I understood that, but I wanted (and still want) to point that the use of "morally superior/inferior" as a legit feature and the confusion between politics and actual cultural features can lead really easily to prejudiced views.I personally don't see either culture as superior to the other: both have advantages and disadvantages.
As I said in my previous post, one shouldn't confuse racial prejudice and cultural prejudice. One can abide by the latter without the former, and quite easily so.But to defend my OP, I never, ever meant something to do with racial background.
And I've Syrians friends that say the contrary. We could play "I know someone that" all day, but eventually when it comes to fundamental cultural features, you'd end with a more important "kinship" within the Arabo-Islamic world than with European world.Especially over an area of the Arab world: I have Lebanese friends who say they are culturally closer to the Mediterranean Greeks and Italians than they are to the Gulf.
Which it doesn't mean you don't have Arabo-Islamic cultures being more close to the latter than others, of course, or even having some AI cultures sharing same values with a non-AI culture.
But without making AI something totally foreign (which is not), you have eventually more closeness between Peninsular and Levant Arab cultures than, say, Syrian and Spanish cultures.
(A bit like, in spite of their differences, the overall Western European civilisation cultures tend to be more close from each other, even when having closer ties with other cultures).
Frankly, I don't buy that the government is the victim of its people there. Wahhabism was imposed over by the ruling elites, and that was and still is trough sheer political means that Saudi Arabia culture had to integrate this.The government abides by strict Islamic scruples because it needs to keep the clerics on side, because the clerics are popular with the people.
Without a strong and authoritarian Wahabist take, politically, you can bet that it wouldn't be that of a popular issue. Unless arguing, which I know you don't but again taking it to its logical outcome, that Saudi Arabs were doomed to know a rigorist (religiously and socially) Islam.
I really don't care if he felt forced to sugar-coat what is still a cultural prejudice. It doesn't, at the slightest, make it more acceptable.But so did Mike - the fact he specifically stated "in my opinion" shows that.
You're entitled (I'm not sure if the word is as neutral in English that it's in French) to this opinion. But I can assure you that's a no-go in historical analysis, because it ends as considering our views, our moral and our conceptions as the pinnacle and the center of Human history.I personally believe that its ok for moral judgment to be used in history: I think it's fine to say that slavery was a great moral wrong, whatever people thought at the time.
A bit like an historical geocentrism/anthropocentrism if you will : it's simply not fit a serious analysis.
Doesn't mean one have to consider slavery as a non-moral issue of course, but one does need to put it in its historical context (where it can easily be considered as amoral or immoral : see the History of XIXth). But the existence of eternal truths is eventually an act of faith, not something you can use scientifically or academically.
We discussed it a bit there, and I'll stick with my answer.
That some moral values cristallized over time (being part of a cultural baggage), I'd agree and I'd agree as well about some being universal trough parallel development (order as a value being present in almost all organised states) or trough influence.
But they don't exist independently of society that can add some (We could say gender equality could become a basic value in Western societies, but could be reversed in time without having the opportunity to "cristallize") but as well remove or modify some values that were considered as basic or even vitals (such as what was considered as piety or honor before in Western societies).
But we may want to continue this particular discussion in another thread.
Okay, maybe I saw your reaction as more defensively that it was, due to the other poster having really running on my nerves. Sorry about that, even if it might be a bit understandable, I shouldn't have mixed at this point.Rather than criticize you, I raised the contradiction of why I was struggling with it to elucidate an answer from others.
But the bit you cut was quite significant to understand my post. There's saving space, and there's modifying (even unwillingly) the sense of a post.I cut out the bits I'm not responding to in order to save space. That is all.
You don't, but it's mostly because that's an artifact of XIXth/XXth tought, that far-right (at least in Europe) is the most active proponent to maintain conciously and wholly.But I don't think you have to be far right to not buy into the "every culture is equally moral" mentality.
It's not : again superiority in culture or morals essentially depend from a relative "superior" point of view (it's really rare that a whole culture considers itself as inferior : strangely enough only superior get to make the superior/inferior distinction).I think it's quite clear, for instance, that northern American culture in 1860 was superior to southern American culture.
Simply repeting it doesn't make it any more true, but makes it even more of an act of faith. There's no objective superior/inferior scale that you could refer to.
If anything should be learnt from History, it's that separating cultures, races or any human group as inferior/superior, and even for very "benevolent" reasons (IMO, I'd think it would be at least paternalism, which I found being...misplaced as a behaviour), is doomed to end very poorly and very nastily.
The whole principle behind European colonialism, for example, was about raising savages from their inferior cultures (rather than racial inferiority) to civilized behaviors. I find it disturbing and uncomfortable to be used on a "progressit" point of view, as a student on History.
But you're doing so along your preconception, your moral features that doesn't come out of nothing, but are part of the cultural context you grew up in.as I think there are several cultures which have superior aspects to my own.
Would have you grew up in, say, early XIXth America, you won't have considered slavery as the proof Southern culture was flawed (Admitting that Southern culture was only about slavery, historically or today, which would be wrong, even if it did play an important role).
The simple fact of pulling a moral judgment about, not a feature that one can legitimately consider as moral or amoral, but about whole culture that you put into "Superior" "Inferior" classification is about making oneself and its cultural conceptions the objective judge of morality.
And one isn't going to consider itself as inferior, you can bet on that.
(But again, we may want to discuss it elsewhere, unless you think it's directly relevant to the matter at hand in this thread)