Did Russians successfully manipulate or change American votes?

Strangely enough, there's a NEMO Hotel in Odessa, too - here: Отель NEMO ОдеÑÑа

I don't understand the reference, either. I do like Hierophant's Hypothesis, though - or maybe it's Hierophant's Hierarchy (of Western-ness.) :smile:

J.

P.S. Another Otrada here: Otrada, Inc.

 

Wow - how far we've wandered -- wonder what the NSA is making of this thread?

J.

 

My point in post #340 was that the phrase "Western" seems to be ambiguous and can mean several different things. Where particular cultures fall in the east/west dichotomy depend on how the phrase is being used.

Perhaps most broadly and generally, "Western civilization" seems to refer to any and all of those cultures that are heirs of the formative cultural events in European history. These might include a heritage of Greek ideas such as philosophical rationalism and Athenian democracy, Medieval Christendom, the Renaissance (which revived many of the Greek ideas), the Scientific Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, the growth of secularism and the Enlightenment.

That's how I personally tend to use the phrase 'Western civilization'. Countries that have inherited these ideas from their own histories can properly be called 'Western' in this sense.

Many cultures have acquired these kind of ideas from abroad, typically during the centuries of European colonialism. The more of these ideas that a culture that isn't historically European now shares, the more 'Westernized' we can say it is. It varies tremendously. (Just think of Singapore compared to Afghanistan.)

Most cultures around the world have adopted experimental science in the form it developed in Europe in the 17th century and subsequently, and are Westernized to that extent. But when it comes to things like individual liberty, a host of issues revolving around sex and gender, religion and religious freedom, broad cultural secularism, political democracy and so on, Western ideas haven't penetrated nearly as widely.

The Chinese communists seem to think that they can adopt Western science and technology, styles of dress and popular culture, and perhaps even developed market economics, without importing political democracy or giving up China's historical top-down imperial system of governance and its attempted control of all sources of information. Many Islamic countries seem to think that they can adopt Western science and technology while holding tight to what Islam has traditionally believed is a divinely revealed law and social order. Those latter ideas of adherence to shariah are currently enjoying a huge resurgence in the Islamic world, probably in reaction against what many Muslims feel is excessive Westernization at the expense of their own traditions. Witness all the Muslim women wearing hijabs today whose mothers wouldn't have done so a generation ago.

The whole idea of globilization and a fanciful post-national world-culture in which "we are all alike" and cultural distinctions are no longer important or recognized raises the question of what ideas, values and presumptions that global culture is supposed to embody, and the question of what to do about regions of the planet that don't agree and conform. It always seems to be assumed that the post-Enlightenment Western social ideas of sexual equality, gay rights, freedom of speech and their like will somehow become the prevailing cultural values of the entire planet, without any real discussion of why or how.

Why not Islamic law, the dictates of the Chinese communists in Beijing or India's Hindu village cultures?