When China Rules the World

[Joe McCarthy]

Is the US culture not a hybrid as well, since most of its music comes from the African diaspora there?

You might ask the same, of say Spain, given that much of its artistic expression, including dance, comes from Gypsies.

[Agrippa]

This sort of yardstick could be used to say Japan is Western. In fact, it often is.

Well, Shintoism and Buddhism are definitely less European than Catholicism and their ancestry and other expressions are - let's put it that way: Very modern, in many respects a copy of the West, but A CHANGED copy.

To me someone living like traditional Catholics 100 years ago in Europe is more European than an Asian with a cell phone and better BNP.

I'm not talking about superiority in this respect, just about traditions and culture and what's more occidental. Because Western = occidental European, not American Capitalism...

I think I've already adequately demonstrated the distinctions.

Not to me, sorry, I don't see it.

Our fundamental disagreement seems to be that you're defining culture and civilization in particularist terms, i.e., applying it to a people independent of the larger society in which they live.

Well, the majority of Brazilians is closer to what I call occidental civilisation, individually even more so.

After all, living in a state means nothing, don't you agree? Or do you have more in common with your resident Jews, Amerindians, Mexican mestizos and Near Eastern Muslims than with people living close to the way their ancestors lived in Brazil, people with a Spanish, Italian, German, Scandinavian etc. background?

Even some US-slum-like areas are less European than some Southern Brazilian cities...

Culture and civilization is probably at least as much a matter of assimilation as it is race.

Point is, the Southern Brazilians in particular are European by race AND culture.

If a country adheres to what is very much a hybrid culture, such as Brazil, then it matters not what particular individuals within that culture do.

What else than music and dances or the like is really non-European in the whiter parts of Brazil? Tell me that? And tell me the difference to the popular US-culture.

You said US-whiggers are less "African" than white Brazilians - I say they aren't.

Otherwise we'd be left with absurdities such as saying Germany is Islamic, rather than Western, because certain individuals within it express Islamic cultural traits.

Yes, they are foreign elements, which is why they should be, if becoming too many and too influential, removed and going in their sphere.

Yet in Brazil the European part is the absolutely dominant one in every respect throughout the country, so if you don't go for race, seriously, Brazil would be even more European than what I would have said.

Because to me many parts and cultural aspects of Brazil are less European, also because of race...for little other reasons.

You might ask the same, of say Spain, given that much of its artistic expression, including dance, comes from Gypsies.

It is completely normal and healthy to adopt foreign cultural elements which seem to be favourable, the crucial aspect is to do it in a selective way, so chosing as a group what you like and what not.

F.e. Germans don't want Islam, but they got Islamicised in a way by force, through politicians and foreign birth rates, foreign mass immigration.

They could have decided to accept this or that practise of Muslims, which wouldn't have changed their European status overall - if being done selectively.

Now the same here. Brazil has an European culture which adopted just certain foreign aspects, same for the US.

The more European parts are as European in EVERY RESPECT as the US. I don't see the difference. If you don't like Catholicism and some more traditional European aspects, it is an INNER EUROPEAN ISSUE!

And if you define "Western" by the American Capitalism and Liberalism, oh well, then Western is a worthless term and even hostile towards what being European really mean or at least meant.

We should better use occidental civilisation then and oh yes, Brazil is part of that - at least its still more European parts and those are THE DOMINANT inside the country, regardless of what outsiders think to see.

[Joe McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Agrippa
Well, Shintoism and Buddhism are definitely less European than Catholicism and their ancestry and other expressions are - let's put it that way: Very modern, in many respects a copy of the West, but A CHANGED copy.

To me someone living like traditional Catholics 100 years ago in Europe is more European than an Asian with a cell phone and better BNP.

I'd agree, but then in moving beyond ancestry you basically delved into the arena of technics and forms, and Japan is rather 'Western' in that regard. The important point though is that neither Brazil nor Japan have a dominant Western culture.

Because Western = occidental European, not American Capitalism...

Your hatred for capitalism is well known, but there are few things with more history in the West than capitalism, and America, as you rightly affirm, is its leading proponent.

Not to me, sorry, I don't see it.

It's pretty simple. Brazil, from its inception, involved a blending and meeting of cultures. The Portuguese were the trailblazers in niggerfication. On the other hand, America is a very late comer in that regard, having only had our racial system overthrown in the last few decades after centuries of Anglo Protestant white supremacy.

After all, living in a state means nothing, don't you agree?

I wouldn't say it means nothing. It's safe to say that an American black is more culturally American than you are, and that a German Turk is more culturally German than I am.

[QUOTE][Or do you have more in common with your resident Jews, Amerindians, Mexican mestizos and Near Eastern Muslims than with people living close to the way their ancestors lived in Brazil, people with a Spanish, Italian, German, Scandinavian etc. background?
/QUOTE]

Overall I have more in common with the whites you mention, if only because of shared origins. But we are speaking of cultural attributes and it's safe to assume that white Brazilians have more in common with non-white Brazilians culturally than they do with Danes.

F.e. Germans don't want Islam, but they got Islamicised in a way by force, through politicians and foreign birth rates, foreign mass immigration.

Americans never wanted Mexicans, and still really don't, but we have them nonetheless.

You said US-whiggers are less "African" than white Brazilians - I say they aren't.

Well, you seem to have a romantic vision that white Brazilians are yeoman farmers on the Volga. Perhaps you should spend some time watching Brazilian media.

[Agrippa]

I'd agree, but then in moving beyond ancestry you basically delved into the arena of technics and forms, and Japan is rather 'Western' in that regard. The important point though is that neither Brazil nor Japan have a dominant Western culture.

The first time I read that was with "The Clash of Civilizations" from Samuel P. Huntington. Before that, I never read that, it must be typically American in a way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Clash_of_Civilizations



It is much to simplified and he even gave Argentina and Uruguay to his "Latin American Civilization", which is just crazy if you make such a big deal out of it and put Argentina together with countries like Bolivia and Guatemala?!

What's that worth?

It's pretty simple. Brazil, from its inception, involved a blending and meeting of cultures. The Portuguese were the trailblazers in niggerfication. On the other hand, America is a very late comer in that regard, having only had our racial system overthrown in the last few decades after centuries of Anglo Protestant white supremacy.

Yet the Southern states of Brazil are more European in every regard than various states of the USA!

I'm not talking just about individuals, but about some of the biggest and most important states here!

I wouldn't say it means nothing. It's safe to say that an American black is more culturally American than you are, and that a German Turk is more culturally German than I am.

American black has no real other identity than a newly constructed one, after all they came from slavery and Protestantism, but you can't really compare that with Europeans in South America or Muslims in Europe...

Overall I have more in common with the whites you mention, if only because of shared origins. But we are speaking of cultural attributes and it's safe to assume that white Brazilians have more in common with non-white Brazilians culturally than they do with Danes.

Yes in some aspects surely, but funnily, exactly not in those which are important for civilisation!

Because whether they speak the same language and dance to the same music is not exactly the same like the same civilisation..

Americans never wanted Mexicans, and still really don't, but we have them nonetheless.

Many Brazilians didn't liked Negroids, slavery lasted long there, you know?

Also Americans love Mexican food it seems, probably they Anglos get "Mexicanicised" that way?

Well, you seem to have a romantic vision that white Brazilians are yeoman farmers on the Volga. Perhaps you should spend some time watching Brazilian media.

Well, I can also watch US-media. Evangelicals behave quite often like some Voodoo fetishists in Africa, they are no occidental Christians.

Or talking about the music? Even the way many speak!

Honestly, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones...

[Lurker]

A good part of Brazil was settled much like the Caribbean, with very large slave owning plantations that produced cotton, sugarcane, cocoa, etc. Those slaves came mainly from captured Native American tribes (at the beginning) and imported African slaves (until 1850). That's the case of the colonization that happened in much of the Northeast, the North and in three states of the southeast (Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo). So the civilization that was created in those parts can't be considered Western if the Caribbean can't.

(I'd also say that Southern United States (the Confederate States of America) couldn't be considered Western as well, since the basis of their civilization is also slave-owning farms. Both Brazil in 1808 (the time when the Portuguese Crown left Europe) and 1850 (the date when slave importation was prohibited under British pressure) and the CSA in 1860 had 33% of their population as Black slaves. But that's a different discussion.)

The point is that the colonization pattern in Southern Brazil (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Parana) is much different from the rest of Brazil. That region was supposed to be under Spanish territory, so the first settlements happened in military outposts (like Sacramento, in nowadays Uruguay). Then the Portuguse sent Azorean families to settle in those lands in the 1700's and early 1800's, to occupy them in the Crown's name and make a better claim in the negotiation tables with Spain.

After Brazil was independent, the Southern region still remained dangerously underpopulated. Argentina, Uruguay or Paraguay could take those empty lands. So the Brazilian government started importing European colonists (from Italy, the German states, Poland, Russia, etc) to settle in those lands. The Brazilian military or those colonists themselves would fight the Native American tribes in those lands, killing them/sending them to reservations and taking their territory. They would then establish several small farms in those lands, planting wheat, corn, potatoes, raising cows, chicken, etc.

The pattern of colonization of Southern Brazil is very much like of the US West/Australia/New Zealand, with the military or colonists fighting the Natives, then several immigrant families from Europe settling in those lands. There wasn't much of a mixing of civilizations in those cases as the replacement of one with another.

Brazil has many differences between its regions. It'd be a similar case if the US had not only made itself independent in the 1700's, but also conquered the other British colonies (Canada, Jamaica and other Caribbean islands, Guyanna). Would you consider the US to be nonwestern because part of it (Jamaica, Guyanna) isn't? Would you consider France to be nonwestern because part of it (legally) is formed by Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guyanna? Its the same case with Brazil, except that the non-White/non-Western part is larger and is more known in other countries than the White/Western part.

[Joe McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Agrippa
It is much to simplified and he even gave Argentina and Uruguay to his "Latin American Civilization", which is just crazy if you make such a big deal out of it and put Argentina together with countries like Bolivia and Guatemala?!

Not at all. Uruguay and Argentina have much more in common culturally with other Latin American states than they do with the West. This is reflected in their shared experience of revolt against Spain, their attitudes toward the outside world, and their grouping together in political-economic organizations. If they were truly standouts in the region, such as say, South Africa was in Africa, their political and cultural outlook would be reflected in membership in European organizations rather than Latin American ones.

[Agrippa]

Not at all. Uruguay and Argentina have much more in common culturally with other Latin American states than they do with the West. This is reflected in their shared experience of revolt against Spain, their attitudes toward the outside world, and their grouping together in political-economic organizations. If they were truly standouts in the region, such as say, South Africa was in Africa, their political and cultural outlook would be reflected in membership in European organizations rather than Latin American ones.

You organise with the regionals - or doesn't have the US of A Mexico in the NAFTA?!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_A...rade_Agreement

Sorry, that argument is ridiculous.

Looking a Buenos Aires normal districts, it is a totally European appearance!

I would even say that many of those cities have a more European character than many others in the US.

Strongly influenced by European culture, Buenos Aires is sometimes referred to as the "Paris of South America".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buenos_Aires#Culture

There come various American cities to my mind which are less European...

[Joe McCarthy]

Originally Posted by Agrippa
You organise with the regionals - or doesn't have the US of A Mexico in the NAFTA?!

Just as France organizes with North Africa. The key though is that no one will seriously contend that France or the US primarily sees itself as part of North Africa or Latin America, just as no one would seriously contend that Argentina and Uraguay sees itself as part of North America or Europe.

Let's put it this way: in the conflict over the Falklands between Britain and Argentina, which side do you think Brazil and Uraguay is on, the West, or Latin America?

[Joe McCarthy]

And similarly, when Portugal was battling African insurgents in Angola, which side do you think Rhodesia and South Africa was on?

[Agrippa]

Just as France organizes with North Africa. The key though is that no one will seriously contend that France or the US primarily sees itself as part of North Africa or Latin America, just as no one would seriously contend that Argentina and Uraguay sees itself as part of North America or Europe.

Let's put it this way: in the conflict over the Falklands between Britain and Argentina, which side do you think Brazil and Uraguay is on, the West, or Latin America?

That is geopolicy, to me, that is something different from Civilisation.

You can have a deadly war with people of the same Civilisation, that's not the point neither.