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| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
The problem with "superior" itself is that, in order to say what's superior (or not), you must have standards, which are often subjective, depending on the needs and culture of the judge.
Interesting example: There's an indigenous tribe here in Brazil known as Pirahã (I'm not sure if the name is related to the fish). Their language and culture are extremely odd for us for its simplicity, as they don't have numbers in their language and, among the "bizarre things", they also don't necessarily sleep through the night, but instead, they take naps throughout the day. They do not learn Portuguese because they claim the language doesn't fit their needs because their language is the "best language in the world", and they couldn't care less about buildings (I'm on a hurry and I can't look for the actual quotes but there are statements such as "building a house and building a house on top of another house is no different" and "Documents being worthless if compared to the word of a person"). |
I agree that for any sort of superiority you need to have a reference point in order to claim that something is superior to something else. Inuit language is superior to most other languages regarding descriptions of snowfall, a mice is superior to elephant regarding the amount of energy required to sustain vital functions of the organism, and so forth. Therefore we may define one language as superior to another if it better suits the need of the people using it. As for the chinese script, it is not better suited for the needs of the chinese people than the latin alphabet (perhaps art-wise, but that's absolutely subjective and therefore not debetable), simply because of it's unnecessarry complexity, and therefore it should be considered inferior to latin (and most other) scripts.
Culturally, things aren't really that black and white, because it's something much more difficult to measure. Even so, we can not say that all cultures are equal, nor can we always say that some cultures inherent in indigenous groups are better suited to the needs of those groups than some other non-indigenous ones. Many indigenous cultures, while functional and apparently compact are only functional because a lack of sufficient contact with more advanced forms of society. And although people do not in any way manifest their unaware desire for change, latently they are dreaming for one to happen, and as soon as they are introduced to a more advanced form of society, their culture falls apart and they usually end up on the margins of the new culture. A good example for that would be the cultures of pre-Columbian latin americans. While nobody really complained about sacrificing children and virgins so that the sun will rise every day because everyone took it as a normal part of life, once they have been introduced to christianity which at least, despite all its flaws, didn't sacrifice children and virgins every day, their culture and religion lost its appeal to most of the people that came in contact with the europeans. Granted that the spanish conquistadors were a bunch of violent thugs, but do you think it would really be possible for a culture to dissolve so quickly in front of a several hundred raiders if the people unconsciously didn't want a change? It is true that there were some other factors involved, amongst them were the myths of the indians about white skinned gods, and horse riders which were thought to be a single creature, but if the indian culture was stronger and superior to that of spaniards, it couldn't have perished so quickly. Most of the time when people achieve a higher form of society than their surroundings, they either spread it or defend it mercilessly. Now, I hate to be an advocate of christianity, but a similar thing happened to the Roman Empire. People lived under the old roman culture for centuries, considering slavery, torture, and inequality as normal things. Yet latently they strived for a more equal system which was offered to them by christianity, and that's why they so wholeheartedly embraced it. Similarly, when christianity turned into a tyrannical and opressive system, the more advanced parts of Europe quickly embraced Martin Luther's ideas and split up from the rest of the church, and later their culture, although mildly different from that of catholic origin, did show itself to be superior considering that the newly declared protestant countries underwent a much faster social and especially technological development than their catholic neighbours. Not to say that some local cultures aren't better suited to their local needs, but overall it does make sense to talk about superior and inferior cultures in regards to how well they can suit the needs of their people.
| quote: | | Back to why China didn't kick Europe's ass technology wise, it's not because China wasn't developed - they had maps of Europe before the Europeans got there and their ships were far greater (and more reliable) than the ones from Europe. Europe is not located in a very fertile land (with exceptions) - besides, it's full of mountains (hence the first expansion, i.e. the Greeks), among other problems. China, on the other hand... they had all the rice they could possibly want, why leave? |
The reason why China ultimately lost its upper hand in the race with european countries is not so much because of the european expansionism (which, of course, did play a role), but more because of the fact that their technological and scientific development ground down to a halt, mostly as a result of their culture and mentality. After a significant period of exploration and advancement, China switched to an isolationist conservative policy which basically froze it in place and enabled the rest of the world to catch up. The basic flaw that stopped China from further advance was also the same one present in Europe in the period between the fall of Roman Empire and the rise of rennaisance, and the only reason why Europe managed to beat China was that it managed to get over it earlier than the chinese (largely in part because it was composed of many small competing territories and because the Turks blocked the ancient silk road so inventivity and exploration were needed to get around their blockade). That flaw was basically the development of an introverted, non-inventive, and backwards-looking mindset that gave too much importance to honoring ancestors, conserving the status quo, and mystifying knowledge, while not supporting inventivity, exploration, and rational thinking. Of course, after China got defeated by european powers on multiple occasions, the general mindset of the people did start to change, so that now they do have a more "westernized" mentality, the remnants of the old mentality are still there, and will be hard to get rid of (of course, assuming that they do want to get rid of it in the first place - but they already showed their desire to do so).
| quote: | Sorry if there are some flaws, but I'm really in a hurry to double check everything. However, I'm really enjoying this discussion  |
I didn't find any
| quote: | | Move requested (I can't do it myself because I'm not a mod at the chill out room). |
Great..maybe we should have a classic thread section opened up soon
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in Russian that colour would be: Голубой
