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Aswad -> RE: Japan hangs three death-row inmates (2/9/2008 12:43:17 PM)
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ORIGINAL: luckydog1
I can only hit a tthe first point today, maybe more later.
No worries, took me a few days to get around to it, myself.
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But why the West?
Heritage, and I'm using the US as a point of reference to keep it simple.
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Why draw the set that way.
As explained, that's a matter of the genealogy of morals and culture.
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America is not a colony of Europe.
It was. The primary cultural inflluence is European.
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Frankly we have spent far more time butting up with other cultures, and in many ways are broken from Europe.
Yup. But moving away from home doesn't change the parentage.
For that matter, 2/3 the population wanted to stay a colony, IIRC.
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White Americans have always been influenced by the natives and Africans among us.
Sure. But if you have a look at Native Americans, their culture and morality has been more influenced by yours that you have been by theirs. And the Africans weren't considered people until pretty late in your history. For all intents and purposes, they have an American cultural and moral heritage. A lot of them wouldn't last a day in the societies their ancestors were originally sold by.
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More of us have mix than know it.
Genealogy of culture and morals is different from genetic genealogy.
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Why should a black, White mutt or Chinese man in America care about Prevailing Europeon Morality.
Never said they should. I'm just saying that there is shared heritage there. More commonalities than differences, by far. And that the fact is that this makes it useful for comparisons, especially in light of the argument that application of morals is more likely to change and adapt than the morals themselves are. That the customs differs so significantly on this point, and that a lot of citizens in the US are voicing the same lines of reasoning as are applied by Europeans, indicates that it is more likely that there is a difference in how the two apply their morals (i.e. the manner in which compromises are made, the kind of compromises made, and views of this) than that there is such a significant difference in the actual underlying morals and values.
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Europeon Culture when my Grandfather was a young man was stuffing his cousins into ovens.
The tales of the Grimm Brothers are a preservation of folk lore, not a representation of prevailing culture.
And if it was a Nazi reference, then that mostly applies to Germany; others didn't go quite that far.
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The Christian Tradition link is the only one you gave that seems valid, but I reject it. ]
You may reject it, but the influence of Christian thought on Western morality and culture is undeniable. We have gone from women leading armies into battle wearing nothing but skin paint, to parents being advised to not allow their children to see them naked after a certain age, despite evidence pointing out that this is detrimental to the development of the child; an application of the Catholic attitude to sexuality. We have gone from killing undesired infants by exposure, to holding on to infants born without a brain; a continuation of the early practices of Christians in the Roman empire (where the child would die if the father didn't claim it; the practice stopped when Christians started adopting the unclaimed infants illegally). We generally hold lies to be immoral, at least if malign. Hell, US courts ask people to swear on the Bible. I could go on and on, but I'm pretty sure you can see that there has been a significant formative influence.
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The traditions of the Mid east also derive from the indo language tree, and are Abrahamic.
No. The Middle-Eastern region derives from the Mesopotamian cultures and languages. Granted, there has been an influence on the Jewish people from the Abrahamic faiths up to and including Christianity, while the Arabic people have been influenced predominantly by the Islamic branch. You will note significant differences between the practices of third-generation immigrants who still hold on to Islam and those of Muslims born in the Middle-East. The final product is not sufficiently comparable for inclusion in the set, and the roots are dramatically different. Researching Mesopotamian culture, morals, language and religion will make this apparent..
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Why is Saul of such relevance. I just see that as subjective.
Basically every Christian denomination out there will disagree with you. This was also perhaps the principal focus of Nietzsche's «The Anti-Christ» and has been referenced elsewhere. Saul dramatically changed Christianity in its formative years, and basically Western Christianity is uncontroversially viewed through the lens of Saul's teachings and commentary, despite the man being a Jewish puritan who was employed by the Romans as a beurocrat and charged with taking down Jesus, his followers, and his teachings. Arguably, he has been the single largest influence on the prevailing interpretations of Christian thought second only to Jesus, if that.
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If you are asserting it based on Christian teaching, shouldn't all Christian teaching be enacted into law?
No, I am asserting that there is a heritage there. Christianity, as espoused by Saul of Tarsus, became the Humanist school of thought in ethics and philosophy. Also, Jefferson made his own version of the Bible, that he forwarded as pretty much the pinnacle of human morals and ethics, based on much the same things as Humanist thinkers have used as a foundation for their own ethics. Such things have been a formative influence, but the final product is not identical to its origins, nor would one expect it to be.
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Wouldn't that stop BDSM and Gay rights, ect. Seems inconsistent.
LGBT rights are far behind in the US, compared to e.g. Norway. We're bickering about adoption requirements and other things that are mostly trivial by comparison. Marriage is already the same thing for LGBT couples as for hetero couples, and most churches will wed LGBT couples. It was recently forwarded that Poly should be equivalent to marriage, too, though I expect it will be a few years before that will actually happen. One of our bishops is openly lesbian. Several politicians are openly LGBT. The minister of finance in the previous term was gay, and married as such. BDSM is legal, if practiced consensually. The line is drawn at grievous bodily harm, or at restraining or imprisoning someone unsupervised in a manner that will not allow them to escape in case of emergencies (fire, etc.).
Whether this is consonant with the faith or not, depends entirely on who you ask, and what their interpretation is. Catholics tend to be of the opinion that LGBT people must be celibate. Protestants tend to be of the opinion that they don't need to be. I am firmly of the opinion that the relevant sections of the Bible deal with creating a contrast to the Caananites, who practiced LGBT, incest, bestiality, polygamy, polyandry, endogamy, and a bunch of other things. This was necessary to avoid having the Jewish tribes subsumed into the Caananite culture and losing their seperate identity. Simple as that.
Health,
al-Aswad.
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