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Post by krzych32 on Jun 30, 2010 0:51:52 GMT -5
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bullskitur
Planet
Intelligence requires not confusing what you believe with what you know
Posts: 306
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Post by bullskitur on Jun 30, 2010 7:45:40 GMT -5
Why does your philosophy argue that Western culture is better just because it has been through more stages? Stars that are supernova-ing have been through more stages than our sun, yet they are neither better nor worse than our sun. I'd argue that Eastern culture is better because of its work ethic, even though it does have some drawbacks. Eastern culture is also superior because of its promotion of those who are skilled and only those who are skilled, its acceptance of all forms of creativity, etc. To say that stages define quality is to say that all adults are smarter than all children. I'm not saying that age doesn't bring wisdom, but I know a few adults who are stupider than me, and several that are stupider than other kids I know. Age affects not quality. Environmental factors, surrounding cultures, etc. define cultures. What he meant was that in order to reach the next stage the culture had to advance, which implies improvement, which means getting better. And you talk about eastern culture as better because of promoting those who are skilled and only those who are skilled and the work ethic. Corruption and political favours is a major problem in China, India and number of other countries in south east Asia and I don't think working 50-70 hours a week is a good work ethic.
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Post by oblecedemorsa on Jun 30, 2010 15:55:24 GMT -5
Why does your philosophy argue that Western culture is better just because it has been through more stages? Stars that are supernova-ing have been through more stages than our sun, yet they are neither better nor worse than our sun. I'd argue that Eastern culture is better because of its work ethic, even though it does have some drawbacks. Eastern culture is also superior because of its promotion of those who are skilled and only those who are skilled, its acceptance of all forms of creativity, etc. To say that stages define quality is to say that all adults are smarter than all children. I'm not saying that age doesn't bring wisdom, but I know a few adults who are stupider than me, and several that are stupider than other kids I know. Age affects not quality. Environmental factors, surrounding cultures, etc. define cultures. What he meant was that in order to reach the next stage the culture had to advance, which implies improvement, which means getting better. And you talk about eastern culture as better because of promoting those who are skilled and only those who are skilled and the work ethic. Corruption and political favours is a major problem in China, India and number of other countries in south east Asia and I don't think working 50-70 hours a week is a good work ethic. I'm, sorry. When I talk about Eastern culture, I have a bad habit of talking only about Japanese culture.
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Post by low on Jun 30, 2010 18:34:11 GMT -5
Culture is the choices--rituals, beliefs, technologies, arts, and innovations--that seemed practical for a particular group of people in a particular place. When you're comparing cultures, you have to have a standard for what's good or bad to say if some are better than others. If good is most advanced technologies, then western Europeans tend to dominate; if good is happiness and physical fitness, then the Nordic is great, but also competing with some isolated native cultures such as the Tarahumara or Bhutan. What you ten to find, though, is that the differences between cultures might be exaggerated, which is why Donald Brown made this list of cultural universals.
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Post by velvetdivorce on Jul 2, 2010 17:54:01 GMT -5
What you ten to find, though, is that the differences between cultures might be exaggerated, which is why Donald Brown made this list of cultural universals. I think it was Levi Strauss of came up with a formula for the mythologies and folklore of cultures; any culture. And anyway; you can't answer this question with some amount of bias; as you're be assessing from your position within your own culture.
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Post by Enemynarwhal on Jul 4, 2010 0:34:28 GMT -5
You can measure it and that is by measuring how happy the people of that culture generally are. By those standards America at least sucks. I forget how well the rest of the world fared. All i remember is poorer countries were happier than us. Oh well.
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bullskitur
Planet
Intelligence requires not confusing what you believe with what you know
Posts: 306
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Post by bullskitur on Jul 4, 2010 6:02:36 GMT -5
You can measure it and that is by measuring how happy the people of that culture generally are. By those standards America at least sucks. I forget how well the rest of the world fared. All i remember is poorer countries were happier than us. Oh well. Happiness is very hard to measure and it really varies where countries are on the list. Iceland is usually in the top 5 on some lists and then in others it's nr.60 or at least way down there. And what about cultural opinion of violence and women rights? You might be waking up happy as a clown and get shot in the face at the age of 20 or maybe women in Saudi Arabia are very happy because they don't know anything else. What if in another culture violence is ok and women have no rights, little girls get splashed with acid but in their culture its ok and therefore they can life their happy little lives.
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Post by Enemynarwhal on Jul 5, 2010 2:25:58 GMT -5
You can measure it and that is by measuring how happy the people of that culture generally are. By those standards America at least sucks. I forget how well the rest of the world fared. All i remember is poorer countries were happier than us. Oh well. Happiness is very hard to measure and it really varies where countries are on the list. Iceland is usually in the top 5 on some lists and then in others it's nr.60 or at least way down there. And what about cultural opinion of violence and women rights? You might be waking up happy as a clown and get shot in the face at the age of 20 or maybe women in Saudi Arabia are very happy because they don't know anything else. What if in another culture violence is ok and women have no rights, little girls get splashed with acid but in their culture its ok and therefore they can life their happy little lives. Ok so I didn't think that all the way through, obviously. Perhaps if we could find a reliable way to measure happiness and equal rights, and maybe some other stuff that I can't think of right now then combine them into some sort of point system we can figure out what cultures are better. I'll acknowledge my knowledge of some problems with this method before i get further attacked. Hopefully this time i'll think it through. I would say that morals overall should be added into this but all morals are subjective. That does mean that treatment of woman and equal rights and all that nonsense is subjective but I will say that equal rights is something most educated people will say everyone deserves so we can use it to measure the quality of some cultures. Now just because everyone has equal rights doesn't mean everyone has enough freedom, but how do we define what is enough freedom? If we were to create this point system we'd have to define how much freedom an individual needs for his or her culture to be a good one. Maybe we can simply measure it by how much freedom they have but just because someone can do whatever they want doesn't mean their culture is good. We also have to try to stay clear of western biases. Maybe if they had too much freedom for their own good they would be more miserable and points would be deducted that way? Also the economic conditions in a country whenever this survey is conducted might not be a good indicated of how well their culture is and make them appear to be more miserable and possibley have less freedom than they normally do and thus not be a good indication of how good their culture is. Thats another question. Should economic status be taken into consideration? If the people are free and relatively happy while living in a poorer nation is their culture still bad? Now i know most poor nations arn't home to free people but we still have to take that into account when coming up with this whole thing. I guess the safety of the people should also be considered butt that might be included in how happy they are which we can't really measure that well. Did I think of everything this time? It's improbably to come up with this system and employ it for not only every country but the multiple cultures that are present in some of them, but that doesn't mean it's not a good way to measure the awesome levels of each individual culture.
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bullskitur
Planet
Intelligence requires not confusing what you believe with what you know
Posts: 306
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Post by bullskitur on Jul 5, 2010 5:58:52 GMT -5
Happiness is very hard to measure and it really varies where countries are on the list. Iceland is usually in the top 5 on some lists and then in others it's nr.60 or at least way down there. And what about cultural opinion of violence and women rights? You might be waking up happy as a clown and get shot in the face at the age of 20 or maybe women in Saudi Arabia are very happy because they don't know anything else. What if in another culture violence is ok and women have no rights, little girls get splashed with acid but in their culture its ok and therefore they can life their happy little lives. Ok so I didn't think that all the way through, obviously. Perhaps if we could find a reliable way to measure happiness and equal rights, and maybe some other stuff that I can't think of right now then combine them into some sort of point system we can figure out what cultures are better. I'll acknowledge my knowledge of some problems with this method before i get further attacked. Hopefully this time i'll think it through. I would say that morals overall should be added into this but all morals are subjective. That does mean that treatment of woman and equal rights and all that nonsense is subjective but I will say that equal rights is something most educated people will say everyone deserves so we can use it to measure the quality of some cultures. Now just because everyone has equal rights doesn't mean everyone has enough freedom, but how do we define what is enough freedom? If we were to create this point system we'd have to define how much freedom an individual needs for his or her culture to be a good one. Maybe we can simply measure it by how much freedom they have but just because someone can do whatever they want doesn't mean their culture is good. We also have to try to stay clear of western biases. Maybe if they had too much freedom for their own good they would be more miserable and points would be deducted that way? Also the economic conditions in a country whenever this survey is conducted might not be a good indicated of how well their culture is and make them appear to be more miserable and possibley have less freedom than they normally do and thus not be a good indication of how good their culture is. Thats another question. Should economic status be taken into consideration? If the people are free and relatively happy while living in a poorer nation is their culture still bad? Now i know most poor nations arn't home to free people but we still have to take that into account when coming up with this whole thing. I guess the safety of the people should also be considered butt that might be included in how happy they are which we can't really measure that well. Did I think of everything this time? It's improbably to come up with this system and employ it for not only every country but the multiple cultures that are present in some of them, but that doesn't mean it's not a good way to measure the awesome levels of each individual culture. I'm too tired to try to find flaws in your argument but I like it a lot more then the first one.
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Post by krzych32 on Jul 5, 2010 11:24:09 GMT -5
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Post by Enemynarwhal on Jul 5, 2010 17:08:55 GMT -5
Ok so I didn't think that all the way through, obviously. Perhaps if we could find a reliable way to measure happiness and equal rights, and maybe some other stuff that I can't think of right now then combine them into some sort of point system we can figure out what cultures are better. I'll acknowledge my knowledge of some problems with this method before i get further attacked. Hopefully this time i'll think it through. I would say that morals overall should be added into this but all morals are subjective. That does mean that treatment of woman and equal rights and all that nonsense is subjective but I will say that equal rights is something most educated people will say everyone deserves so we can use it to measure the quality of some cultures. Now just because everyone has equal rights doesn't mean everyone has enough freedom, but how do we define what is enough freedom? If we were to create this point system we'd have to define how much freedom an individual needs for his or her culture to be a good one. Maybe we can simply measure it by how much freedom they have but just because someone can do whatever they want doesn't mean their culture is good. We also have to try to stay clear of western biases. Maybe if they had too much freedom for their own good they would be more miserable and points would be deducted that way? Also the economic conditions in a country whenever this survey is conducted might not be a good indicated of how well their culture is and make them appear to be more miserable and possibley have less freedom than they normally do and thus not be a good indication of how good their culture is. Thats another question. Should economic status be taken into consideration? If the people are free and relatively happy while living in a poorer nation is their culture still bad? Now i know most poor nations arn't home to free people but we still have to take that into account when coming up with this whole thing. I guess the safety of the people should also be considered butt that might be included in how happy they are which we can't really measure that well. Did I think of everything this time? It's improbably to come up with this system and employ it for not only every country but the multiple cultures that are present in some of them, but that doesn't mean it's not a good way to measure the awesome levels of each individual culture. I'm too tired to try to find flaws in your argument but I like it a lot more then the first one. Thank you, I'll take that for what it's worth.
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