Can someone help me define Western Civilization?

[Tee Kay]

So in other words you are using 'western' as a synonym for 'wealthy and friendly to the US'?

No, because you'd see I specifically excluded South Korea, Japan and China-Taipei in my map of Western countries.

 

[RedRalph]

No, because you'd see I specifically excluded South Korea, Japan and China-Taipei in my map of Western countries.

So Ireland in 1972, poor, not in the EU, not in NATO, almost theocratic government, were we not a western country then?

 

[Tee Kay]

So Ireland in 1972, poor, not in the EU, not in NATO, almost theocratic government, were we not a western country then?

I made no provisions for past definitions of The West. But I'm pretty sure Ireland at the time was far better off than, say, almost all of Africa.

 

[Lillefix]

How the hell is Spain in the west, but Latin America isn't?

Too much influence from nonwhite Indians perhaps? Although Argentina is mostly white I've heard.

 

[RedRalph]

I made no provisions for past definitions of The West. But I'm pretty sure Ireland at the time was far better off than, say, almost all of Africa.

But dirt poor by western standards. So when did whatever definition you use these days come into play for you? When exactly did Poland, say, become Western?

 

[Tee Kay]

But dirt poor by western standards.

But rich by world standards. We could ping-pong this back and forth all day.

So when did whatever definition you use these days come into play for you? When exactly did Poland, say, become Western?

I'd say about five years ago is a good point.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

I'd say about five years ago is a good point.

I can't really follow you. You seem to suggest Poland became "western" when it became part of the EU so it looks like our definition of western is purely political, yet you exclude Japan.
I'd rather use a cultural and geographic definition and say Poland was part of the westen world since the adoption of christianity.

 

[Cashie]

I wouldn't exclude Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

These countries have successfully "Westernized"

Having spent some time in most of these places, definitely not. The Korean & Japanese cultures are about as alien to western culture as they come. Japan is slightly more westernised, but the pervading culture is Japanese. Men with short hair and pop music don't make countries Western. South Korea has a large Christian population, but the Confucian mindset dominates everything.

I think tailless summed it up nicely in the map. Western Culture is based on European people, European languages and Christianity (often with a Jewish minority). Western countries are mostly European countries situated in lands once part of the Roman Empire and their colonies (where colonists became the majority).

 

[Tee Kay]

I can't really follow you. You seem to suggest Poland became "western" when it became part of the EU so it looks like our definition of western is purely political, yet you exclude Japan.
I'd rather use a cultural and geographic definition and say Poland was part of the westen world since the adoption of christianity.

IMO a "full" Western country by current definition a country should 1) have strong Judeo-Christian foundation, 2) be white, 3) be a democracy, 4) be wealthy and 5) share common or similar economic, foreign and defence policies. Additionally, self-perception and perception by others are important too. I feel that about five years ago Poland got to a stage where it seems appropriate to include it in The West, that's all.

I'd also like to state that I only use the term The West as a convenient short-hand label to describe a certain group of country that fits all those categories. I don't use it to mean "democracies" or "rich countries" or "developed countries" or "European/American countries" or "civilized countries" or "Christian countries". Hence I excluded Japan. Hence I consider countries like Brazil or Russia "partly" Western.

 

[Ekolite]

I would also add that as a term it has only been relevent since the end of the cold war. Trying to apply it to the medieval era or even earlier makes no sense whatsoever. For this reason, Poland has been part of the Western World since they became democratic and/or joined the EU, not when they embraced Christianity.

Members of the EU are part of the Western world because the entry requirements of the EU corrolate quite strongly with many aspects of what makes a country ''western.''

In my opinion the ''western world'' started in the UK with the Industrial Revolution, and spread from there. The ''most'' western countries are all fully industrialised and comparitively wealthy, with good standard of living, a strong democracy and a white, Christian background and a culture with a high level of Individualism.

Emerging countries such as those in South America are not western. Neither is Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea or Singapore (these are western influenced only). Turkey and Israel also fail the criteria.

 

[RedRalph]

I'd say about five years ago is a good point.

What threshold was passed about five years ago?

 

[Lillefix]

For what it's worth I remember a few lines from from Jared diamond's "Collapse". He mentions how the Norsemen who were left almost all alone on Greenland identified themselves far more with Europeans than with the Eskimos, even though they barely had contact with other Europeans. I remember that he said that they adapted to European fashion for example(fashion within clothing, religion, etc. ). So there must have been some common identity even back then.

 

[NedimNapoleon]

Why do you say that?

I feel that the Germans are one of the main drivers of modern Western Culture through literature, music, philosophy, and science.

Including germany, everything west of Germany with Germany, I should have wrote everything west of Poland excluding Poland

 

[Reginleif]

What does EU membership have to do with western civilization? Western Civilization was begun by the ancient Greeks, passed on to the Romans, and so forth. How can some upstart organization (that, according to all the Euros here is not even a real nation, state, or anything else but apparently just a gentlemen's club sort of thing) which has only been around for 17 years (actual EU) have any bearing on what is and is not western civilization?

I disagree, I don't think Western Civilization began with the Greeks or the Romans at all. The more I understand Classical Athens, the more I understand that they are inherantly an offspring of African and Mesopotamian cultures. I also have to put forward that no major cultural or political institutions survived into the Middle Ages in what would become the major Western states. This includes intellectual traditions as well, although this remained the strongest influence of classical culture, but during the Middle Ages and Renaissance Western traditions developed and largly outmatched earlier ones.

Rome has a significantly better case to be classified as "Western," since the political, cultural, and religous institutions developed there certainly did impact the way France, England, Germany, etc developed. However it is largly the legacy of the Late Roman empire, so the the early part from the Republic is not identifiable with Western Civilization.

Western civilization largly began with the fall of the Roman Empire, with a combination of Germanic, Christian, and Late Roman civilization.

 

[bhsup]

What does EU membership have to do with western civilization? Western Civilization was begun by the ancient Greeks, passed on to the Romans, and so forth. How can some upstart organization (that, according to all the Euros here is not even a real nation, state, or anything else but apparently just a gentlemen's club sort of thing) which has only been around for 17 years (actual EU) have any bearing on what is and is not western civilization?

I disagree, I don't think Western Civilization began with the Greeks or the Romans at all. The more I understand Classical Athens, the more I understand that they are inherantly an offspring of African and Mesopotamian cultures. I also have to put forward that no major cultural or political institutions survived into the Middle Ages in what would become the major Western states. This includes intellectual traditions as well, although this remained the strongest influence of classical culture, but during the Middle Ages and Renaissance Western traditions developed and largly outmatched earlier ones.

Rome has a significantly better case to be classified as "Western," since the political, cultural, and religous institutions developed there certainly did impact the way France, England, Germany, etc developed. However it is largly the legacy of the Late Roman empire, so the the early part from the Republic is not identifiable with Western Civilization.

Western civilization largly began with the fall of the Roman Empire, with a combination of Germanic, Christian, and Late Roman civilization.

Oh whoa, I think we need Dachs to weigh in on our differing views here. I'll abide by his explanation.

 

[SKILORD]

Parlimentary veto and so forth, Poland was pretty liberal back in the day, sure they had a rough couple centuries, but I'd say they are more European than most, with the fact that they're on the edge of Europe leading to insecurity about being "Western" which is then represented in the politics and society of Poland as cultural bastions against the goddamn Asiatic Cossacks.

What I mean to say is that Poland did not have a particularly strong domestic authoritarian tradition before FDR sold them down the river at Yalta.

 

[Dachs]

What does EU membership have to do with western civilization? Western Civilization was begun by the ancient Greeks, passed on to the Romans, and so forth. How can some upstart organization (that, according to all the Euros here is not even a real nation, state, or anything else but apparently just a gentlemen's club sort of thing) which has only been around for 17 years (actual EU) have any bearing on what is and is not western civilization?

I disagree, I don't think Western Civilization began with the Greeks or the Romans at all. The more I understand Classical Athens, the more I understand that they are inherantly an offspring of African and Mesopotamian cultures. I also have to put forward that no major cultural or political institutions survived into the Middle Ages in what would become the major Western states. This includes intellectual traditions as well, although this remained the strongest influence of classical culture, but during the Middle Ages and Renaissance Western traditions developed and largly outmatched earlier ones.

Rome has a significantly better case to be classified as "Western," since the political, cultural, and religous institutions developed there certainly did impact the way France, England, Germany, etc developed. However it is largly the legacy of the Late Roman empire, so the the early part from the Republic is not identifiable with Western Civilization.

Western civilization largly began with the fall of the Roman Empire, with a combination of Germanic, Christian, and Late Roman civilization.

Okay, well, saying that the Greeks came up with "Western civilization" and the Romans inherited it and passed it through their world-empire to what eventually became Europe is overly reductionist and simplistic. Honestly, the only reason that the Greeks get so much credit for inventing stuff is because they were the ones who wrote about it first. Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't come up with a lot of stuff that's had major impact on "Western civilization", especially in the realms of political theory and philosophy. Describing classical Athens chiefly as a mere "offspring" of African and Mediterranean cultures is missing the forest for the trees, highlighting a few similarities and connections that, while relevant, aren't the chief part of the whole story. That Greek culture could be immensely impacted by those east of it (especially during the archaic and Hellenistic periods) does not make it any less Greek, or (theoretically) any less Western, any more than rock is an intellectual property of the "African civilization" because black performers and "black" styles of music were the chief driving force behind it. And while the Romans ended up using an awful lot of what the Greeks did, especially in the realm of art and history/historiography, saying that they just "inherited" their culture or the Grand Line of Descent of Western Civilization or whatever from Greece is giving the Romans far too little credit. The old stereotype of the Greeks as the learners, thinkers, and artists and the Romans as the bloodthirsty warmongers who slaughtered everything in their path and who had to be domesticated by the civilized Greeks that they conquered needs to die. Badly.

Roman culture was Roman, and Greek culture was Greek; that both had influence on the other is undeniable, but it's hardly the whole story. Even in the realm of art history, the old stereotype is that rich Romans (esp. from the south of Italy) started hiring Greeks en masse as sculptors and wall-painters in the late third and early second centuries BC, and those Greeks used frequently-Greek materials (e.g. Pentelic marble) and had clear stylistic influences from pre-Roman Greek Hellenistic art. That's true, to a large extent, but at the same time the works that these Greeks were creating were not entirely just "copies" of previous works; plenty were copies with a new spin of some kind, or subject matter that simply hadn't been done yet (albeit in a similar style as before), or new takes on old subject matter (especially ones that incorporated certain other styles with influence on Romans, such as "Etruscan-style" portrait-statues). And the Romans were the ones paying for it and determining the subject and execution of the art. Does that make the art Greek, or Roman? Does that differentiation even matter? Judgment call.

Now, if we're talking in terms of "civilizations" and "traditions" and so forth - and I'm very uncomfortable with doing something like that, because the discussion seems to generally consist of vague assertions and grand, sweeping statements - honestly, you can pick and choose what you want to refer to as "Western". (Which is what I said earlier in this thread. ) In terms of things you could reasonably credit the "Greeks" with in direct, discernible descent in "Western civilization", you could include, to various degrees, the writing of history, art, philosophy (and, tongue-in-cheek, Christianity), political theory (not very much, though), and, somewhat intriguingly, military theory. Not that any of those things was a specifically Greek creation that passed whole cloth from Greece to Rome and from Rome to nascent Europe, but that Greek ways of doing each one of these things were discernible in the ways various medieval dudes did them, too. Does that constitute some kind of clear "Western civilization"? And what differentiates, say, the Greek impact on Roman culture from the impact of Levantine or Iranian societies on the Greek culture that made an impact on Roman culture, or from the impact Roman culture made on the places that would eventually become Germany, France, England, Spain, or Italy? And where do the Byzantines fit into all of this? Eh. You can make a case for it in pretty much any way you like, if you're into that sort of thing. I'm obviously not.

Although, if you're talking about Romans at all, you almost by necessity have to include the Muslim states in the equation. The Umayyad and 'Abbasid caliphates were very much reliant on Roman (and Greek) ways of doing things - perhaps not so much in the realm of law or philosophy or religion, but definitely in terms of political systems, especially the bureaucracy and tax structures (which they inherited whole cloth from the Roman Empire) and even in terms of sociopolitical structures with regards to landowning (see esp. al-Andalus there) - hell, even architecture. Was Muslim Syria or al-Andalus any "more" or "less" Roman than was, say, Anglo-Saxon Yorkshire or Frankish Neustria? If you're talking about a classical Greco-Roman inheritance - or just Roman, even - forming a base for "Western civilization", you have to come up with a reason to draw a line between Christian Europe and the Muslim parts of the Mediterranean littoral, other than, preferably, lolmooslims.

tl;dr: you both have a case, you both are overstating parts of your respective cases, and deciding what you want to go with is a matter of personal choice.

 

[bhsup]

As (excluding War of Northern Aggression stuff) always, I am humbled and bow before your wisdom.

 

[Theige]

I would.

Of the few you mention, only Singapore has a European Language significant speaking population and as a official language. And while these nations have adopted a lot from the Americas and Europe, there is no way in hell that we would consider ourselves as Westerners. We are Japanese/Korean/Chinese/Malay/Indic first, and at best, western-influenced second.

I never you said the people of these nations were "Westerners." But they are Westernized

To be a civilized, rich and developed nation is to be Westernized

 

[SKILORD]

I think that we have moved to a global culture with regard to economic affluence. It would be entirely inaccurate to say that the current global culture is homogenously Western. Greed might be a dominant value in the West, but it is not uniquely Western in any way. Just because they wear business suits instead of Kimonos does not mean that the people who sell you anime based video games are not Japanese. There's nothing you can do to make Reggae white, but it influenced and changed the perspectives of a wide variety of Westerners with nonwestern values, which helped contribute to a global culture that can no longer be termed exclusively Western.