He lectures widely and consults on historical documentaries produced by the History Channel, National Geographic, and the BBC. He lives in Wales. The work is divided into three parts. Part 1 traces the reign of Marcus Aurelius through the Crisis of the Third century to the rise of Diocletian. In many ways the reign of Marcus Aurelius was the height of the empire left by Augustus, but the generations that followed witnessed a painful transformative process. Part II begins with Diocletian's attempts to rebuild from the rubble, reorganizing the empire into a new entity. It ends with the political split of the empire between East and West. Part III then details the sordid legacy of the Western Empire as emperors fought rivals, and barbarian warlords fought Roman generalissimos who were themselves often of barbarian extraction. The West increasingly loses ground until it is a patchwork of barbarian kingdoms loosely carrying on Roman traditions. Part III ends with the rise of the Islamic invaders who in turn dismember the outer realms of the surviving Eastern empire. Goldsworthy's book is largely in response to the most recent scholars, such as Peter Heather, who paint a picture of a vibrant later empire only torn apart by Germanic supertribes and a reborn Persian superpower. Goldsworthy disagrees on both fronts. He claims there is no sufficient evidence to paint the later empire as being as prosperous or as strong as Augustus' Principate. Nor does he see the Persians or various barbarian tribes as being especially larger or more organized opponents than what confronted the earlier emperors. Instead Rome's greatest enemy was itself. The constant civil wars fought after Marcus Aurelius destabilized Roman society and weakened the borders, allowing otherwise weak enemies to exploit Roman instability. The later emperors cared more about mere survival than about imperial welfare at large, which led to deleterious reforms. Senators were excluded from military command so as to no longer threaten the emperor, but ironically this opened the power struggle to a much wider and far less predictable strata of society below them, namely Equestrian officers and bureaucrats. Furthermore, the split between the civil bureaucracy and the military forces, and the increasing division of both into smaller units, was designed to prevent any one official from having the resources to overthrow the emperor. But this also had the effect of reducing the empire's ability to quickly marshal the necessary resources to oppose foreign invasion. The result was of course an increasing trickle of foreign foes who were allowed to occupy the land, thus depriving the West of needed tax revenue, which in turn weakened the army and bureaucracy, and so encouraging more infiltration and forced settlement. The tale of western Roman collapse is a long and depressing epic, but Goldsworthy tells it expertly. The prose is enchanting: intelligent but direct and always engaging. Where some saw his Caesar biography as rather needlessly verbose, the author manages in this work to condense about four hundred years of Roman history into as many pages. The books also contains various maps and illustrations, charts and tables, and several pages of photographs. The last hundred pages is populated by a chronology, glossary, bibliography, end notes and an index. This is an excellent narrative for the general reader interested in late antiquity, whether or not one fully agrees with the author's conclusions. Actually you see the same symptoms of decline in all monarchies and even totalitarian systems. One capable founder followed by a bunch of middling leaders are followed by a brilliant overachiever and in turn followed by petty rulers who are pre-occupied with survival tactics. You see this even in Indian history the Mauryas, the Guptas, Cholas, Sultanates, Vijayanagara, Mughals and Indian National Congress thru the Nehru dynasty. It almost happened in US with the Republicans. A peaceful method of regime change, such as elections allow, ensures state continuity and existence. Incapable leaders can be changed and the nation survives. Such nations have history while others have dynasty histories. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 07 Apr 2009 09:23 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Ramana, Rome's imperial expansion was based on the health of its political system, but the expansion threatened the health of the political system. The choice was Republic or Empire. The Republic was better at using social/class cohesion to manage the intensity political competition, but the empire offered wealth. Rome's biggest failure was its inability to develop a mechanism for the peaceful orderly transfer of power from one emperor to the next. The Islamic caliphate suffered from exactly the same problem. Primogeniture seems like a simple and obvious solution, but it wasnt always so. Without it dynastic succession was often a brutal and exhausting war of attrition between relatives, or a merry go around as palace guards murdered rulers and put the throne up to bid. Europe's adoption of primogeniture as the principle of succession provided a measure of basic political stability that was missing in the Roman and Islamic empires. With political stability comes a greater incentive to invest in the longer term, rather than the short term battle for survival. Whether a political system is based on monarchy or democracy, it has to built around practices that reward longer term thinking. | |
| Author: | Sanjay M [ 08 Apr 2009 09:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1239125 ... %3Darticle Quote: By BRUCE GILLEY | From today's Wall Street Journal Asia. Threats to the global liberal order are usually identified with illiberal states. That's why China, with its repressive domestic regime and its see-no-evil (unless related to the United States) foreign policy attracts so much attention these days. But a more compelling challenge to the current world order may be emerging from an unlikely trio of countries that boast both impeccable democratic credentials and serious global throw weight. They are India, Brazil and South Africa and their little-noticed experiment in foreign policy coordination since 2003 to promote subtle but potentially far-reaching changes to the international system has the potential to leave fears of a rising China in the dustbin of history. The quasi-alliance of these three powers has serious implications for the international system, and its major underwriter, the U.S., depending on how the challenge is handled. But an equally important, and quite unintended implication, is the sabotage of China's great power ambitions. By robbing China of its claims to represent developing countries, this new cooperative trio could sideline China from the major debates in international affairs. That may be good news for domestic reform in China, which has long been stunted by the country's great power ambitions. The origins of the India-Brazil-South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) lie in South Africa's quest for a new allies more consonant with its interests and ideas following the end of apartheid in 1994. The immediate impetus came from Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who floated a formal cooperation scheme in early 2003. In June of that year, the foreign ministers of the three countries inaugurated the group in Brasilia, calling for a strengthening of international institutions to address the concerns of developing countries in areas like poverty, the environment and technology. Since then, according to Sarah-Lea John de Sousa of Madrid's FRIDE think tank, the trio has been gaining support as "spokesmen for developing countries at the global level." IBSA announced its presence by convincing a group of 21 developing countries to block agreement at the World Trade Organization's Cancún summit that year over the issue of rich country agricultural subsidies. It also successfully lobbied for changes to WTO rules covering the production of generic versions of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis drugs. Yet it quickly moved beyond trade to take stands on issues of international security and institutional reforms. In addition to trade, energy and development projects, IBSA has staked out joint positions on everything from U.N. Security Council reform to the International Criminal Court's prosecution of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir. They have also papered over differences on humanitarian intervention, human rights and nuclear nonproliferation to speak with a common voice. "Though conceived as a dialogue forum, IBSA is rapidly moving into becoming a strategic partnership," wrote Arvind Gupta of India's Institute for Defense Studies and Analyses in a September 2008 report. China reluctantly joined the Cancún coalition. But since then it has remained on the outside of IBSA, looking in. For three main reasons, it is likely to stay there. First, China is a U.N. Security Council permanent member which sets it on a collision course with the IBSA aspirations to expand that body to reflect the views of the world's poor countries. Brazil and India are explicit in wanting permanent seats while South Africa, which is barred by its African Union obligations from seeking a permanent seat, nonetheless sought and won a nonpermanent seat for the first time in 2007. China, torn between its rhetoric calling for the democratization of international affairs and the reality that it would be a loser from this process, has decided to steer the self-interested course, to the detriment of its claims to represent the world's vast unwashed. China is also on the wrong side of IBSA in terms of its views of globalization. The Brasilia Declaration warned that "large parts of the world have not benefited from globalization" and demanded changes to keep more economic and regulatory power in the hands of states. Yet Beijing's leaders see themselves as beneficiaries of globalization and are loathe to embrace left-wing tantrums against "neoliberalism." Critiques of the market are a touchy subject in China, where a neo-Maoist movement is using them to attack the ruling regime. Still, China could soften its views on U.N. Security Council reform and globalization in the interests of developing country solidarity (and its interests in leading that movement). The third reason it stands outside IBSA is one that it cannot change: It is not a democracy. IBSA members note that they are "vibrant democracies" and Daniel Flemes of Hamburg-based German Institute for Global and Area Studies noted in a 2007 paper that "IBSA's common identity is based on values such as democracy, personal freedoms and human rights." Human rights, civil society, social empowerment and "gender mainstreaming" are central to their moral capital. Indian newspapers have reported that Iran and Egypt expressed interest in joining the group but were rebuffed, possibly because IBSA leaders are aware how much their group's international legitimacy depends upon its democratic credentials. The most logical candidate for admission, if the group expands, is Indonesia, another poor, populous and democratic country. Coupled with a Japan that is renewing its role in international affairs, this would also rob China of claims to represent Asia. Democracy is not just about IBSA's membership requirements; it bears on the very purposes of IBSA. IBSA is not a security alliance -- Brazil and South Africa, after all, are harsh critics of India's nuclear program. What it is, rather, is an alliance that seeks to use democratic ideals to effectively reshape the U.N. and other international institutions to serve poor countries better. In a strange way, IBSA is a community of democracies from hell -- a group of countries with impeccable democratic credentials who are using that common identity to challenge rather than advance U.S. interests. International relations scholars call this "soft balancing" because rather than confronting the U.S., they are simply trying to restrain and reorient it. The reason this may work is that, as democracies, these countries have the moral stature in the international system to achieve those goals. Indian and Brazilian diplomats in particular, already among the world's best, can advance the IBSA agenda because they share common ideals. Where does that leave China? Probably wondering why yet another century mooted to be its century has passed it by. That may be good news for domestic reformers in China who can point to democracy as a precondition for international respectability. IBSA leaders are due to meet again in Brazil in October. Those tracking shifts in world affairs should cancel their trips to Beijing and make arrangements to be in Brazil. | |
| Author: | Sanjay M [ 08 Apr 2009 09:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
My comments: China has tremendous soft-power with its $$$. While the Chinese do keep generally aware of others' subtle moves at the UN, the Chinese don't have to get stuck resorting to much of this themselves, because they have UN Security Council Veto. China can therefore spend its 'soft' money on more useful things, like bidding for natural resources it uses to fuel its powerful economy. India, Brazil and South Africa are stuck pussyfooting around using their 'soft power' because they have no hard power. They have no UNSC Veto, they have no strong power projection capability, and no major cash. While India has recently been seen using gunboat diplomacy against pirates nearby in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden, etc, it doesn't have a true blue-water navy like China. India has tried to bid competitively against China for various petroleum and resource projects, but it's pretty much lost every time. India has been campaigning very loudly for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council, but while everybody strings it along with promises, nothing's really happened on that front. Western powers once offered India a seat at the Council back in the 1950s, when Taiwan was vacating its seat at the UN to make way for China's entry. The idea was to prevent China from staking a claim to a place on the Security Council, by filling it with another Asian power. India turned down the offer, thinking that it would score big points with China by being chivalrous. (What a bunch of suckers!) India instead invested its 'soft power' in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement, which consisted of fellow 3rd world countries. That India works through IBSA and other informal alliances today shows the ultimate inutility of the NAM beyond a certain point. Today, such a large group is too unwieldy and divergent in interests to be anything more than just a talk shop. Indeed, the rise of informal groups IBSA are a testament to the decline and virtual disappearance of NAM (the "South Bloc") | |
| Author: | Hitesh [ 09 Apr 2009 03:50 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Johann, the problem with Primogeniture is that it doesn't always ensure that a competent person would be inheriting the throne and rule. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 09 Apr 2009 03:54 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-posted from the Tech & Econ forum thread on Global Prespectives: Ashutosh Malik wrote: Exporting weapons to Vietnam makes a lot of sense. Based on publicly available information one gets a sense that India has not really explored the possibility of using Vietnam as a leverage against China. They are sitting under the Chinese belly and have whipped their ass earlier and hardly have any love lost for the Chinese. Bharat Karnad has also averred to this earlier in his writings. As for Mr. Brando's thoughts - well I would recommend that all of us read the book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" by Paul Kennedy. ISBN-10: 0679720197, ISBN-13: 978-0679720195. Will give a sobering thought to anyone who thinks that any particularly country or empire will retain the edge for all times to come. 20-30 years are hardly anything in the march of nations. What will be interesting is what happens 100 years from now. One history book that I read by a Chinese author residing in US, seemed to suggest that Chinese time frame is to look at where they will stand post 100 years or 200 years. They are keen to teach the western world a lesson for the injustice done to them in the 19th century. Although in India we dont seem to communicate the same resolve, the march of the times will make things clear to our cousins from the western civilisation. Without belittling the achievements of western civilisation - after all we are also learning from them - I think the issue with a substantial number of people in the West is that they think that time started when their civilisation started to rule the waves post around end of 17th/ beginning of 18th century. One can hardly fault the majority among them to think that way - they have just seen their primacy over other civilisations. Interestingly from the economic point of view, even till early 19th century China and India accounted the most substantial portion of the world GDP. Without denying the achievement of the Western world over the last 400 odd years, I think one needs to help them appreciate that time didnt start 400 years ago! And nor will things stop changing! Cheers | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 09 Apr 2009 04:14 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
in the annals of history, USA might go down as one of the shortest-lived superpowers. | |
| Author: | harbans [ 09 Apr 2009 04:31 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
in the annals of history, USA might go down as one of the shortest-lived superpowers That would happen possibly. Now with the US economy shrinking, the Japanese is doing so 10% or so this year..i think there are changes that no expert can foresee. All the world problems have stemmed from India neti style all these years. Clamp down on India, you cannot win WW2. Support Pak and you're asking for terror across the oceans on your doorstep. Suck up to china and the first thing they do is box and circle India. Despite it's cut up size and SDRE look, India manages to emerge from the chains the adharmic world tries to strangle it in. Just think if any other country apart from little Israel, thats in a neighbourhood as tough as ours? None. Thats why India is facing a dilemna. One that Arjuna faced exactly literally to the core. Thats India's internal battle. Why not be decent and civilized to the Kauravas. Why not give them Kashmior? Why not give Arunachal? Hassle is..what appetite are you feeding? Where will it end? Thats why i doubt the US is a power that can solve the worlds problems. Ultimately it has to be India alone. And it will, the argumentative Indian will ultimately settle down..just like Arjuna did. JMT/- | |
| Author: | vadivelu [ 09 Apr 2009 04:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Rahul M wrote: in the annals of history, USA might go down as one of the shortest-lived superpowers. The normal slovenly and tired US phobia and Paki-like posturing I have come to expect from BRFites ( as opposed to us plebian trainees). Perhaps shortest lived - only history can render such a verdict. But the impact of the US - from the nuclear era, to technology in myriad fields to the Internet that makes inane frothing at the mouth possible the US has been the superpower that has impacted human history the most. And pray tell - what has the non-western worldview ever achieved? | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 09 Apr 2009 04:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I have no intention in entering a ******* contest with you nor am I nursing any phobia. may be the NW WV has contributed nothing, I for one would certainly not waste time trying to answer that question to one who has already made up his/her mind. BUT, that does not mean irrelevant off-topic posts will be tolerated here. if you have nothing to add, stay away. | |
| Author: | JwalaMukhi [ 09 Apr 2009 04:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Bait let off the hook. Thanks Rahul M. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 09 Apr 2009 04:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Sanjay M wrote: India, Brazil and South Africa are stuck pussyfooting around using their 'soft power' because they have no hard power. They have no UNSC Veto, they have no strong power projection capability, and no major cash. ...India instead invested its 'soft power' in establishing the Non-Aligned Movement, which consisted of fellow 3rd world countries. That India works through IBSA and other informal alliances today shows the ultimate inutility of the NAM beyond a certain point. Today, such a large group is too unwieldy and divergent in interests to be anything more than just a talk shop. Indeed, the rise of informal groups IBSA are a testament to the decline and virtual disappearance of NAM (the "South Bloc") IBSA is the developing world's equivalent of the G7 - globally competitive economies that are also democracies which are struggling to lift large sections of the populations out of poverty. As such they have a commonality of interests in the global order that other NAM members lack, either because of the nature of their economies, or political systems, or both. Its a combination whose goals arent really geopolitical, but rather about global governance and the global political economy. While their POV will be different from the G7 who have very different internal socioeconomic challenges, their commitment to globalisation means it isnt a zero sum game. IBSA's biggest weakness in pursuing those goals is that it is conflicted by its founding members desire to maintain regional position, and hence the reluctance to admit members that also fit the bill like Mexico and Indonesia. Quote: While India has recently been seen using gunboat diplomacy against pirates nearby in the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden, etc, it doesn't have a true blue-water navy like China. India has tried to bid competitively against China for various petroleum and resource projects, but it's pretty much lost every time. Sanjay - China has "a true blue-water navy"??!! This would be welcome news to the PLAN. The South China Sea is the only place in the world it can achieve decisive results, and that is so long as local powers fail to co-operate or obtain outside help. China has projected influence in to the Indian Ocean through economic(trade and aid) and industrial (including subsidised arms sales) means. Their force projection capacity has a long way to go to catch up with their ability to find footholds. In fact the String of Pearls strategy has been pursued precisely *because* the PLAN can not guarantee that energy flows in to China, and trade flows out of it wont be interdicted. Hitesh wrote: the problem with Primogeniture is that it doesn't always ensure that a competent person would be inheriting the throne and rule. Absolutely true - however the damage from incompetants turned out to be less serious than the damage from chronic and ruinous wars of succession, and endless military coups. Incompetants usually ended up removed by their courts without widespread disruption to society - but once again primogeniture reduced the degree of competition and violence over who succeeded said incompetant. Of course the actual management of state affairs eventually devolved to professionals - ministers, and then elected ministers. Those that failed to make that transition saw revolution. | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 09 Apr 2009 04:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
please don't respond to obvious attempts at flaming. you guys should know better by now. BOTH the instigator and the responder will receive a warning if this continues. Rahul. | |
| Author: | vadivelu [ 09 Apr 2009 05:06 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Rahul M wrote: I have no intention in entering a ******* contest with you nor am I nursing any phobia. may be the NW WV has contributed nothing, I for one would certainly not waste time trying to answer that question to one who has already made up his/her mind. BUT, that does not mean irrelevant off-topic posts will be tolerated here. if you have nothing to add, stay away. This being a military forum sure you can pull rank on me. I challenge you to debate my assertion that non-western civilization has had very little relevance on the world of today. The Western worldview is what will propel today and the future. The printing press, industrial revolution and Internet altered mankind. All were the result of a Western worldview. The mystical East catered to intellectual stimulation. No practical benefit to humankind. Take the ascendency of India today - and I do claim it is on an upward spiral. Would not have been possible without India's adherence to a western worldview and abandoning its Vedic past. | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 09 Apr 2009 05:16 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: This being a military forum sure you can pull rank on me. moderators can pull rank(whatever that means) on any forum, it's got nothing to do with military per se. Quote: I challenge you to debate my assertion that non-western civilization has had very little relevance on the world of today. well, I don't agree but I really don't have the time to debate this at the moment. sorry about that. but I'm sure others will be more than willing to do the honours. just a reminder and advice (both to you and others), be civil and don't flame. I would like to end with a little thought, it doesn't matter if you don't reply, I won't find the time to respond in all probability anyway. could it be that you watched just 5 minutes of a never ending race and are forming your opinion on that only ? | |
| Author: | Johann [ 09 Apr 2009 05:21 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Rahul M wrote: in the annals of history, USA might go down as one of the shortest-lived superpowers. What is a superpower? The Roman Empire suffered from a self-destructive political system and excessively limited social contract, while European colonial empires depended on external populations and resources. The basis of American power remains its population, its natural resources, its political system, *and* the durability of the social contract that binds the population and state together (the real basis of social solidarity, patriotism, etc). While America may not be able to afford to continue to maintain the exceptionally dominant role it took on during WWII, the balance of factors in America's favour remain extremely favourable, more favourable on the whole than any of the other great powers - long term political stability, per capita food production, per capita energy resources, commitment to innovation, etc. Looking back to a past that preceded the birth and industrialisation of the United States is not a reliable or realistic way to read the future. Instead it may be easier to understand if we look at the pre-WWI or interwar period where it was in reality the world's leading great power, but not a 'superpower'. | |
| Author: | Gerard [ 09 Apr 2009 05:25 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: I challenge you to debate my assertion that non-western civilization has had very little relevance on the world of today. I doubt anyone is really interested in 'debating' you (put off by the scent of 'troll') but the BBC is running a documentary called "The Story of Maths". Maybe you should get the DVD. It might open your mind. Quote: The second programme took us to the East and an exploration of Chinese and Indian mathematics. One of the highlights for me was the pilgrimage to Gwalior to see a tiny little temple hanging off the side of a mountain fort. Big enough to fit the presenter and a cameraman inside, we scoured the inscriptions on the walls for the earliest known example of the number zero, one of the greatest and revolutionary inventions made in India. The mathematics of India found its way to Europe, via the spice routes through central Asia. Again health and safety denied us a trip to Iran to recreate the adventures of Omar Khayyam (the British sailors had not long before been released from captivity). So Morocco became our central Asian backdrop where we found some fantastic horses to ride across the Atlas mountains in my reincarnation of the great Persian poet and mathematician. http://www.open2.net/storyofmaths/presenterstory.html http://www.open2.net/storyofmaths/geniusofeast.html Quote: Marcus also learns how mathematics played a role in managing how the Emperor slept his way through the imperial harem to ensure the most favourable succession - and how internet cryptography encodes numbers using a branch of mathematics that has its origins in ancient Chinese work on equations. In India he discovers how the symbol for the number zero was invented - one of the great landmarks in the development of mathematics. He also examines Indian mathematicians’ understanding of the new concepts of infinity and negative numbers, and their invention of trigonometry. Next, he examines mathematical developments in the Middle East, looking at the invention of the new language of algebra, and the evolution of a solution to cubic equations. This leg of his journey ends in Italy, where he examines the spread of Eastern knowledge to the West through mathematicians such as Leonardo Fibonacci, creator of the Fibonacci Sequence. | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 09 Apr 2009 05:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: While America may not be able to afford to continue to maintain the exceptionally dominant role it took on during WWII, the balance of factors in America's favour remain extremely favourable, more favourable on the whole than any of the other great powers - long term political stability, per capita food production, per capita energy resources, commitment to innovation, etc. agreed. my definition of superpower would be the ability to influence events affecting itself, wherever they may be. in that case a nation without much contact outside its neighbourhood could well be a superpower in that region. most big powers of the ancient world would fall in that bracket. but in the modern world such geographic isolation is nearly impossible, meaning superpowerdom will necessarily mean ability to influence events all over the world. The US will still be the foremost power in the foreseeable future but the difference in power to influence world events with the next tier of countries will lessen to an extent to remove the tag 'super'. IOW, US will still be the big dog in a pack of dogs, but no longer a tiger among a pack of dogs. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 09 Apr 2009 05:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Rahul, Again, the pre and post war periods are instructive Part of the meteoric American rise after 1940 is its abillity as *both* as a state and a nation to weather the impact of storms that wreck others and turn the situation to American benefit. Its advantages give it the ability to protect and enhance its already advantageous fundamentals in bad times. There are many storms coming, which is why I dont discount the periodic rise and relative decline of American 'superpowerdom' in the medium and long term. Others - whether Europe, India or China will usually rebuild and recover, and then its the same thing all over again. It's not fair, but that's life. | |
| Author: | Hitesh [ 09 Apr 2009 05:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
How long can the political stability in US last? What factors would it take to degrade the political stability? I suggest looking at the US Civil War and events that precluded it. It would be a good barometer of gauging what factors would be useful to look at to see the long term trends of the political stability in US. The Civil War was the last great event that had the potential to destroy US as a great power. I suggest going back to that era. | |
| Author: | vadivelu [ 09 Apr 2009 06:10 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Theoretical leaps in fundamental science will always happen. If The Hindus had not come up with the concept of zero, the Chinese would have. There will always be Einsteins and Chandrasekhars. It is however technology that impacts humankind. Makes human life more livable. And such earth shattering technology has come only from the West. In the 20th century ( and on) the US has dominated. I see no signs of innovation lapsing in the US of A. Where do you folks google, twitter or get introduced to statins? All three drastically altered my life. And the statins - the Japanese inventor Endo was working in New York and his Japanese company sold the discovery to Merck which realized the potential. Where does this desi arrogance to perennially denigrate the West stem from? | |
| Author: | Abhi_G [ 09 Apr 2009 06:37 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
vadivelu wrote: Theoretical leaps in fundamental science will always happen. If The Hindus had not come up with the concept of zero, the Chinese would have. There will always be Einsteins and Chandrasekhars. By the same logic, if colonization of India and (for that matter a greater part of the world) did not happen then there was a high possibility of *modern* technological developments in India. | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 09 Apr 2009 06:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: Theoretical leaps in fundamental science will always happen. ..... wow ! some may think that a steam engine would be more assured of development in the normal course of things than an esoteric idea like zero or GR.but you know that assertion is a belief, something of the same level as "god exists", "aliens visit me" etc. it's not open to appeals of logic or reason. there can be no constructive discussion with a person who has left the realm of logic, at least for me, it's bound to be pointless IMO. Quote: Where does this desi arrogance to perennially denigrate the West stem from? may be the same source that brings about eulogies for the west in every deserved and undeserved cause ?! ....................... Johann, you raise pertinent points and I agree that US was uniquely positioned to reap the benefits of the post WW world(both the first and the second one). although WW-I saw the economic depression in its aftermath, influence wise it was an watershed event for the US. but are you sure the same reasoning still applies ? is the US of 1919 or 1945 the same as that of today vis-a-vis the outside world ? much or all of the subsequent benefits originate from the economic ones but isn't it the case that the US is almost saturated in how much more it can do. isn't it operating near the peak of its potential beyond which the returns will no longer be favourable ? But then I'm not an economics guy ! | |
| Author: | vadivelu [ 09 Apr 2009 06:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Abhi_G wrote: By the same logic, if colonization of India and (for that matter a greater part of the world) did not happen then there was a high possibility of *modern* technological developments in India. Substantiate your viewpoints with facts will you. Pre-Colonial Bharat was raped, pillaged, plundered by invading hordes that altered the ethos of a once Hindu India. India’s basic culture was altered – everything from cuisine to literature to architecture. All pre-colonial. Do not obfuscate colonial imperialism with the Western worldview – it is the western worldview that has given relevance to India again. | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 09 Apr 2009 07:08 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Troll alert -- do not feed the troll!! This thread will go downhill. If there is nothing great about non western worldview -- so be it, leave us koop manduks alone and use either the whine thread or the indian psyche thread. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 09 Apr 2009 07:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: How long can the political stability in US last? What factors would it take to degrade the political stability? I suggest looking at the US Civil War and events that precluded it. It would be a good barometer of gauging what factors would be useful to look at to see the long term trends of the political stability in US. The Civil War was the last great event that had the potential to destroy US as a great power. I suggest going back to that era. Hi Hitesh, Good question. In the context of the Civil War, the on and off violent industrial labour conflicts from the 1870s to 1930, and the radicalism of the 1960s-70s I would say the greatest threats to political stability came from - deadlock on fundamental issues regarding or relating to the American social contract due to ideological and social polarisation, particularly during periods of economic difficulty. - unresolved constitutional tensions Any political system becomes unstable when a) sections of the *ruling classes* are use coercive measures such as violence against other sections of the ruling classes because they couldnt get their way - whether its a matter of principle, or simple personal advancement. b) oversee a deterioration in economic and security conditions without taking timely corrective action, i.e. prolonged suffering, and an irresponsible response. c)those running the show dont allow less powerful, but numerically significant stakeholders to participate in the political process. The US civil war had more to do with a & c - this was a time when regional identities were at least as strong as American national identity - when that was combined with fundamental constitutional questions class solidarity was unable to cope. The famous example was the choice that fell upon US Army officers - Robert Lee painfully decided he was a Virginian first, and an American second. While it is possible that some very fundamental social, political and economic questions may be opened up by technological advances in the life sciences and IT in coming decades, I havent seen divisions strong enough among core elements of the system that would make them willing to go to war with the system. Intelligently and aggressively playing by the rules is still the way to get ahead. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 09 Apr 2009 07:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
VV its with great difficulty I have managed to keep this thread alive over the years. Please do not derail it. You have your POV and others have too. I request you not to derail it by enforinc it on others. There are other threads for doing so. | |
| Author: | vadivelu [ 09 Apr 2009 07:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
pardon me for advocating a contrarian viewpoint. I have no intention of trolling or flame baiting. If one advocates and solicits a non-western worldview one should have the intellectual temerity, the mental testosterone to argue a case for the western worldview. I will cease from posting here - continue with your incestuous mindset. | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 09 Apr 2009 07:28 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I think the break down of the US hegemony will essentially be a unroll/rewind of the way that has grown it forward. The following factors will play a major role 1) Massive decline of WASP and Nordic populations in US and Europe 2) Severe population pressure from Mexico. 3) Severe economic pressure from China (imbalanced trade) The above two will trigger a back to insularity formula to preserve the original culture. This will create an US rapidly losing the tech/innovation edge, since its edge was rarely homegrown but mostly imported transplanted and nourished with the great resources that US provided. The resources of US will be hoarded for the already existing elites -- it will use Mexican and Chinese as coolies (not that it does not do so now, but in increasing manner) This time due to globalization, the factors which Johann outlined of unresolved parity and unresolved laws will actually play a role in a global sense and not local one. Sooner or later we will see low end home based conflicts in US territories and high end conflicts on larger geographical scale. Roman empire all over again at a WWW level. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 09 Apr 2009 07:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Rahul M wrote: Johann, you raise pertinent points and I agree that US was uniquely positioned to reap the benefits of the post WW world(both the first and the second one). although WW-I saw the economic depression in its aftermath, influence wise it was an watershed event for the US. but are you sure the same reasoning still applies ? is the US of 1919 or 1945 the same as that of today vis-a-vis the outside world ? much or all of the subsequent benefits originate from the economic ones but isn't it the case that the US is almost saturated in how much more it can do. isn't it operating near the peak of its potential beyond which the returns will no longer be favourable ? But then I'm not an economics guy ! Hi Rahul, I cant claim to be an economist either, but there are two basic sources of economic growth - growth in the amount of area exploited for cultivation/mining/habitation, etc. This is limited by the supply of labour, and usually followed by attendant population growth. - increases in productivity which increase the size of surpluses. America's population continues to grow, but importantly it continues to lead in innovation - technological, managerial, social and political, the keys to productivity growth. Innovation isnt just dreaming up an idea - it requires the freedom and the financial capital to be an early, deep and wide adopter over and over and over again. In addition despite population growth the burdens of food security, energy security, political pressures over social mobility and change etc are nowhere as acute and limiting as they are elsewhere - that frees up financial and political capital to innovate and adopt early. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 09 Apr 2009 07:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
vadivelu wrote: pardon me for advocating a contrarian viewpoint. I have no intention of trolling or flame baiting. If one advocates and solicits a non-western worldview one should have the intellectual temerity, the mental testosterone to argue a case for the western worldview. I will cease from posting here - continue with your incestuous mindset. Arent these contradictory and self evident to your intentions? | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 09 Apr 2009 07:55 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Why cant we have a seperate thread for comparision and other issues. This thread should be only Non Western view which took a long time to take off. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 09 Apr 2009 07:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
We have enough threads to host all views from whines - serious. No need for any new threads. | |
| Author: | Johann [ 09 Apr 2009 08:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Sanku wrote: I think the break down of the US hegemony will essentially be a unroll/rewind of the way that has grown it forward. The following factors will play a major role 1) Massive decline of WASP and Nordic populations in US and Europe 2) Severe population pressure from Mexico. 3) Severe economic pressure from China (imbalanced trade) The above two will trigger a back to insularity formula to preserve the original culture. This will create an US rapidly losing the tech/innovation edge, since its edge was rarely homegrown but mostly imported transplanted and nourished with the great resources that US provided. The resources of US will be hoarded for the already existing elites -- it will use Mexican and Chinese as coolies (not that it does not do so now, but in increasing manner) This time due to globalization, the factors which Johann outlined of unresolved parity and unresolved laws will actually play a role in a global sense and not local one. Sooner or later we will see low end home based conflicts in US territories and high end conflicts on larger geographical scale. Roman empire all over again at a WWW level. With respect Sanku, What original culture? America stopped being majority Anglo-Saxon and Protestant a long time ago. It hasnt changed the American recipe for material success. People like what works, regardless of caste or creed. Culture and ethnicity/race cant be tied that closely in America thanks to assimilative pressures. I was startled once when visiting UCSD to have someone there describe it as 'too white' - when its overwhelmingly East Asian and Hispanic in background. What they meant was worldview, not skin colour or ethnicity. The greatest failures of the Roman Empire was its failure to find a common thread to bind its diverse peoples without coercively imposing religion and financial obligations from the centre. The populations of Egypt and Syria for example were *willing* to surrender to the Arabs because the Arabs taxed them less than Constantinople did, and didnt tell them what sort of Christians they had to be on pain of death. Rome had no equivalent of the American political system and social contract, which has mechanisms for any group to achieve full participation even if it is shut out. Once you have a stake in the system things change. A Mexican-American or Chinese-American is Mexican or Chinese only in the sense of family heritage. He has banked his future and that of his family on the success of the American enterprise. Marriage, personal faith, national service - in none of these areas is he particularly distinct from the people he works with. There's too much fluidity across lines to think in terms of 'jathi'. I'd say look at people like Jeb Bush (fluent in Spanish, and a Catholic convert thanks to marriage), or Bill Richardson, who is not a 'WASP' but Hispanic. America has always been a land of hybridisation - that has been a source of strength rather than weakness. Rock and roll wouldnt have been as dynamic as it was if it wasnt for the fusion of Scottish/Irish, African, Jewish and the Italian influences. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 09 Apr 2009 08:01 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: We have enough threads to host all views from whines - serious. No need for any new threads. We need a comparison and it is very important. Maybe later when the discussion are more mature and factual. And also when the posters are calmer | |
| Author: | Hitesh [ 09 Apr 2009 09:11 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Johann wrote: I cant claim to be an economist either, but there are two basic sources of economic growth - growth in the amount of area exploited for cultivation/mining/habitation, etc. This is limited by the supply of labour, and usually followed by attendant population growth. - increases in productivity which increase the size of surpluses. America's population continues to grow, but importantly it continues to lead in innovation - technological, managerial, social and political, the keys to productivity growth. Innovation isnt just dreaming up an idea - it requires the freedom and the financial capital to be an early, deep and wide adopter over and over and over again. In addition despite population growth the burdens of food security, energy security, political pressures over social mobility and change etc are nowhere as acute and limiting as they are elsewhere - that frees up financial and political capital to innovate and adopt early. No need to be an economist when you can see the general trends. Although the Great Depression was a very severe event, it did not threaten the political stability although there were grassroot support for communism, although not widespread but significant among the displaced Midwesterners who lost their homes due to failing crops and loans. I wonder how the political stability held under severe economic depression. Was it due to the New Deal programs in which FDR foresaw the need to pre-empt any mass wide support for communism in order to preserve the essence of capitalism or was it that the people had enough faith in their political system that their leaders will get them out of the mess? | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 10 Apr 2009 07:16 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Johann wrote: What original culture? America stopped being majority Anglo-Saxon and Protestant a long time ago. It hasnt changed the American recipe for material success. People like what works, regardless of caste or creed. I humbly disagree. The elites of US at least to me appear to have not fundamentally changed. If I look at the standard spectrum of political corporate elites, all said and done they are WASPs. I don't know if ethnically WASPs are in minority either. Do you have any references of this (not doubting you just wondering) Quote: What they meant was worldview, not skin colour or ethnicity. That is what I also what I mean -- the elities from other ethnicity have to turn white also and have. Quote: The greatest failures of the Roman Empire was its failure to find a common thread to bind its diverse peoples without coercively imposing religion and financial obligations from the centre. With reference to your statement above I think it is true for US too a large degree. Its the scale which is different and the scale makes up for apparently relative flexibility vis a vis the Roman empire. Quote: Rome had no equivalent of the American political system and social contract, which has mechanisms for any group to achieve full participation even if it is shut out. Once you have a stake in the system things change. I disagree, for its time, Rome did co-opt all manners of barbarians and Romanized them, much like US today. Of course in its day and time the intensity was different. Quote: Rock and roll wouldnt have been as dynamic as it was if it wasnt for the fusion of Scottish/Irish, African, Jewish and the Italian influences. The melting pot internally is not something I challenge -- but my point is some what different 1) Internally the pol power structure is WASP -- other ethnicity have to turn WASP to succeed (rock and roll is frankly a sideshow) 2) The extent reach and scale of US is way larger than previous empires. So it will fail on the same scales. | |
| Author: | Sanku [ 10 Apr 2009 07:18 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Hitesh wrote: Was it due to the New Deal programs in which FDR foresaw the need to pre-empt any mass wide support for communism in order to preserve the essence of capitalism or was it that the people had enough faith in their political system that their leaders will get them out of the mess? Both; and to take the analogy further -- the US must offer the WORLD a new deal -- or it will end. There is still a way, but I think US is towing the usual WASPs rock behavior, esp w.r.t. Obama (funny aint it) | |
| Author: | ramana [ 17 Apr 2009 05:22 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The English Civil wars: 1640-1660 By Blair Worden, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Rs 695 Quote: NOT A WAR WITHOUT MEANING The English Civil wars: 1640-1660 By Blair Worden, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Rs 695 The history that was made in England between 1640 and 1660 remains epochal because it was the first time that a monarch was beheaded as an expression of popular will and protest; it was also the first experiment with republican government. Regicide and republicanism made many historians see the events of those 20 years as a revolution. Other historians have seen the events as the expression of a country at war with itself. Hence the term, ‘the English Civil War’. Blair Worden, in this delightful little book, introduces the term, ‘Civil Wars’. He explains his use of the plural noun thus: “The civil war will mean the war fought between king and parliament in 1642-6. The civil wars will mean the range of conflicts, military and political, of the 1640s and 1650s.” The book is divided into five short chapters: ‘Origins’, ‘War’, ‘Regicide’, ‘Republic’ and ‘Restoration’. The emphasis is heavily on political history at which Worden excels. But one looks in vain, say in the chapter, ‘Origins’, to learn something about the economic conditions (some would say, crisis) prevailing in the 1620s and 1630s. Similarly, while Worden analyses the political positions adopted by the various groups upholding the cause of parliament, there is scarcely a word about their economic ideology. This is one major lacuna of the book. It is political history at its best, but a kind of political history that believes that the subject can be understood without its interactions with the economy. The author is also very good at separating the strands of religious doctrine and debate that excited contemporaries in the middle of the 17th century. The term, ‘Puritan Revolution’, since the time it was first used in the 19th century, has tended to act as a kind of holdall. Worden separates the various strands and where they stood against episcopacy. He does this without going into the nitty-gritty of theological doctrines. This is one of the real strengths of the book, and it serves to underscore how strong religious sentiments were in the wars that divided England in the middle of the 17th century. Worden writes with a hint of disapproval about what happened in England in the 17th century. He comes close to upholding the king’s cause without quite saying it. He closes the book with the words of a poem written by John Dryden in 1700. Dryden walked with John Milton and Andrew Marvell in Oliver Cromwell’s funeral procession, but in 1700, looking back, he had written, “Thy wars brought nothing about.” Worden approves of this assessment. This raises a few questions. Did the Royalists actually regain the throne that Charles “needlessly lost”? Worden seems to think so. But surely the throne to which Charles II ascended was not the same one from which his father had ruled. The terms of power had been radically altered. The significance of this change was demonstrated in the Settlement of 1688, which Worden seems to think was unconnected with the events that engulfed England between 1640 and 1660. Historians may have overstated their case by calling the events a revolution. It would be a similar kind of exaggeration to conclude on the other side that the events signified nothing. There is meaning in failure. History, as a great historian of the 17th century, for whom Worden has much time, said, is tragedy, although not a meaningless one. RUDRANGSHU MUKHERJEE | |
| Author: | SwamyG [ 24 Apr 2009 09:56 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
A neglected Precursor to Classical Economics It is about how classical economics thoughts of Kautilya were for long neglected. | |
| Author: | SwamyG [ 24 Apr 2009 09:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Management fundamentals in Kautilya's Arthashastra Seven set of articles on the management principles found in Arthasastra. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 29 Apr 2009 03:19 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X post viv wrote: It appears to me that there is an assumption that there is no 'science' in Ayurveda. That the scientific method was not followed or is not followed. Is it correct to use the term 'western science' and not the term 'modern science'; as science is equally (or largely?) built upon , and actively continues to be contributed to by folks non-western. The mathematics, or science or medicine or metallurgy of earlier India is explained through observations, hypothesis derived from it and proofs developed from it - is it not? In the last few hundred years contribution from Europe were prominent in extending science - but why should those weigh more than others and we suddenly consider only that contribution as 'real' or 'normal' science and term the scientific method 'western'? The real problem is the level of dependence on logic as opposed to repeatable experiments. Science in the West took the route of disbelieving anything that could not be proven by repeatable experimentation. (Almost) Nothing was "fact" until that occurred, and until that occurred everything was "theory" and "hypothesis", yet to be proven. Science in India did not take that route. Both were science, but only one was "Western science". Both achieved results but only some were on common territory. Both types of science reached places that the other did not reach. (I posted before but somehow my post seems to have vanished.) The scientific method was refined in Europe, sometime post-Renaissance between the 16-18th centuries, to have an increased emphasis on repeatable experimentation. It certainly avoids taking Aristotle's statements on face value - 32 teeth for men but 28 for women etc. But why does this 'process' warrant the science itself to be called 'western'? Why so much weightage to the process that entire modern scientific base is termed 'western'? Then should we call mathematics Indian? - after-all the decimal system, trigonometry, algebra etc. are from India or, call it all 'western math' since the recent advances have been Europe based. It appears to me that post renaissance jump in various disciplines of science and scientific method has allowed 'west' to appropriate science for itself; and leave any of the thought process until then as the 'oriental' science. Unfair!! for the Renaissance leapt off the shoulders of Indian (and other) science and mathematics. Ayurveda that was mentioned earlier certainly followed the scientific method - observation, hypothesis, treatment/verification, and the refinement based on the result. It would have been followed to get the right method for making steel, or other technical processes. I came across Vaiseshika philosophy (800 BC) as described in a book called 'Hinduism' by Klostermaier, and almost thought I was reading an extract from a physics text. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 02 May 2009 06:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-posted... dhu wrote: Nichols explains the migrations out of India ( ie Bactria-margiana ) solely as a function of Geography. The migration *patterns* across Eurasia are overwhelmingly from East to West. Basically, you just need to get a dialect into the steppe expansion zone and this will naturally be carried across into the western cul de sac, leading to a compilation of a pseudo diversity (nongenerative) at the western end. IE, Iranian, turkic, Uralic, and Indic all expand from East to west. When you factor in the sole out-of-africa southern migration route with South Asia serving as a genetic diversification crucible, this only reinforces an overwhelming east to west historical gradient across Eurasia. Hunnic invasions into South Asia are a minor affair (and are nonetheless mostly from the East itself) and do not alter the south asian cultural landscape. This is the default migration pattern with a non-normative ( heathen ) societal configuration. Any reversal within a non-normative configuration will be minor and will not result in any overwhelming cultural change on the scale of (putative) AIT. Likewise, the emigrant groups from south asia will not experience any ideological dissonance, nor will the receiving groups. of course conflict per se is not precluded (ie the conflict will be heathen type conflict, eg between kings and rulers (and not tribal). To reverse this general pattern of migrations (which is dependent solely upon geography and the initial populating inoculations), you actually have to reverse the cultural configuration from non-normative to normative. Alexander's invasion was the beginning where there is just a small residue of normativism. Judaism is the first _application_ of Normative ethics as imperial propaganda in the Ptolemaic and Seleucid setting. Christianity is the Roman successor. So where does Islam fit in this scheme? | |
| Author: | Rahul M [ 02 May 2009 06:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
source thread ? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 03 May 2009 06:22 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Its from India Forum in response to a question on whats normative process and how has it reversed the East--> West migrations over the millenia. Dhu replied to my question: Quote: Muslims are biggest consumers of western propaganda concerning heathens but they are not able to manufacture it proportionately. I tend to think they are primed as converted sepoys for the empire. The color revolution in nepal which happened before our eyes is the main model which we should be applying. As you have said, Church may have resurrected Arianism to remove their Byzantine and Persian opponents and create fodder class in Asia. Just basing upon current parallels. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 05 May 2009 04:07 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-posted... Raju wrote: backing losing causes/criminals in asia seems to be a US speciality - it is no coincidence. Anglo-saxon strategy is to back the smaller revisionist entity rather than the status-quo power. Only in developing situation can they work out their agenda. Look at how they support muslim Bosnia against Christian Serbia in Europe. It is an extension of the same paradigm. It is also an extension of the age old imperialist strategy for creating empires. The rules are like this: Back - underdog vs status quo - minority vs majority (Takleef factor) - Religious minority vs pagan - Anyone vs Orthodox Church Of these the last is the oldest. | |
| Author: | Raju [ 05 May 2009 04:45 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
the support is not for 'any minority', but the 'strongest minority' which can take up the challenge of the majority in their perception. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 12 May 2009 03:32 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-posted... dhu wrote: Following is most accurate description of Marxism that I've found. It was written in 1995. Quote: S. R. Goel The missionary-colonial attack was reinforced by another attack - Marxism. Its source too was Europe and it was even more Eurocentric than regular Imperialism. It used radical slogans but its aims were reactionary. It taught that Europe was the centre and rest of the world its periphery - not by chance but by an inherent dialectics of History. Marx fully shared the contempt of British Imperialists for India. He said: "Indian society has no history at all, at least no known history. What we call its history, is but the history of succesive intruders." He also said that India neither knew freedom nor deserved it. To him the question was "not whether the English had a right to conquer India, but whether we are to prefer India conquered by the Briton." This also became the faith of his Indian pupils. In India, Macaulayism prepared the ground for Marxism - early Marxists were recruited from Macaulayites. Marxism in turn gave Macaulayism a radical look and made it attractive for a whole new class. While Marxists served European Imperialism, they also fell in love with all old Imperialist invaders, particularly Muslim ones. M.N. Roy found the Arab Empire a "magnificient monument to the memory of Mohammad." While the Marxists found British Imperialism "progressive", they opposed the country's national struggle as reactionary. They learnt to work closely with Muslims both during and after Independence. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 12 May 2009 09:46 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Cradle of Indian History By Rao Bahdur C.R. Krishnamacharyulu Its about the history and Geography of the Puranas. | |
| Author: | SwamyG [ 18 May 2009 03:47 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I am cross-posting my own post from another thread. SwamyG wrote:  Sudhir: Recently I had drawn this picture about the State vs Family vs Individual. It is my opinion that in the West the individual relationship with each other in family is weakening and the State relationship with the individual is strengthening. For example the State's say over an individual is more than the say by a family member. The strong lines from the State suggest the "hold" over the individual is increasing. The amusing thing is this is all happening where democracies flourish. In the non-Western World, say in India - the relationship between the individuals in a family had more say. For example the family honor mattered. Then the clan honor mattered. Essentially the individual was identified with family, caste, clan and other factors that held stronger connections. In the Western Democracies; the State is exercising and demanding stronger relationship with the individual - sometimes supplanting existing familial relationships. For example there is a case going on in USA, where a family is rejecting chemotherapy for its 13-yr old son. I think the Judge is ruling that the boy is too young to decide but he must undergo treatment. The State might be intervening in cases where an individual is not an adult or is not in a position to make decisions, but there is a steady encroachment into family relationships. We are not yet seeing this in India, it can happen in another 2-3 generations if the West continues to hold its sway over the World. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 22 May 2009 09:17 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
In India Forum there is long running thread on Historicity of Jesus. Recently it has been able to collect some important conclusions. A blog was created to take the reader through the logic. Its still in work so please visit it often. Alternateivley one can swim thru the ~13 pages of the original thread. One will also realize some mind blowing stuff about INC and its mission. http://ascendantasia.blogspot.com/ Link to IF Historicity of Jesus-2 its not just about Jesus but you get an understandingof Greek and Roman thinking. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 28 May 2009 09:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Need to explore the rise of the Anglo-Saxon West. By and large in three centures from 1588 (Spanish Armada) to 1888 it supplanted the Islamic mercantile system, became a naval and colonial power. Its language and customs became widespread and the sun never set on the British Empire. It withstood three big challenges: American Independence, Napoleon, and the first Indian war of Independence. Around 1880, US started its rise in industrial production and began its drive to supplant the British which it did after WWII. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 29 May 2009 08:18 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
One thing remarkable about the long centuries of Asian dominance of global GDP us the absence of coupling it with imeprialistic or militarist ambitions. The dominance helped spread culture and values. Its only with the Anglo-Saxons rise that we see the coupling of imperial and militarist ambitions with global economic domination. In fact they drive of each other in a closed loop and spiral upwards. I would like a map that shows the cultural footprint of Indic values as shown in history. | |
| Author: | John Snow [ 29 May 2009 08:23 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
West was driven by aquisition of natural resources like the Lizard is doing in Africa, where as the orientals (prior to west dominance) were exporting and trading the finished product ( of advanced technology like ornaments silk carpets and perccious stones & metals processed not ores) | |
| Author: | ramana [ 29 May 2009 08:49 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
The British lost because of the Western European turmoil which sucked them in their search for stability in Europe. So loss of balance of power in Europe was the cause for their loss of the Empire. | |
| Author: | Prem [ 30 May 2009 12:21 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Anglo Saxons occupy lot of real estate on this planet . Indoos should try to populate Australia, Canada and further "develop" them culturally and economically for World benefit. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 30 May 2009 12:22 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Prem wrote: Anglo Saxons occupy lot of real estate on this planet . Indoos should try to populate Australia, Canada and further "develop" them culturally and economically for World benefit. Finally the real solution by somebody! | |
| Author: | Prem [ 30 May 2009 12:43 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Acharya Sir , "Developing " these lands with India in the Middle will bring upon Geo -political change on Yuga scale . India with huge human resources can expedite their entry into big boys league. Past 2030 , Indicians should be into good economic condition to initiate trillon dollar development plans for these under exploited territories .After all we are also English speaking people. | |
| Author: | vsudhir [ 30 May 2009 02:08 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Democracy - the God that failed (Book extract) Worthwhile read and impinges on Yindian historical narratives (or lack thereof). Quote: To make a decision regarding such incompatible interpretations, we need a theory. By theory I mean a proposition whose validity does not depend on further experience but can be established a priori. This is not to say that one can do without experience altogether in establishing a theoretical proposition. However, it is to say that even if experience is necessary, theoretical insights extend and transcend logically beyond a particular historical experience. Theoretical propositions are about necessary facts and relations and, by implication, about impossibilities. Experience may thus illustrate a theory. But historical experience can neither establish a theorem nor refute it. The Austrian School Economic and political theory, especially of the Austrian variety, is a treasure trove of such propositions. For instance, a larger quantity of a good is preferred to a smaller amount of the same good; production must precede consumption; what is consumed now cannot be consumed again in the future; prices fixed below market-clearing prices will lead to lasting shortages; without private property in production factors there can be no factor prices, and without factor prices cost-accounting is impossible; an increase in the supply of paper money cannot increase total social wealth but can only redistribute existing wealth; monopoly (the absence of free entry) leads to higher prices and lower product quality than competition; no thing or part of a thing can be owned exclusively by more than one party at a time; democracy (majority rule) and private property are incompatible. Theory is no substitute for history, of course, yet without a firm grasp of theory serious errors in the interpretation of historical data are unavoidable. For instance, the outstanding historian Carroll Quigley claims that the invention of fractional reserve banking has been a major cause of the unprecedented expansion of wealth associated with the Industrial Revolution, and countless historians have associated the economic plight of Soviet-style socialism with the absence of democracy. From a theoretical viewpoint, such interpretations must be rejected categorically. An increase in the paper money supply cannot lead to greater prosperity but only to wealth redistribution. The explosion of wealth during the Industrial Revolution took place despite fractional reserve banking. Similarly, the economic plight of socialism cannot be due to the absence of democracy. Instead, it is caused by the absence of private property in factors of production. "Received history" is full of such misinterpretations. Theory allows us to rule out certain historical reports as impossible and incompatible with the nature of things. By the same token, it allows us to uphold certain other things as historical possibilities, even if they have not yet been tried. Read it all. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 01 Jun 2009 08:23 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Two quotes on ancient India Quote: From Arrian's indica... Quote: This also is remarkable in India, that all Indians are free, and no Indian at all is a slave. In this the Indians agree with the Lacedaemonians. Yet the Lacedaemonians have Helots for slaves, who perform the duties of slaves; but the Indians have no slaves at all, much less is any Indian a slave." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indica_(Arrian) And Quote: From Megasthenes indika... Quote: Of several remarkable customs existing among the Indians, there is one prescribed by their ancient philosophers which one may regard as truly admirable: for the law ordains that no one among them shall, under any circumstances, be a slave, but that, enjoying freedom, they shall respect the equal right to it which all possess: for those, they thought, who have learned neither to domineer over nor to cringe to others will attain the life best adapted for all vicissitudes of lot: for it is but fair and reasonable to institute laws which bind all equally, but allow property to be unevenly distributed. http://www.mssu.edu/projectsouthasia/histo...enes-Indika.htm | |
| Author: | SwamyG [ 01 Jun 2009 09:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Prem wrote: Anglo Saxons occupy lot of real estate on this planet . Indoos should try to populate Australia, Canada and further "develop" them culturally and economically for World benefit. I used to joke around long long ago, India should export what we produce in large and good quantities - people. Indian workers were moved by the British, now why not India - where and when ever it makes sense. | |
| Author: | satya [ 01 Jun 2009 09:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
EU is going to open up big time 2010-2020 time frame and its not sector specific , they need immigrants in almost all spheres of economy ( already Spain has a special business visa , italians have seasonal farm workers visa & portugal also happen to has a very low skill requirement visa where intake is presently low somewhere in thousands owing to current slowdown & to get EU level legislation in place before making it very open & large scale .Once implemented it will have somewhere around million + per annum intake on low side ) .If India plays its cards right so far ok overall , we will easily have the largest share of immigration in mainland EU . | |
| Author: | ramana [ 01 Jun 2009 09:50 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Will also see an opening in basic engineering jobs in US too as the uty output is falling. | |
| Author: | Prem [ 01 Jun 2009 10:09 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Europe is already crowded and not much spare natural resources. The aim ought to be to own and bring under our control the vast territories and the natural resources. Australia is major empty space close to us and imagine 100 Million Yindoss in Canda next to the biggest developed market with old, downhill superpowerdum looking for crutches to make a stand . Its a great oppertunity staring at our face and win win for all parties .Canadianwill like it and OZ deserve all zzzzzs till eternity. Soon Chinese will make move toward vast empty Russian territories, indoos can offer same to our dear friends in Moscow | |
| Author: | SwamyG [ 02 Jun 2009 01:43 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I agree with Prem, Australia is a prime real-estate. But Canada would be more easy, no? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 02 Jun 2009 03:19 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
From IF Quote: How the ‘Aryan invasion theory’ came to be As the Catholic ex-priest James Carroll (2001) has detailed in Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, European Christians have, for a tragically long time, denigrated and reduced the living Jews among them, oppressing them alternatively with genocide, inquisition, forced conversion, expulsion, genocide… The same history has inflicted, on Christians, a profound intellectual awkwardness: the ancient ‘heroic age’ of Christianity is Jewish! It just doesn’t feel comfortable, in an antisemitic civilization, that one’s story of origins should be Jewish; or that this story should be so much longer than the Christian ‘New Testament’; or that it should be so much more interesting and fun to read. But it cannot be avoided, because Christianity claims to have developed out of ancient Judaism. It is remarkable that this absurd state of affairs has remained stable for so long, but signs that it would not remain so forever began to appear in the eighteenth century. At this time, many European intellectuals began looking for a way out, and tried to give themselves an ancient ‘heroic age’ that would not be Jewish. Navaratna S. Rajaram explains that, The humanist movement now known as the European Renaissance was followed by voyages of discovery in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, leading to greatly increased trade and colonizing activities. This had resulted in Europe becoming aware of the richness, antiquity and the complexities of Indian history and culture. As Jim Shaffer notes: “Many scholars such as Kant and Herder, began to draw analogies between the myths and philosophies of ancient India and the West. In their attempt to separate Western European culture from its Judaic heritage, many scholars were convinced that the origin of Western culture was to be found in India rather than in the ancient Near East.” (Shaffer 1984:80) At the time, skin color in particular was also capturing the European imagination, because colonialism brought close contact with dark-skinned peoples whom the Europeans, with their more effective weaponry, had subjugated. So the story these conquering Europeans came up with became that, in ancient times, mirroring the contemporary experience, the socalled ‘Aryan race’—blond, blue-eyed, and white-skinned— had burst forth from Central Asia and invaded everything, becoming the ruling class in India, Iran, and Europe, replacing the dark-skinned natives just as the modern Europeans in colonial times were subjugating the dark-skinned natives everywhere else Not exactly original. It was German intellectuals with a nationalist bent who became most interested in this alternative ‘heroic age’ story of origins, the better to coalesce around it in pride. Why? Because, for a long time, the Germans had been divided into small principalities rather than unified into a single state, and in consequence were pushed around by the other European powers. The ‘Aryan race’ theory was a convenient and unifying alternative myth of origins with which the German nationalists were able to stir the imagination of the German masses to mobilize together politically. The theory became popular all over ‘Nordic’ Europe, but the German nationalists claimed special ownership over this theory by saying that the Germans were the ‘purest’ descendants of the original Aryans. As a dominant European power, the British had zero interest in fostering German unification—and yet they accidentally did just that, by sponsoring the ‘Aryan race’ theory. Here is how it happened. The British were looking for ways to undermine Indian culture and pride in order more effectively to rule India. For example, in 1831, Colonel Boden bequeathed to Oxford University his entire fortune—worth £25,000—to create the Boden Professorship of Sanskrit, the explicit purpose of which was to promote knowledge of Sanskrit among Englishmen so as “to enable his countrymen to proceed in the conversion of the natives of India to the Christian religion” (quoted in Rajaram 1995:71). More significantly, “as chairman of the Education Board,” Thomas Babbington Macaulay (1800-1859) “was instrumental in establishing a network of modern English schools in India, the principal goal of which was the conversion of Hindus to Christianity” (ibid. p.105). This is not speculation: in a letter to his father in 1836, Macauley wrote, It is my belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolater among the respectable classes in Bengal thirty years hence. And this will be effected without any efforts to proselytize, without the smallest interference with religious liberty, by natural operation of knowledge and reflection. I heartily rejoice in the project.— quoted in Rajaram (1995:105)1 Macauley was obviously a narrow Christian chauvinist, convinced of the superiority of Christian doctrine. And yet he was not so self-assured that he felt comfortable with a level playing field: to ensure that the Brahmins would become Christians, he “wanted someone willing and able to interpret Indian scriptures in such a way that the newly educated Indian elite would see for itself the difference between their scriptures and the New Testament and choose the latter” (ibid. p.106). It was in Germany that Sanskrit studies were flourishing the most, so Macauley eventually recruited a German scholar to make a translation of the Vedic scriptures that would undermine Indian religion. That he selected his man with care may be inferred from the fact that it took him fifteen years to find him: the ardent German nationalist and Sanskrit scholar Max Müller. Given that the rise of German Prussia as a European power was then worrying the British, and given the fateful consequences of Max Müller’s work for Prussian expansion, it is ironic that it was the Prussian ambassador, Christian Karl Hosias, who brought the 31-year-old Müller to meet Thomas Babbington Macauley, the man who would become his British sponsor. It was hardly fitting for a German nationalist to assist the British in their efforts to turn themselves into an even more formidable international power, but Max Müller was also a devout Protestant Christian—and hard up. So, for the sake of Christianity, and for the sake of his own economic stability, he accepted payment from the British East India Company for the work that Macauley commissioned (ibid. pp.106-107). A letter that he wrote to his wife in 1866 shows that Max Müller took his Christian mission seriously: …this edition of mine and the translation of the Veda, will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It [the Vedic scripture] is the root of their religion and to show them what that root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last three thousand years. Rajaram quotes the above passage and comments that, since Müller had no particular reason to misrepresent his motives in a private letter to his wife, we may take the above as a sincere expression of his intent (ibid. p.108). I think that’s reasonable. Rajaram (ibid. p.114) also quotes a letter that Müller wrote to N.K. Majumdar, an Indian social reformer, late in his life: The first thing you have to do is to settle how much of your ancient religion you are willing to give up, if not as utterly false, still as antiquated; …Tell me some of the chief difficulties that prevent you and your countrymen from openly following Christ, and when I write to you I shall do my best to explain how I and many who agree with me have met them, and solved them… (In Devi Chand 1988:xxvi-xxvii) This leaves little doubt that Müller’s purpose was to undermine Indian belief, which is hardly a recommendation for someone who is supposed to be a scholarly authority on Indian beliefs, and the author of the Vedic translation that many scholars still today are using. In one sense Macauley’s effort was highly successful, because the upper-class Indians whom Macauley targeted responded very well to British-style education—except that they didn’t convert to Christianity. But if Macauley failed to undermine Indian religion, he did manage to create a new religion in Europe, because Müller’s work was a huge log in the fire of the ‘Aryan race’ theory. Though he was not the only one or the first German nationalist to do this, Müller interpreted the words ‘Arya’ and ‘Aryan,’ which appear repeatedly in the Rigveda, as referring to a race—the ancestral ‘Aryan race’ to which the German nationalists were learning to imagine themselves as the purest descendants. Thus, for example, “in 1861 he gave a series of lectures under the title ‘Science of Languages’ in which he made extensive use of Vedic hymns to show that the Vedic words Arya and Aryan were used to mean a race of people” (ibid. p.109). This completely contradicts the way in which these words are used in the original Sanskrit. For this distortion Müller bears a special responsibility because, “Unlike most other German romantics and nationalists, he as a Sanskrit scholar was fully aware that in Sanskrit, Arya does not refer to any race” (ibid.; original emphasis). Not all Sanskrit scholars followed Müller in this. For example, “Shlegel, no less a romantic or German nationalist always used the word Aryan to mean ‘honorable’ or ‘noble’ which is much closer to the original Sanskrit in meaning” (ibid. p.110). But the interpretation of the Aryans as a supposed race was more influential by far. And it matters, because it was the claim that the ancient Sanskrit texts speak of a supposed Aryan race— when they don’t—that became the basis for the belief that there had ever existed such a race or people. As it turned out, Max Müller was very successful with this ‘Aryan race’ stuff, and the emerging ideology was instrumental to Otto von Bismarck’s push to create a unified German empire by extending the borders of his native Prussia. Ever since the 1700s, when Frederick I of Prussia had “raised the army to 80,000, effectively making the whole state a military machine,”1 Prussia had been, as in the case of the ancient Greeks, though not quite as extreme, society as army. Though Prussia had lost—like everybody else—to Napoleon Bonaparte, by the time it provoked a war with France in 1870- 71 (after provoking wars with Denmark and Austria), it was again a redoubtable fighting machine. The outcome of the Franco-Prussian war was a resounding victory for Prussia, 1 "Prussia." Britannica Student Encyclopedia from Encyclopædia Britannica Online. http://proxy.library.upenn.edu:8409/ebi ... Id=9276562 [Accessed April 20, 2005]. which then allowed its leader, Bismarck, to annex the south German principalities, creating Germany. In order to expand Prussia’s borders to create the German Empire or ‘Reich,’ Bismarck appealed to the German speaking peoples of Europe in a way that shows the importance of the ‘Aryan race’ theory of German origins: Bismarck’s famous exhortation to the German people, over the heads of their particular political leaders, to ‘think with your blood’ was a[n]…attempt to activate a mass psychological vibration predicated upon an intuitive sense of consanguinity. An unstated presumption of a Chinese (or German) nation is that there existed in some hazy, prerecorded era a Chinese (or German) Adam and Eve, and that the couple’s progeny has evolved in essentially unadulterated form down to the present.—Connor (1994[1978]:93-94) The Germans were learning to think of themselves as the exalted pure descendants of an Aryan—not Jewish—Adam and Eve: the ‘Aryan race.’ This worked so well that even in Austria, which was then a major power in Europe, a movement grew among the German-speakers to join ‘Germany.’ For example, “a large part of the membership [of the student fraternity Deutsche Lesehalle in Vienna] insisted on Austria’s subservience to Germany…and supported Austria’s eventual union with Bismarck’s militant empire” (Elon 1975:52). This view was widespread. As is well known, the mood of nineteenth century pan-German nationalism continued into the twentieth century, making Adolf Hitler’s bloodless annexation of his native Austria—under the banner of a now truly assertive ‘Aryan race’ ideology—relatively easy. German nationalism produced a tragic irony: “Many, if not most, Jewish students in Austria were ardent German patriots” (Elon 1975:53). In fact, hardly anybody was more infatuated with German culture than the German-speaking Jews: “many Jewish intellectuals were dazzled by the rise of German power under Bismarck” (ibid.). It took these Jews a long time to recognize the dangers to them inherent in German power, something that can be dramatically appreciated by the fact that one of the Austrian Jews who most firmly believed himself to be ‘German,’ and who was initially most in love with the rise of Germany, was Theodore Herzl, the very man who in time would create the Zionist movement to protect the European Jewish population from the antisemitic violence that he finally realized would engulf his people. And yet German nationalism was clearly antisemitic, based on the ‘Aryan race’ theory that exalted white skin, blue eyes, and yellow hair, and explicitly desired to exclude Jews: “‘Nowadays one must be blond,’ Herzl wrote in a revealing note found among his papers from that time” (ibid. p.54). Herzl’s own pro-German fraternity, Albia, soon became a nest of antisemites, and in March of 1883 he resigned in anger (ibid. pp.60-61)—but it was a while still before he became seriously worried for the fate of the Jews, and despite the eventual success of his belatedly feverish and heroic efforts to create a Jewish homeland, his dire predictions would find themselves confirmed in the twentieth-century German assault against the Jewish people. The Western Jewish naïveté before the growing German threat appears to many, in hindsight, remarkable; but proper—i.e., historically informed—hindsight produces an exactly opposite assessment: this was normal. Herzl’s biographer, Amos Elon, writes that “Never was an attachment by a minority [German-speaking Jews] to a majority [Germans] so strong” (1975:53), and yet the modern Jewish attachment to and infatuation with the United States is arguably stronger, despite the fact that US foreign policy towards Israel in the twentieth-century, and into the twenty-first, has been a series of stunningly vicious attacks, something the Jews appear entirely blind to, but of which I have now given a book-length demonstration.1 Anybody who has read historian Christopher Simpson’s 1988 work, which documents, with material obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, that US Intelligence was created after the World War by absorbing in secret tens of thousands of Nazi war criminals, cannot be surprised that US foreign policy has prepared the impending destruction of the Jewish state.2 But most Jews have not read Conclusion The best current evidence agrees with the view that the Iranians are a development out of the Vedic-Indian civilization of the Sarasvati river (later, the Indus Valley), and it appears that they emerged into their own at least in part as a result of ideological movements produced by class conflict, with the proto-Iranians representing the ancient left, and in turn producing a world-saving leftist movement: Zoroastrianism. In time, as we shall see, the Zoroastrians would sponsor a more radical leftist movement: Judaism. http://www.scribd.com/doc/6428395/Aryan ... heory-Crux | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 02 Jun 2009 03:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Ramana - What parts of India did Arrian and Megasthenes travel to? How do their accounts match with the concept of the caste system that surely existed in those areas in those times? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 02 Jun 2009 03:40 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
megasthanes as you know was the Selucid Greek envoy to the court of Chandragupta. So likely he travelled all over from modern day Afghanistan to Pataliputra. Arrian wrote an account of Alexander's invasion but a couple of centuries later. I dont know if he travelled to India. If you find out let us know. Somewhere on my back up HD archives I have the full text of his account. | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 02 Jun 2009 03:44 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: megasthanes as you know was the Selucid Greek envoy to the court of Chandragupta. So likely he travelled all over from modern day Afghanistan to Pataliputra. An excerpt can be found here. I don't know how reliable it is but it is from a university website. http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Indica.html He describes seven castes but makes no mention of untouchables or even those who do menial labor. It is possible that he did not differentiate between those who did higher labor and those who did lower labor (taking care of dead bodies, cleaning toilets, etc.). | |
| Author: | ramana [ 02 Jun 2009 04:24 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Thanks. A request please dont follow up this stuff in this thread as I dont want it to be another exploring India thread. Thanks, ramana | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 02 Jun 2009 04:55 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Keshav wrote: He describes seven castes but makes no mention of untouchables or even those who do menial labor. It is possible that he did not differentiate between those who did higher labor and those who did lower labor (taking care of dead bodies, cleaning toilets, etc.). Did he also describe human rights in that period and the state enforcing human rights on 'higher labor' and 'lower labor'. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 02 Jun 2009 05:04 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Acharya, Please see my post above yours. Thanks, ramana | |
| Author: | Keshav [ 02 Jun 2009 10:23 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Acharya - I will post a response in the "Distorted History" thread. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 17 Jun 2009 04:52 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Saudi Oil company Aramco's Journal issue of July 2005 Indian Ocean and Global Trade in 750-1500 A D | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 17 Jun 2009 06:05 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: Instead of India talking about its history and its world trading position in the past we have other countries publishing it. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 18 Jun 2009 11:17 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Find the comparison of "Judaism" as "Left" ideology, quite problematic. The Abrahamic is entirely based on claims about history. Without history there is nothing left of foundations or legitimacy in the ideological claims. The "Left" on the other hand is entirely based on a rupture with history - it is about inverting the dialectics of "hidden hand of history" in Feuerbach and Hegel, into "historical materialism" that is used to overturn history. "Left" cannot source its legitimacy from "history" and therefore is constantly in need of a rupture from the past and reconstruct a new line for the future. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 24 Jun 2009 04:58 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
This x-post should be read again and again for it captures the true force of history. Rony wrote: Skratu wrote: Yeah it was on the Indian Naval discussion board, found the link: Thanks Skratu.That was very informative. Philip wrote: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 564974.ece Currency, culture, Confucius: China's writ will run across the world I humbly disagree with the content of the British article. If History is taken as a precedence as the author does, then it wont be China, but India that would dominate the future.This is nothing to do with being pro-Indian or anti-Chinese, but strictly by using the same yardstick which the author is using which is historical precedence. Strictly speaking, China's influence never reached beyond East Asia and even its limited influence in south east asia is nothing comparable to the historical Indian influence there.On the other hand, India's influence reached beyond Indian Subcontinent ('South Asia' in Anglo-American terms).Entire South East Asia including what is now called 'Indo-China' was called 'Greater India' for centuries.The Chinese never militarily penetrated any terrorities beyond Manchuria in the east and Xinjjiang in the west.In other words, today's china's borders (which was a gift of non-Han manchus who united the nation with current borders)are the greatest extent to which any chinese empire penetrated.On the other hand, Historical India was far larger and far powerful than historical china.Economically in the last 2000 years, Historical India was the World's largest economy for 1600 years, historical china merely for 200 years. Militarily, Indian Empires in different time periods penetrated as far as Persia in the west during Mauryan times and Indonesia-Malyasia in the east during the Chola times.And Zheng He 's 'voyages' of attacking small coastal areas are nothing compared to the Chola's 'invasion's' of huge established empire and Kingdoms.In terms of ideas and culture, historical china itself is a recipient of historical India's superior idea's and culture.If you take historical precedence as yard stick, from every angle it will be India that would be dominant in Asia once again in the long term, not china IMVHO. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 24 Jun 2009 08:24 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Anybody figured what is a "New World Order" | |
| Author: | ramana [ 09 Jul 2009 04:11 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: The western tradition civilized? The British punished Indian mutineers in the Sepoy Rebellion only 150 years ago, by firing them from cannons. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 09 Jul 2009 10:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
"Civilization" for Europe is essentially about power and dominance. A "culture" carries art, literature, philosophy, science, music - creative products of the human imagination that stimulates other human imaginations. For Europe, culture is a product of civilization, but civilization is not a product of culture. This means, for Europe, civilization is not defined or characterized by culture alone. For the eternally vulnerable, small tribal, existence with a persecution complex, where everyone and everything appears to be out to get them, the European tribesman learnt to worship power and dominance. This was power to control the environment and other humans. The reasons for this persistence of tribal mentality lies in the fractured land geography of Europe. The Mediterranean served the role of the Great Asian rivers and pluvial cultures, but a far more dangerous path of interaction it was. Thus we see, some degree of cultural homogenization only along the Mediterranean rim leading to imeprial ambitions and attempts at centralization. But bulk of the "subcontinent" is separated geographically from this influence. It was this fractured tribal existence that shaped their attitude towards "civilization". For them, therfore, civilization meant a greater sense of control over uncertainty of existence. This led them to abhor diversity, and each "tribe" wanted to shape all others in its own image, and preferably as dominated one. But the contradictory pull of distrust of the other tribes remained, leading to easily identifiable, visually characterizable, distinctions and hierarchies. This is the key to understanding Europe's visual based racism, and its overwhelming urge to have unified and centralized world views which each "small" tribe hopes to dominate. Power and domination needs conscious and ruthless exercise of coercion, because the others sought to be dominated will also resist from the same viewpoint. Parallel this with the great perennial riverine civilizations of the East, and it is easy to see why in the East, it is "civilization" which is the product of "culture". Extreme diversity leads to seeking extreme unification. Extreme unification leads to seeking extreme diversity. Indic philosophies contain a hint of accommodating both elements, but that is OT here. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 14 Jul 2009 08:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Here is the mother of Non-Western World view!!! Non Jonesian History of the World. His book is published by Minerva Publications, New Delhi. http://www.ranajitpal.com/ | |
| Author: | ramana [ 15 Jul 2009 03:08 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Interesting conclusions on Linear A script of ancient Greek. The Language of Minoan Greeks Quote: Beginning our research with inscriptions in Linear A carved on offering tables found in the many peak sanctuaries on the mountains of Crete, we recognise a clear relationship between Linear A and Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. There is also a connection to Hittite and Armenian. This relationship allows us to place the Minoan language among the so-called Indo-European languages, a vast family that includes modern Greek and the Latin of Ancient Rome. The Minoan and Greek languages are considered to be different branches of Indo-European. The Minoans probably moved from Anatolia to the island of Crete about 10,000 years ago. There were similar population movements to Greece. The relative isolation of the population which settled in Crete resulted in the development of its own language, Minoan, which is considered different to Mycenaean. In the Minoan language (Linear A), there are no purely Greek words, as is the case in Mycenaean Linear B; it contains only words also found in Greek, Sanskrit and Latin, i.e. sharing the same Indo-European origin. More at this site: Dr. Owens http://www.teicrete.gr/daidalika/ | |
| Author: | SwamyG [ 15 Jul 2009 08:34 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I am posting here as the author goads us to think from an Indian perspective and not just from an Western angle. It is very very good, so I paste the entire blog. In the interest to generated traffic to WSJ I will only link Part 1 as a linky Kamal Nath, a feisty guy, talks about 'jugaad' too in his book "India's Century".And don't forget to read the comments on both blogs. Quote: The comments on Part 1 of this article highlighted a variety of innovations by Indians that many of us, myself included, were not even aware of. Such is the brilliance and breadth of India's innovation! Sadly, a large number of our innovations don't become more widely known because the exposure for smart innovations centers around Western and Japanese inventions. Our simple, everyday innovations [or jugaad – an interesting word with various connotations] are something we must find a way to capitalize on. The current pitiful economic state is an opportunity for that. So what are the missing ingredients for Indians to take our innovative ideas and products to the world? For it to happen on a sustainable basis and to attract development investment, it needs to have a profit motive. We already know that profitable models do exist, but there isn't yet a thriving venture capital industry around this here as there is in the U.S. around the technology industry. The problem is not lack of capital or brilliant people -- the problem is the lack of deeper understanding. We don't know and appreciate the opportunities that are in front of us. This lack of deeper understanding appears at the level of businessmen and entrepreneurs who have largely looked to the West for viable business models and have been content creating an "Indian version." And it appears at the level of investment firms, capital markets, and venture funds who do not realize or are sometimes downright skeptical of Indian innovation opportunities. Why so? For a very simple reason: The people who work in these funds (be it fund managers or analysts) have studied case studies of western companies in their MBA classes but would have never looked at Amul as an example of sheer creative genius in decentralized manufacturing. The lack of general awareness about such examples is widespread especially among students and the younger workforce of the country – take a poll of those who want to join Coca-Cola, IBM, McKinsey after their graduation compared to working for a potential Indian startup company creating innovative products. (Full disclosure: At Vu, we just hired five product design graduates from IIT who want to be part of a smaller company and contribute to its innovation.) Innovation is a product of entrepreneurship, passion and experimentation. We can't blame the government for letting us down in this arena as we normally do in others. Rather, our minds and hearts need to fundamentally change. Among business leaders, we need to allow for an "experimentation fund" within our companies and involve ourselves deeply in getting new ideas to market. Let's work with an example. How many of us know that the Jaipur Rugs Company has built a very successful enterprise by making entrepreneurs out of 40,000 carpet weavers and artisans? It is now a world class business which exports carpets, durries, and mats to countries the world over in their "own brand." Within our secondary education and business schools, instead of students reading up on case studies about "Coke vs Pepsi" and having summer internships at Sony, we must attempt to have students study the Aravind Netralaya model and intern at Amul and Jaipur Rugs. This will create a pool of talent which then understands the vast business opportunity in "constraint-based innovation" and creates the investment and management talent to make this opportunity a reality. Within our media, we need to regularly lionize efforts like the Tata Nano and plenty of others so that more Indians know about the kind of great innovation work that happens in our country. Lastly, among ourselves, we must learn to give Indian products and innovation its respect and its price rather than automatically assuming that something coming from an American or Japanese company is automatically superior. Remember, a country that does not respect its heroes is soon left with none. —Devita Saraf is CEO of Vu Technologies and Executive Director of Zenith Computers in Mumbai | |
| Author: | ramana [ 16 Jul 2009 03:15 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Acharya wrote: Anybody figured what is a "New World Order" Here is an x-post realted to above question. brihaspati wrote: Some interesting clues to the European mindset now about India vis-a-vis UNSC is the following: http://www.cer.org.uk/pdf/bn_india_cg_26sept08.pdf Quote: Perhaps, when India is – as it must be, one day – admitted to the UNSC and the body that replaces the G8, it will start to take on a greater sense of responsibility for global governance. In the long run, India would benefit from a stronger and more effective rules-based international system. The author's stance is obviously his visualization of what he terms the "new world order". His other writeups worth fishing about to get a profile of the current EU thinking, is about Russia's "role", China's "role", and a curious giveaway article speculating about whether "EU+PRC" can provide a model of global "governance". This is the gist of the envisioned "new world order" : a framework that ensures that the world runs according to the European model and preserves perceived European interests. In this India, China to be coopted as client/agents. This is basically an attempt at reviving the heyday of the "British colonial empire" and hence its most persistent proponents are likely to represent British interests. It is possible, that UK and EU no longer have full reliance on the USA to maintain their interests. So they are thinking of an arrangement that can replace the existing arrangement based on US, but still continue UK or EU interests - primarily abnornally high energy and other economic consumption levels. Obviously the US has its own vision of a "new world order", but that still sees Europe as "culturally" reliable but "weak" and dependent agent. The USA is also aware that the Europeans can switch boats if necessary and hence in the US vision also India and China are important client agents. For both "visionaries" Russia has to be kept on a tight leash. It is the Russia and the "Islamic" factor which are undetermined variables in both their equations. And the swings in policies and initiatives that we see stem from this nervousness. Both China and India are going to be pricked and cajoled and "loved" until they fall in line - at least that appears to be the plan. Once these two are on-board, the task is to use these two to tackle Russia and the Islamics. There is an Italian American journalist who has written two books"The Europeans" and the "Italians". In his first book he considers US as an extension of Europe especially Western Europe. He doesnt think much of US intellectual prowess as its tied up with Biblical dogma. The US is still getting out of the Bibilical formulation of races etc. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 16 Jul 2009 05:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Deleted. Not for this thread. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 17 Jul 2009 05:51 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
SSridhar wrote: Paganism without Idols Quote: Indeed, this neo-paganism helps explain the Western fascination with the only remaining ancient pagan system still extant, Hinduism. Hindus have been under Western rule, but it is only now that they have started taking to capitalism in large numbers. They too have adopted as the new god Science, which Westerners have set up in place of the idols of tradition. Hindus have as an advantage their retention of a vast number of idols, which increases the Western fascination with them, where once it fuelled disgust, when as occupiers they were still Christian. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 18 Jul 2009 06:45 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Very perceptive article by a Paki! Quote: Paganism without idols By M. A. Niazi | Published: July 17, 2009 One of the abiding misconceptions of the War on Terror is that it is a war on Muslims as a continuation of the Crusades, which were definitely a war of Christianity with Islam. This is because the West of today is essentially pagan with a Christian veneer, and wishes Muslims to complete their conversion to the same paganism, and is now struggling to make that conversion complete. It should not be forgotten that the faith of Judaism and Christianity are the same as Islam. Indeed, according to devout Muslims, all three faiths are identical, and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was merely the Last Messenger in a chain that had previously been among the Jews. So had Jesus, only he was rejected by the Jews themselves, and accepted by the Gentiles, to the extent of being accepted by the Roman Empire itself, and adopted as the Empire's religion. The West was still Christian when it embarked on its imperialist enterprise, which engulfed the Muslim world. However, before decolonisation, it moved. It had already adopted capitalism as its economic system, and it thereupon adopted pagan values to live lives according to. The ideas of paganism had long been present, especially after the post-Renaissance revival of classical learning, but it was only at the turn of the 20th century, just before the First World War, that they were widely adopted, at about the same time as socialism or communism won so many supporters. While the Christian West had certain shared values with the Muslim World then, it jettisoned these values now. It set-up as the measure of all things Man, and made humanism the ultimate good. Though there was no reversion to the idol worship of the ancient pagans, there was the setting up of untouchable shibboleths, in the form of the freedoms. These were ultimately borrowed from the French Revolution, from its Rights of Man, so that Revolution, even though it was predated by the American, became the seminal Western Revolution, with all of its rigmarole of a new calendar and a new religion, with its virulent anti-clericalism. Western man no longer was willing to be judged by the Almighty, as was Islamic man; and that was the main difference. The Afterlife might have been foretold, but it included a Judgement according to a code, which had been revealed through the Prophets. That this code had included a number of direct instructions was only accepted by Orthodox Jews and Muslims, but not Christians, who had not followed the laws of Moses for centuries before they finally left the teachings of Jesus. The code was also abandoned by the Jews, as they attempted to assimilate and abandoned orthodoxy, and decided to take a national homeland in the Middle East, ignoring the rights of those who were settled there before them. The 20th century saw the full flowering of Western paganism, and the attempt to impose it on Muslims, who not only followed the code of the Almighty as was revealed to Muhammad (PBUH), but also believed in the Afterlife and the Judgement. Pagans on the other hand did not believe in this, and held belief to constitute something which retarded in the enjoyment of the here and now. This may have been paganism with a new twist, as it did not have any of the ancient gods in attendance, and was buttressed by one of the revealed religions, in the shape of Christianity. This was perhaps inevitable, as young pagans, for various reasons, ended up as ministers of the Church, and played the crucial role of making their Church support the neo-imperialist enterprise. One thing the new paganism did do, and that was make capitalism possible. Now with no more restrictions, the neo-pagan could seek profits that were unlimited both in amount and location, and in the lives that were lost. Within the Muslim scheme of things, which explicitly includes Jews and Christians (though not necessarily Judaism or Christianity), this is not how to approach life, which is a test, with Judgement at the end. More important, life itself is not significant if a favourable Judgement is to be obtained. This refusal to join in the capitalist game has made Muslims fair targets nowadays, apart from the downing of the Twin Towers. This has led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the implied threat to the rest of the Muslim World. Muslims should realise that the invasions are not about security for the West against terrorism, or about access to energy sources, but about belief systems. The West wishes for Muslims to become pagan in the same way, while nominally subscribing to a revealed religion. Islam should no longer be a barrier to the full plunge into modernity, which is another name for paganism. Indeed, this neo-paganism helps explain the Western fascination with the only remaining ancient pagan system still extant, Hinduism. Hindus have been under Western rule, but it is only now that they have started taking to capitalism in large numbers. They too have adopted as the new god Science, which Westerners have set up in place of the idols of tradition. Hindus have as an advantage their retention of a vast number of idols, which increases the Western fascination with them, where once it fuelled disgust, when as occupiers they were still Christian. However, what the West seems to have omitted from its calculations is the truth or otherwise of the belief systems. Islam is squarely in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, it has placed itself firmly there, both by the manner and the content of the revelation to Muhammad (PBUH). The West is now working on the assumption that there will be no judgement. If there is, and Muslims know there will be, the followers of capitalism will be asked why they did not follow the code revealed to them by the Almighty through His Messengers. Paganism is the religion people invent for themselves when they turn away from the Revelation. All the ancient paganisms, like the Graeco-Roman or the Norse, were attempts in this direction. But paganism, even the modern, even when clothed in one of the revealed religions, as the modern West, is obviously in opposition to the Almighty. Therefore all involved in the War on Terror, not just the Muslims, need to ask themselves where they are going. Indeed, perhaps a more relevant question is whether they want to go there at all. E-mail: maniazi@nation.com.pk | |
| Author: | Johann [ 18 Jul 2009 06:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
What the author misses is that the 'paganism' he describes never ever went away after the Christianisation of Western Europe. Roman Christianity went far deeper in replacing the thought patterns of the Eastern Roman Empire (Greece, Balkans, Egypt, Syria, etc) than it did in Western Europe. The patrician families of the city of Rome were some of the last to convert - it was in fact their opposition that led Constantine to establish a new capital at Constantinope, intended to be Christian from foundation. As with Iran, semitic religions did not replace the pre-existing civilisations, but rather co-mingled. That is why Christmas for most westerners is not Jesus but the Christmas tree of the winter solstice, and Easter means fertility symbols of bunnies and eggs, not the cross despite Christian attempts to coopt the ancient festivals, and why Nowruz remains the new year for Iranians . | |
| Author: | ramana [ 22 Jul 2009 05:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
I am reading about the formation of German identity through the German language in the 12th thru 14th centuries. A big factor was the feuds among the various little royal houses. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 22 Jul 2009 06:47 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
There is a key book called "Warfare in the Ancient Near East" by William Hamblin. It discusses warfare from early antiquity till 1600BC. Its 544 pages long and is a good read to understand the difference that normative religion brought to the lives of the Near Eastern people. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 22 Jul 2009 09:19 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
In the Near East societies the idea of Priests (who speak for gods) and Kings (who fight for the gods) came about and eventually the roles merged into the Priest King figures. In ANE(Ancient Near East) the idea was that gods fought through their human representatives and not vice versa ie humans fighting invoking the names of gods. Normative religions removed the plurality of gods and made them non existent to one God. And further developments/tinkering with these religions separated/bifurcated the Priest King roles. This led to dissonance aka jahilya. Then came along Muhammed who recombined the roles. The Europeans adopted all these ideas from the Near East: Divine rights of kings and all that much. Yet they say they are civilized when its only copied and that to partially. The English also combined the roles under Henry the 8th. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 23 Jul 2009 07:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
New York Review of Books : Knossos: Fakes, Facts and Mystery | |
| Author: | RajeshA [ 24 Jul 2009 07:12 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: I am reading about the formation of German identity through the German language in the 12th thru 14th centuries. A big factor was the feuds among the various little royal houses. Ramana garu, What's the name of the book? | |
| Author: | ramana [ 24 Jul 2009 03:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Its dated article from the magazine "History Today" from UK. I will post the refs from the article for further study. | |
| Author: | Hari Seldon [ 28 Jul 2009 02:30 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Dinno where else to post these. From another forum, a set of mighty interesting quotes indeed. Quote: "The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds' central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (Macmillan Company, 1966,) Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University "The Council on Foreign Relations is the American branch of a society which originated in England ... [and] ... believes national boundaries should be obliterated and one-world rule established." Dr. Carroll Quigley "I know of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years in the early 1960s to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies ... but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." -Dr. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope Quote: "As a teenager, I heard John Kennedy's summons to citizenship. And then, as a student, I heard that call clarified by a professor I had named Carroll Quigley."President Clinton, in his acceptance speech for the Democratic Party's nomination for president, 16 July 1992 | |
| Author: | R Vaidya [ 29 Jul 2009 12:04 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
New Indian Express Soft power to ‘conquer and dominate’ R Vaidyanathan First Published : 29 Jul 2009 12:18:00 AM IST Last Updated : 29 Jul 2009 12:56:04 AM IST Religion is no longer derided in China. The keynote speech by Communist Party general secretary Hu Jintao to the 17th party congress in October 2007, devoted a paragraph to religion. He stressed that religious people including priests, monks and lay believers played a positive role in the social and economic development of China. Hence religion is no more the opiate of the masses. The state-controlled Xinhua stresses freedom of belief. It says religion could play an important role in realising a ‘harmonious society’, which is the new political role of the party. That is the main issue we in India should note. A study by two professors of China Normal University based on more than 4,500 people in 2007 concludes that more than 300 million people, namely 31 per cent are religious, and more than 60 per cent of those are in the 16-40 age group. The number of followers of Christianity has increased to 12 per cent from less than eight per cent in the Nineties. This last fact is interesting since a huge underground church has developed in China and Zhao Xiao, a former communist party official and convert to Christianity, thinks there are up to 130 million Christians in China. This figure is much higher than the official figure of 21 million — 16 million Protestants and five million Catholics. If the former figure is true, then there are more Christians in China than Communist Party members, 74 million at the last count. The major change in China is not related to growth rates or the Three Gorges dam, shopping malls and Olympic stadia. That is a typical Western way of viewing China. The main change is in religious affiliation, and the assertiveness of Islamic followers and development of a large-scale underground church. The middle classes have given up rice (perceived to be for the illiterate poor) and are embracing Christianity as it also helps job mobility, particularly in global companies where the heads could belong to the same church. The Muslim population is more concentrated in specific locations like the western parts. But there is also a growing interest in China about its past. The white marble Ming dynasty tombs in Beijing were painted red during the Cultural Revolution of the Sixties. Even today labourers are trying to restore the white, without success. The guides are not reluctant to talk about it. The 10-handed Buddha in the summer palace of the Qing dynasty near Beijing has many similarities with Vishnu, and even this is mentioned clearly. More importantly China is opening ‘Confucius Institutes’ in more than 50 countries, similar to British Council efforts, but more focused on China’s ancient wisdom. The first thing we should learn is to stop looking at China with Western glasses. Economic growth bereft of spiritual underpinnings in the context of the death of Marxism will be a great challenge for China. India as an elder brother should facilitate an orderly transformation based on our common shared ancient wisdom. Let us remember that China too is a multi-cultural and multi-religious society but interested in our shared past. In the words of Hu Shih, a former ambassador of China to the USA (1938-1942) “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without having to send a single soldier across her borders.” We should be using our soft power to ‘conquer and dominate’ China. We need to print million copies of the Ramayana and Mahabharata and start some 50 Bharatiya Vidya Bhavans in China. This is the only way to destabilise our younger brother, by de-legitimising communism. Actually China needs this more than USA even though all our soft power is currently on show in the USA. We should recognise China’s weak point and the need of its masses in the absence of communism. Many Chinese even today believe that their next birth should be in India to reach salvation. Culture and religion are not taboos any more. There are other issues. Officially China recognises or permits only five religions, Buddhism, Islam, Taoism, Protestantism and Catholicism. Hence we should take steps to include Hinduism as well. The point is that our soft power in culture is interwoven intimately with religion. You cannot separate it however much you try it. Carnatic music without Bhakthi is neither music nor art. The strategy should be to encircle China with music, dance, art, yoga. ayurveda, spiritual texts, etc, and capture the hearts of the middle-classes as we have done for centuries. The second issue is related to our own mindset. We tend to look at China either through Western spectacles or through local Marxist spectacles — which have thicker glasses. We need to come out of it. Policy formulators are still living in the Sixties and Seventies while China is undergoing a gigantic social crisis due to material prosperity and spiritual vacuum. The foreign secretary-in-waiting was India’s Ambassador to China. She should send someone to China who grasps the strategy and fashions the responses and our actions. Unfortunately, as a Chinese colleague of mine commented, “both our countries are ruled by rootless deracinated foreign educated wonders that do not have any idea of the civilisational roots or the cultural richness of our lands.” But this is an opportunity too good to pass up, especially as there is every likelihood that the next two superpowers will be from Asia. In the process we would be destabilising the current dispensation and the remnants of communism. Are we ready to undertake such an ‘invasion' | |
| Author: | ramana [ 31 Jul 2009 07:38 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
One key insight to understand Western critiques is they look at the world thorugh their own social structures and then thru Christian framework. This is what we came to conclusion yesterday in a talk. So it colors all their views even if they profess ot be not normatizing. -- To continue with my German identity studies, a key question is what took them so long to create a state after language was their identifier as a nation? It took the French and Norman English the hundred years war to form nation states during the same period. The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 was essentially a way to settle the German question. Yet it took another 200 years to create their nation state. And another 100 years and two World Wars to make them peaceful. So what we see in Europe are two large states: France and Germany that form the core and all are at the periphery. Russia is both European and Asian as the situation warrants. --------- concept of Heimat a key to understanding German identity. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 01 Aug 2009 04:24 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
There is tussle between Old World post-Refromation Christianity and the New World Puritanism. Post Refromation Christianity evolved into/ secularised as paganism without the idols. the tussle is to renormatize the secualrised non idolatorous pagans. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 02 Aug 2009 05:00 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
X-post... Johann wrote: ramana wrote: One has to sudy Nazism in its true meaning to understand what it is. Its a new Islam for Europe. Its about de-Judaizing Western civilization. This includes de-Hebrewising the Bible and take Jesus out of Mary. Absolutely Quote: And it was Roman Catholic Church project. The RCC initially supported it because they believed Fascism was a conservative project that would fight godless communism amongst the middle and working classes. The two fell out at the top about halfway when the Catholic Church realised Fascism was not against 'the excesses of modernity', but was in fact just as much a part of the threat of radical modernisation as communism. Particularly when it became clear that Himmler and SS, which was the nucleus of Nazi philosophy believed that the only way to de-Judaise Europe was to give up Christianity entirely for a revived old Germanic paganism combined with borrowings from both Islam and Dharmic religions. Fascism as a whole ultimately aimed to replace god with nationalism, the state, and the will of Nietszche's superman. Religion was for the most part seen in Marxist terms (opiate of the masses, etc), but with a twist, which Stalin adopted in 1941, ie rather than ban religion, make sure that it is tightly controlled and serves the state rather than the other way around. In addition I think it was a way to create a new covenant for Europe outside of the Ancient Near East. | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 02 Aug 2009 08:54 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramanaji, German nationalism was formed in a tussle between two colliding forces - Roman imperial centralization versus Germanic, tribal, confederationist regionalism. Germans did not need to be a German nation, they were forced to become one by Rome. Throughput Europe we will see this struggle to maintain tribal centrifugal forces in the northern passages against centralization based around the Mediterranean. The Saxons, Nordics, Danes stubbornly resisted Christianization, and Christianization was deliberately adopted as an imperialist centralization tool by the later Romans and their successor regimes of the Franks (ironically one of the Germanics displaced by the Romans). This was also why Christianity, a faith basically alien to the European, had to be deliberately brought in by Rome - and edited/reconstructed as per requirements of the empire to overrule and erase the indigenous "pagan", so that regional, local identifications did not survive. To rise again as a German nation, the roots had to be therefore discovered or invented in the pre-imperial past of indigenous beliefs and culture. Linguistic revival only paves the way to search for common roots, and therefore a common geographical origin of the various components of the loose tribal confederation. The Catholic Christianity would hamper the process in trying to blur any such potential distinction from the imperial heritage. Thus they would need to assert their regional, indigenous, version of the prevailing faith as a first step. But the very need to use Christianity itself againt Christianity, creates problems in the absence of an alternative equally centralizing philosophy that helps in the formation of a homogeneous German identity. Typically fractious collections of identities, who fail to recognize their own inherent commonalities, need an external enemy or inavder who does not recognize those differences and sees some commonality. Being equally treated or humiliated, the smaller quarrels of identities break down. The Germans therefore had to wait for the Napoleonic wars to do the final melding. | |
| Author: | shaardula [ 03 Aug 2009 10:15 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
paging all... Prof. SN Balagangadhara talks to Dr. R Ganesh about indian approaches to problem solving. the discussion has many ends. but very engaging and provocative. not the type of things you hear these days. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xQ2EkrXBy4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25AsxRRQvAQ (ramana, part two has a discussion about the living traditions of avadhana in andhra, also a discussion on the contrast between TE, MA poetry to KA, TA poetry.) | |
| Author: | shaardula [ 03 Aug 2009 11:02 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
an interesting question from Ganesh. india discovered english, like the west discovered sanskrit. india has produced many english works, (aurobindo even wrote poetry in greek and latin). what about west's contribution to indian poetry & thought? i think they are stuck at the level of purva paksha and have not moved beyond it. that would be angeekaara. and that comes from the common notions about gnyaana. basically the west and we see knowledge in completely different terms. i think loosely it is this: our attitude to gnyaana is more like a mathematicians attitude to mathematics. their approach to it is not. even if they constantly market and remarket themselves as scientific. something about it is black magic. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 03 Aug 2009 08:36 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
shaardula wrote: i think loosely it is this: our attitude to gnyaana is more like a mathematicians attitude to mathematics. their approach to it is not. even if they constantly market and remarket themselves as scientific. something about it is black magic. I assume that you are refering to the west. The western mind has to morph its mind to scientific thinking from its Christian roots. This is not permanent. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 06 Aug 2009 02:38 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
People asked me to provide links to my pontifiacting about Hitler and roots of Nazism. Here is one website Hitler and Christianity And his own notes Hitler-Bible: Monumental History of Mankind The latter has a handwritten note before his assuming power. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 06 Aug 2009 11:33 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: Tuesday, August 4, 2009 The Modern West, A Culture of Death http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/ From the early 1800s, the West, in an affront to God, has moved ever more rapidly into a culture of death and destruction, away from the teachings of Christ. At its present state, the most significant thing that the West is bringing to humanity is a culture of totalitarianism and death, one on such an nuanced level as would only be celebrated by the most brutal of Pagans and Lucifirians and would even be an affront to the most blood thirsty of the Mohammadens. The foundation of this was laid by the Augustinian theories of Just War. This created an atmosphere that condoned murder, even if under strict circumstances. Do I say that the Eastern Church has not gone to war? Of course not, or rather the Church has never gone to war but the people have. However, these were never Jihads or their lesser versions: Crusades. Indeed the wars that the Orthodox peoples have fought have always been viewed as a sin, as the shedding of human blood is a grave sin, regardless, but in a fallen world is often necessary to prevent an even greater evil. To that end, an Orthodox soldier who has shed blood is unclean and thus must cleanse himself through prayer and fasting, seeking the forgiveness of God for what was done. Conversely, this may also explain why our wars are so vicious. As the Orthodox soldiers know they are committing a sin, they are repulsed by what they do and seek to end it as fast and as permanently as possible, which in itself becomes a much more bloody affair. Do not confuse this with the actions of the Red Army, in WW2, which was under the control of the Western Marxist import and its subsequent ideology of death. Contrast this to the West, and Augustine's misplaced concepts of Just War. Often, in the Crusades, the crusaders, as with their Mohammedan enemies, were taught that to die in the process or to even take place would be the forgiveness of sins. This built a foundation that was later used in crusades against fellow Christians, such as the Basque and the Hungarians and later in France. It also set the stage for the Inquisition and Church sanctioned mass murdered, even if those numbers have been inflated over the years. Similarly, when Protestant movements broke out, they, under the influence of the Renaissance, took these extremes even further, as was witnessed by the atrocities of the Ana-Baptists in northern France and western German, Cromwell's Round Heads in England and the Calvinists under the despotic and murderous reign of John Calvin in Switzerland. Again compare this the Orthodox Church, which not only has never waged a holy war, but has never had an inquisition. For the most part, heretics are never burned or otherwise murdered but are exiled and prayed for. This is a far cry from the Albigensian Crusades where the catch phrase was: "Kill them all, God will know His own", and this in reference to the murder of fellow Christian women and children. So, it is only natural that when Humanism appeared, with its bent on atheist science, as opposed to science as the handmaiden of religion, explaining the Maker's great creation, the foundation of death was greatly built upon. The range of who should die was widened. Starting in the 1800s and reaching full strength in the first half of the 1900s was the eugenics movements, out to breed the perfect human being...perfect being under the eye of the particular beholder, of course. Abortion, the sin of sins, the murder of God's most precious gift, became a standard into getting the unwanted races residing in the West, to self terminate their future. America's Planned Parenthood led the way and spread quickly through out Western Europe. A greater evil is hard to imagine, this being even something the most psychotic Jihadist does not stoop to against his own children. Honour killings are a some what different issue, though just as evil. Many of these Luciferian groups have gone so far as to even create abortion ships which travel to just beyond the waters of conservative, Christ fearing nations that ban abortions, such as Poland or Ireland, and ferry women in to have the Gift of Life butchered from them. All to prove the power of man over life and thus spit in the eye of God. Remember, that during the various colonizations by the Western Europeans, whole peoples were exterminated, after being branded as savages. Often even when they adopted their cultures to the Wests, such as the Creek or the Iraqua, they still, in the end, faced extermination as little more than savages, sitting on valuable land. Again, compare that to the Russian crown's conquest of Siberia, which was taken in 3 battles, one over a misunderstanding and a second with the Chinese. All of the original peoples who inhabited Siberia and Alaska were still and are still present, at least in Siberia. Homosexuality, too, was brought in as an affront to God, destroying the traditional family, mutating the moral standings of children and breeding a hedonistic, self destructive life style. Both the Catholic Church and its Protestant offshoots, as well as the societies they serve, have become not only tainted but fully perverted by this and by the weakened Western Christians' desire for inclusiveness. Even the evils of the Marxists, in Russia, were a Western import. Compared to what those Marxists, such as Lenin and Stalin suffered from the Orthodox Christian Tsar, when they were sent to Siberia, it is an almost comical comparison. Both were exiled to live in a Siberian village, unable to leave but able take guests and write letters. Following all of this was the next logical step: termination of the physically deformed, the invalids, the mentally ill. The first victims of Hitler, after all, were fellow Germans and not even the anti-Nazi aristocrats; they came second. The practice died off after WW2, only to return in force in the 1990s and fully in the new Devil's Western century. The so called Western democracies, the champions of so called human rights, though never of God's laws, are now screaming at the top of their lungs the "right" to a quality life, whose allegory is: if you are deformed, handicapped or old and infirm, your quality of life is low and thus you are better off dead. This vile, paganistic, Luciferian approach, again, even worse than anything that the Mohamedans thought up for their own people, is an affront to God of incredible degrees. Further more, the drive to have the elderly person commit suicide, or as the agents of Lucifer prefer to call it: to self terminate with dignity, is to have the subject damn their soul for all eternity. Suicide is self murder and that is one murder that can not be sought forgiveness for. In Russian, our word for suicide is: Самоубийство or quite literally: self-murder. We do not have the right to terminate the gift of life that God gave us. Just because we live in pain does not mean that we do not live to fulfill some aspect of God's plan. The pain is a test of our faith in God, something to work through and to continue to seek to serve God. As such, suicide, self-murder, is an escape of our responsibilities before God. What ever good could still be done, is now terminated. Many of these concepts are alien to our cultures, many others were imported with the Marxist revolution and we are still suffering their ill effects. On abortion, Russia, which still allows it, has curtailed it to the first 12 weeks and there is much pressure to end this murder fully. Euthanasia is illegal in Russia. Eugenics is also something that never took root and with the Orthodox Church the leading moral authority of the land, once more, it never will. Now let us pray that the Orthodox Church will be powerful enough to restore Christianity to Europe and N. America, in the wake of the catastrophic failures of both Catholicism and Protestantism. Sunday, July 26, 2009 Three Deadly Western Imports Russia, as the cross roads between Europe and Asia, has been used for more than trade, but also for the exchange of ideas. Unfortunately this applies just as well to horribly bad ideas as to good ideas and if those horribly bad ideas ruin or weaken Orthodox Christian Russia, the West is all the more happy to export them with every ounce of its being. Three horrible ideas have been planted in Russia to, if not destroy her, retard her growth, as much as possible. We, dear reader, will now explore each of them in detail. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 06 Aug 2009 11:37 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Quote: The West I do not like the West, first and foremost, because in one way or another, they are an enemy to us and have been about enslaving, disenfranchising and destroying Russia, our faith, culture and even our very race, for 900 years. However, I also do not believe that 1. the "West" is an actual homogeneous unit, which is why I specify the Anglo-Sphere, so often and 2. that we must be enemies and 3. that we can not learn or pickup key points to improve ourselves.. In the "West", we have much common ground with the Germans, Italians, and others, such as, possibly the Scots and Irish. Even in America, regional elements and possible future free nations such as the Texas, Confederacy and Alaska. http://mat-rodina.blogspot.com/ | |
| Author: | ramana [ 07 Aug 2009 03:20 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
One way of looking at it is the West aka Western Europe since Reformation is on a trajectory to go back to paganism without idols. All the humanism they profess is really old time pagan values, but, since the Abrahamic immersion, they want to rid themselves of idols and gods. What Soviet Commmunism did was to force march Tsarist Russia into the modern world. The angst of Orthodox Russians is instead of reverting to Orthodox Church as was expected with demise of SU, the Russians want to adopt the new Paganism of the West. Every social engineering leaves it mark in unintended ways. | |
| Author: | rajsunder [ 07 Aug 2009 04:48 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: One way of looking at it is the West aka Western Europe since Reformation is on a trajectory to go back to paganism without idols. All the humanism they profess is really old time pagan values, but, since the Abrahamic immersion, they want to rid themselves of idols and gods. What Soviet Commmunism did was to force march Tsarist Russia into the modern world. The angst of Orthodox Russians is instead of reverting to Orthodox Church as was expected with demise of SU, the Russians want to adopt the new Paganism of the West. Every social engineering leaves it mark in unintended ways. The praise should go to stalin for creating a industrialized USSR. heard on one of the documentaries on History channel that he made USSR into a industralized nation in 30 years to a level that which the European countries took about 150 years | |
| Author: | ramana [ 07 Aug 2009 04:52 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Its not praise. Its to understand where they are coming from now. To praise or condemn is not my job. I am a seeker with an open mind till proven wrong. | |
| Author: | ramana [ 07 Aug 2009 04:55 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Brishaspati and RayC, Over the top but both of you can relate to this. In "Anand Math" the writer Bankim Chandra Chatterjee tells the story in bits and pieces(vignettes) and not in a linear fashion. This in Literary Criticism theory is Modernist approach. What are you views? | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 07 Aug 2009 05:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: One way of looking at it is the West aka Western Europe since Reformation is on a trajectory to go back to paganism without idols. All the humanism they profess is really old time pagan values, but, since the Abrahamic immersion, they want to rid themselves of idols and gods. What Soviet Commmunism did was to force march Tsarist Russia into the modern world. The angst of Orthodox Russians is instead of reverting to Orthodox Church as was expected with demise of SU, the Russians want to adopt the new Paganism of the West. Every social engineering leaves it mark in unintended ways. Protestant movement has taken the role of human rights movement and other values of eastern world. This is a direct result of colonialism for over three centuries. Orthodox Christianity does not recognize the new Protestant and cannot identify with it. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 07 Aug 2009 11:22 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramana wrote: One way of looking at it is the West aka Western Europe since Reformation is on a trajectory to go back to paganism without idols. All the humanism they profess is really old time pagan values, but, since the Abrahamic immersion, they want to rid themselves of idols and gods. German identity was created with discovery of sanskrit and development of philosophy based on the eastern text. This new insight gave the Germans a new way to create an identity away from Hebrew and catholic Christian history. Hitlers project was to create a new version of the NT and Germans would be important part of this history. | |
| Author: | shaardula [ 07 Aug 2009 11:43 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
Acharya wrote: shaardula wrote: i think loosely it is this: our attitude to gnyaana is more like a mathematicians attitude to mathematics. their approach to it is not. even if they constantly market and remarket themselves as scientific. something about it is black magic. I assume that you are refering to the west. The western mind has to morph its mind to scientific thinking from its Christian roots. This is not permanent. i am not sure i completely understand what your are saying. but if you are saying for all the pretensenses and projection of being scientific they are overwhelmingly guided by the one-book worldview, then i agree. there is nothing scientific about their working system. agents like Time and Newsweek etc., talk about all sorts of things in scientific terms, and say things scientists say this or that - without ever understanding what they are actually saying. one of the major causes for this is the reductionist approach of the west to things like social interaction, psychology etc. They some how believe that by reducing it, these fields will yield to science. i have read some papers in these areas, but so far i found hardly any well posed problems, forget methdologies and solutions. its almost like they know that the blacksmith uses a hammer, and so they also take that hammer to everything that they come across. | |
| Author: | Acharya [ 08 Aug 2009 12:22 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
shaardula wrote: i am not sure i completely understand what your are saying. but if you are saying for all the pretensenses and projection of being scientific they are overwhelmingly guided by the one-book worldview, then i agree. there is nothing scientific about their working system. agents like Time and Newsweek etc., talk about all sorts of things in scientific terms, and say things scientists say this or that - without ever understanding what they are actually saying. The church in America By William Adams Brown http://books.google.com/books?id=7EYaAA ... navlinks_s Free download. Gives a history of Scientific movement on Church in America. They see a threat to their religion with the science. They have created a psuedo science to keep it from destroying their belief and belief system.   | |
| Author: | brihaspati [ 08 Aug 2009 02:12 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ramanaji, Chatterjee's style is surprisingly modernist. His "Kamalakantar daftar", (from the desk of Kamalakanta) is a superb satirical commentary, but resembles more modern stream-of-consciousness style - like Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka, or Miller's Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn. Some say he was heavily influenced by Walter Scott, but "from the desk of Kamalakanta", and to a certain extent "Krishnacharitra" shows he was far ahead of his time. | |
| Author: | pandey [ 08 Aug 2009 03:49 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
shaardula wrote: paging all... Prof. SN Balagangadhara talks to Dr. R Ganesh about indian approaches to problem solving. the discussion has many ends. but very engaging and provocative. not the type of things you hear these days. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xQ2EkrXBy4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25AsxRRQvAQ (ramana, part two has a discussion about the living traditions of avadhana in andhra, also a discussion on the contrast between TE, MA poetry to KA, TA poetry.) In one of his Lectures he proposed that Indian society is without any religion and the word Hindu or Hinduism has been coined by Westerners (Muslims and Christians) to group the Indian behavior ( which they cannot understand, First because their Society makes them believe that Societies cant be without organized religions hence India have a religion. They need to prove their own faith system or religion or god to be "right" to convert others , for this they have to prove that "other" is wrong and inorder to prove this they need to prove the existence of "other". English as a Language is inadequate to express Indian cultural experience because it has been developed in a different society . it doesn’t have sufficient and appropriate words for Example Worship in Indian tradition is very different from Western Tradition as it serves totally different purpose . Secularism is a Soft version of Christianity as it originated from a clash between Protestants and Catholics Secularism starts with a belief and assumption that People have religions and all religious behaviors are equal (hence there has been and will be a clash between Indian world view and secular worldview .) Secularism justify unethical religious behavior of Minorities on the ground that religions have to treated equally hence Polygamy in Muslims or soft Proselytisation in form of Minority educational institution has t be allowed. | |
| Author: | shaardula [ 08 Aug 2009 12:04 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
part 3 and 4 of Ganesh's interview. even better http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUdrbAZJCEk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVQRYd3ArfE R's assessment of what ails the study and practice of lit should have hit a raw nerve for B. B et al., wanted to test their seminal problem formulation - secularism's logical fallacies - with indian academicians. but the later were not interested in academic rigor, they ended up rejecting it because it was not what the "pamphlets" said. rofl. in these parts discusses the myth of "brahminism" also. also he correctly identifies the attitude of the vedas to their own authority & purpose. this is what distinguishes the vedas(or the approach of the vedas) from the rest of the pack. | |
| Author: | shaardula [ 08 Aug 2009 12:35 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
ps: turns out ganesh is a jingo. kannada http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4iNAk3h3rN0 talks about the manufactured memory of ashoka and the purging of vikramaditya. | |
| Author: | shaardula [ 08 Aug 2009 01:27 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Non-Western Worldview |
sorry folks again in kannada. acharya, bhyrappa puts it best. talking about the conflict between science and faith in the west and the contrasting approach in the east. "yaakdandre, modalindaluve namage churche jignyaase" since the earliest of times jignyaasa is our church. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3CMMpQewTg | |
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