[...] people who use "Western" [...] as a
swear word, [...]
Ian, the problem is that the dumbest of us is also the loudest of
us
and the smartest of us can't be bothered to spend the energy
required to shut them up. :)
Very true. And the dumbest of us very rarely hangs
around
graduate-level anthropology classes. ;)
Well, yes, but the people who do presumably are aware of _that_.
I actually think that part of the problem is that "Western" society
_is_ rather stupid in some important respects.
In particular, the American Experiment is only some two or three
centuries old. Most of the rest of the world has had many centuries,
millennia for some parts of it, to learn how to live sustainably, at
least for local values of "sustainably" (and the difference between
local and global there is a separate issue). North America is still
living its startup transient, learning through hard experience what
(most of) the rest of the world has learned so long ago the learning
has been forgotten and the lessons have become an ingrained way of
life. "What's the difference between a European and a North American?"
"The European thinks 100 miles is a long distance; the North American
thinks 100 years is a long time."
Of course, "Western" != "North American". But there are strong
tendencies that way, and the worst of "Western" culture and society
tend to be the pieces that come from North America.
I also note - and speculate that it's relevant - that the invasion
(usually miscalled "discovery") of the Americas, the point at which the
American Experiment started, was also the filling up of the last
available habitable land on the planet, at least from the point of view
of the now-dominant Western European culture. Since the beginning of
the Industrial Revolution (and arguably before), they've been on an
exponential growth spurt, and are starting to painfully run into the
resource limits that guarantee that curve can't continue forever. The
resulting crowding, after well over a human lifetime of getting used to
always having somewhere new to expand into, is causing...friction.
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