Pirates me hearties, pirates!

[Kevin]

And that's a fine enough answer, but at this point, the Greeks are vestigal to the argument. Individual rights becomes what defines the West.

-Jester

So we are breaking things down to Western Philosophy has a key (the key?) tenant of Individual Rights versus everything else as no one has seemed to want to tackle any definition of "Eastern" including by geography.

[Jester]

So we are breaking things down to Western Philosophy has a key (the key?) tenant of Individual Rights versus everything else as no one has seemed to want to tackle any definition of "Eastern" including by geography.

Well, I don't think I would come up with either of Pete's definitions, but then, I think "the West" is a bit of a silly concept anyway. "The East" is even worse, and between the two, there are gigantic chunks of the world left poorly defined. What is Latin America? What is Africa?

-Jester

[Kevin]

Well, I don't think I would come up with either of Pete's definitions, but then, I think "the West" is a bit of a silly concept anyway. "The East" is even worse, and between the two, there are gigantic chunks of the world left poorly defined. What is Latin America? What is Africa?

-Jester

Fair enough, but I can live with a philosophical definition if one can be agreed upon or even put forth. I really just wanted to make sure I was following your train of thought. Not necessarily adding commentary at this point.

[kandrathe]

Well, I don't think I would come up with either of Pete's definitions, but then, I think "the West" is a bit of a silly concept anyway. "The East" is even worse, and between the two, there are gigantic chunks of the world left poorly defined.

Historically, if you were living around the Mediterranean 2000 years ago you were in the center of the Western civilized world. They also knew about and traded with India and China, but as far as I can tell, everything east of Greece is considered the Middle East or East. That is, with the exception of those northern regions that become associated more with the west, like Poland and Russia. It is also reflected in the designation of empires and Catholic orthodoxy from the time of Constantine.

What is Latin America?

The New World.

What is Africa?

South of the Sahara, it was mostly tribal and left alone until the colonial period. Our ideas of Western and Eastern are based on a history that dates to the Roman empire. Vast areas of the world far removed from the Mediterranean Sea were simply tribal, primitive and ignored. My own tribal people were not "civilized" until between 1000 and 1400 AD. The New World was not discovered until after East and West had been firmly rooted in European thought.

[Jester]

I think, to even start to come up with a "big regions" map of world civilizations, you'd have to block off a whole series of areas. My off-the-top-of-my-head list would be this, trying to keep geographical and cultural areas intact without utterly running totally roughshod over history:

Chinese cultural area
Indian subcontinent
Central Asia
Persia/Mesopotamia/Arabia/East Africa (possibly several regions, possibly not)
The Mediterranean
Atlantic Northern Europe
Slavic Eastern Europe
Sub-Saharan Africa
Andean South America
Mesoamerica
East Coast/Great Lakes North America
West Coast America
Australasia

Now, these all change considerably over time, and there are plenty of borderlands that might just as well be their own areas. Some areas only appear recently as densely inhabited spaces (Southern Cone Latin America, Brazil, Plains of North America) But at least that list doesn't lump a billion Indians and a billion Chinese together as "eastern" or "oriental" or whatever.

-Jester

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . the Greeks are vestigal to the argument. Individual rights becomes what defines the West.

The Greeks are *central* to the argument, at least unless you can give me another example of an ancient society where the state was considered subordinate (in principle) to the people rather than the other way around.

What distinguishes chimps from humans is not the 98% of the DNA they have in common, it is the 2% that differs. And so it is, I think, with societies.

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . . I think "the West" is a bit of a silly concept anyway.

So is 'left' and 'right' which focus on the happenstance of seating rather than on the political or social inclinations of the individuals so labeled. So what? Would you rather that I use "Europe west of the former communist block, primarily the highly industrialized nations, plus the United States of America and Canada; in some contexts including post World War II industrialized Japan and, occasionally, again depending on context, pre 19?? Hong Kong"? No educated, intelligent, informed person in the first decade of the twenty-first century lacks a clear mental concept (which may differ slightly from person to person, but in a quibbling rather than a fundamental way) of what "The West" is, and the remainder I do not care to engage.

"The East" is even worse, and between the two, there are gigantic chunks of the world left poorly defined. What is Latin America? What is Africa?

Yes, but the division into 'West' and 'East' is not one I make. Since 'West' is used to define a common culture rather than to designate a geographic direction, the remaining partitions can be (and are) named nearly anything. I have no difficulty, for most purposes, using the partition you gave in a later post. And, most definitely, I fully agree that "these all change considerably over time"

--Pete

[--Pete]

Hi,

I think, to even start to come up with a "big regions" map of world civilizations, you'd have to block off a whole series of areas.

Depends on what differences you want to emphasize. Look at the Balkans. From the outside, they all look about the same, but (at least from their behavior) they think they are all different, hostile, species.

The boundaries may be both tenuous and flexible, but I think that there are partitions that can be drawn with a size that lies somewhere between 'he' and 'humanity'. And some of the boundaries of those partitions are religion, common folk stories, shared assumptions, language structure. All those things that come under the nebulous umbrella we call 'culture'. And I think 'Western culture' is a definite, identifiable entity.

--Pete

[Jester]

The boundaries may be both tenuous and flexible, but I think that there are partitions that can be drawn with a size that lies somewhere between 'he' and 'humanity'. And some of the boundaries of those partitions are religion, common folk stories, shared assumptions, language structure. All those things that come under the nebulous umbrella we call 'culture'. And I think 'Western culture' is a definite, identifiable entity.

The criteria are slippery. Cultures tend to share the qualities you state, although even that can be slippery. But for a whole "Western" bloc? It would be shot full of holes. Are the Basques western? Are the Jews western? Are the Celts western?

I think the differences so powerfully overwhelm the similarities that we need to be more precise about who we're talking about, lest we fall into big-narrative myth-making.

-Jester

[--Pete]

Hi,

. . .

I reiterate, you reiterate, I reiterate, . . .

DeeBye calls "Jimmy" (quite rightly).

Occhi calls us both fools (quite rightly).

Tal shuts down the thread because of inanity beyond the bounds of Lurkerdom (quite rightly).

I should have stuck by my 30.

:whistling:

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Maybe we could just say that Wikipedia is close enough...


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

[Jester]

Maybe we could just say that Wikipedia is close enough...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_philosophy

In paragraph one:

There is some debate of whether to include areas such as Northern Africa, some parts of the Middle East, Russia, and so on.

So, uh, that might not solve our problem.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

So, uh, that might not solve our problem.

Sure it does. There is some debate, and that ages old debate will not be resolved through our sophistry, as cerebral as we might be. While it is helpful in debate to define what we mean when we say "Western Mentality', it becomes increasingly fruitless to try to point out all the alternative meanings or prejudices of the word "Western". In this case, it means as derived from Greek philosophy, especially the notions of the ethics of citizenship and individual rights. "Western Mentality" in this case is that idea that a civil society is sewn together by the rule of law, rather than the rule of the ruthless.

When (radical) Islamicists outline their war against the "Western Mentality", it might mean the prevalent pop culture, hedonistic excesses, profanity, vulgarity and the propensity for young starlets to be photographed intoxicated and without proper under garments. Or, the war might be against the philosophy of freedom that Pete described. It is probably both, in that while preaching the morality of the first, the real agenda is the latter, that is, the ages old desire by sectarian totalitarians to control the morality and lives of everyone. To me it seems that Sharia law is very effective if punishing many morality crimes (esp. women's crimes), however absent when reigning in the thefts and murders perpetrated by say these Somali pirates against non-muslims. I reject a legal system that at its core, does not guarantee that all individuals are treated equally, which is a distinctly "Western" concept.

[Jester]

To me it seems that Sharia law is very effective if punishing many morality crimes (esp. women's crimes), however absent when reigning in the thefts and murders perpetrated by say these Somali pirates against non-muslims.

Up until quite recently, the legal code in Somalia was not based on Sharia. This is apparently changing. However, it seems clear enough to me that the problem has nothing to do with their legal code being Western, Islamic, or whatever else, it's that the government is not in control of its own country, and thus cannot enforce any law at all. They have been living with decades of anarchy, and piracy is an all-too-obvious result.

I reject a legal system that at its core, does not guarantee that all individuals are treated equally, which is a distinctly "Western" concept.

A distinctly enlightenment concept, maybe. Certainly the Greeks didn't believe it, at least, not for "all individuals"; they had great masses of slaves, thought foreigners had no rights, and kept women under the boot. (Gotta give them credit for homosexuals, though.) The state may have been, in theory, the instrument of the people, but it was still only a slice of the people. This is something that occurred to me last night about Pete's definition about individual rights and the Greeks. It's all well and good to have a philosophical, rather than geographical, definition for what is "Western". But the problem is that an individual rights definition makes the "West" simply vanish from the globe from the rise of the Roman Empire until at least the 16th century, and by any practical standard, much later. European states were Divine Right Monarchies, aristocratic Oligarchies and "Republics" which were scarcely concealed Oligarchies. Even if we count republican city-states as "Western" in the individual rights sense, they are a few tiny islands in a thousand-year ocean of Kings, Princes and Emperors.

A representative democracy of the kind practiced in Athens doesn't really appear again in Europe until the 1750s with Pascal Paoli in Corsica. The philosophical underpinnings come earlier, but not that much earlier: Locke wasn't until 1650, and was contemporary with such "Western" yet anti-democratic philosophers as Hobbes. The Italians probably get the kudos for instituting some form of it slightly earlier, but a quick read of Machiavelli would show just how ambiguous this was. So, yes, those are "Western" ideas in terms of having Greek origins, and "Western" in the sense that they happened in Europe rather than, say, India, but the yawning historical gap between Athens and the rise of democratic rights in Europe makes it seem suspect to me.

-Jester

[shoju]

personally, I would rather we deploy the seals, rangers, or whatever tactical people we have. Kill the pirates, get the vessel back.

Rinse and repeat.

1 of 2 things will happen.

1.) Somalian people will realize that piracy sucks, and search for fixes to the problem either internally or externally.
2.) we kill all the somalians.....


I thought that the pirate thing was cool and funny when I first heard about it. haha people trying to be pirates again. Then I realized that this wasn't some movie, and it was pretty crazy. Kill em, capture em, hang em, just make it evident that piracy comes with a very steep price. Eventually the price will be too high.

[Kevin]

K I'm finally getting back to this post.:)

Hi,
First, they must be the ones who want it. And with that we cannot help much other than by diplomacy and propaganda. Once they do want it (or at least a sizable group with some power does) then we can help. We can help mostly with education. Education in the democratic process, in improved farming, in low tech business start ups, in family planning, in basic health and hygiene. We can also help with financing (loans, not hand outs), with security, etc. But it has to be at their request.

OK I still believe that a sizable portion do want it. But your parenthetical comment becomes key "with some power". There isn't a sizable portion with power. The currently largest group is also not really native. The Islamic Courts Union seems to be the most in control, but they are forcing sharia based laws on populations that don't want it, but can't do much about it. It's my understanding that the Ethopians (with some UN and US help) went in to topple this regime at the request of the people of Somalia. That to me seems to be a group that does want help. But they can't get anything sustained or don't have enough local power to bother with. I still would like to see a good way to address that.

In historical times, founding a nation usually means replacing a nation's government with another government or form of government. The only relatively non-violent example I know of is the Glorius Revolution. Most often, the process is much bloodier.

Good read. Stuff I didn't know and it appears some things that happened there had some influence on ideals that the the US founding fathers did. Interesting way to have things happen.

The problem is that the process is slow. And by that, I mean generations slow. The bulk of the world doesn't seem to be willing to let the process play itself out. Perhaps they are right, but to date their attempts to fix things have lead to worse rather than better.

That seems to be what I've noticed. But the exercise of seeing if we can learn something from all this history to help things happen in a better way doesn't seem wholly pointless to me. Individual humans aren't rapid adopters of new ideas. Most people, after they decide on something or form some belief system stick with it. That's part of why racism has taken so long to get rid of. The people that had mental pathways that said "people that don't have the same skin color as me are inferior" didn't stop believing that until they were dead.

There are medical reasons for this. Creating new neural pathways becomes harder as you get older. The mental processing does get "stuck in a rut" in a somewhat literal fashion and you have to actively work harder to not think that way. This is why I agree education and exposure is critical and most critical at the youngest ages.

This is why I think public schooling does need help and support and is valuable. Parents should be and need to be heavily involved, but even the best of us doesn't know everything. Higher exposure rate will help create more neural pathways, even if they aren't always used and re-inforced. But the research I've seen is that creation is harder than reinforcing, so if you get the connections made earlier and they can be built later.

Even if a kid is told that "people of color are inferior to you" by their parents day in and day out. If they are exposed to people of color and get to see that they aren't in fact inferior they'll have a much better chance, of making that rational switch when they have more control over their thoughts and actions than if they only got that poison but didn't get anything else.

This I can see mattering in nation building as well. If you are exposed to only monarchy or dictator ship you won't see the reasons why something else is better as easily. So yeah, propaganda and education, matter, and yeah I can understand the generations.

This is another reason why I like to have a few really radical folks around go too far. It gets your "average" or moderate some exposure and they get to thinking about the idea.

Unfortunately I'm not sure of a good way to help make education better to utilize what we do understand of brain chemistry. It's also not really being utilized well in the existing structure.

That's a very complex question. You can't blame the people individually for it, because individually, the people are too weak to change it. But you can blame the people collectively for it, because collectively they do have the power to change it. Collectively, they accept it.

See above. If no one individually even understands that you can do something different or better, then they can't know collectively either. So I guess we are back to the propaganda level again. Try and get the youth to understand that there can be change (as they are the easiest to ones to teach) and then hope that in a few years they can get something going huh? That still sucks. Living with generations of anarchy can't really be fun for the guy who really just wants to get up raise his crops (or go to work) and have a family. Can we bootstrap that process more quickly?

Besides, that is a larger question than we are dealing with here. The question here is simply, "Are the pirates at fault for their actions?" And the answer is always, "yes, provided they are sane."

I'll buy it, in as much as I'll buy that any sane person is responsible for their actions. But I do again have to say, they don't always understand the alternatives and wonder if we can let them know about that better. I honestly can see why someone would choose piracy as the best option of what they see before them. It is hard to wrap my head around because I've been exposed to so many other options. But it's not completely different from the inner city problems we face here. Those people don't always get enough exposure to the better options. Though some of them do and still choose the crappy "solution". I was so proud of Bill Cosby's outburst on that subject and his proposed solutions.

So I'm alright with killing the pirates. I'm not a fan of bloodshed, but personal responsibility is something I do believe in. So we can hold them responsible for their actions and I can live with a few death sentences being arbitrarily issued to them without giving them a trial. Especially given that I think that might be a rapid way to deliver some education. But that better be done with the delivery of additional information to these people of other things they can do to survive.

See I don't fully think this can be just boiled down to a smaller issue. Even if I admit my ignorance on several facets of it.

I think you are right, there is no way to fix these problems from the outside unless we're willing to conquer those countries, govern them for the decades necessary to build their infrastructure and educate their population and eradicate their tribal hatreds. The quick fix doesn't work. And I don't think the West is willing to take on that burden. And, probably, morally shouldn't.

Which sucks. I'd love to find a way for it to work. I'd love for humanity to evolve a little more I guess.

But we can do something about the symptoms, whether they be piracy, kidnapping, or terrorism. We can make the cost of those actions so high that no one, no matter how extreme, will support them. But do we have the stomach for it?

Sure, and I'm not completely against the idea of making that cost high and using it as an additional tool. I understand that some rights have to be trampled on to protect other rights. I agree that even if they were fully educated decisions by the pirates that they still made a choice.

I'm not sure that not blowing them means we don't have guts though. I'm not sure it's the only way. I'm pretty sure it's the fastest way though. Is it gutless if the administration tries to solve the piracy issue by stepping up education and aid and trying to capture the pirates and give them a fair trial? Personally taking the longer harder, but ultimately more beneficial route seems to take more guts than just taking the easy path.

Personally I do think that some killing mixed with other methods is probably the better short term answer. But I'm not willing to bring the connotations that saying we don't have the guts to just blow them up has to bear on the administration just yet.

And for the record I was and still am all for hunting down Bin Laden and killing him and many other members of Al-Queda, I don't think they need a trial at this point. I also think that other actions we are taking in Afghanistan now are the right thing to do. We are helping them to build from within based a lot on what they want even if we don't always like what they want. I like that the current administration has said that we are going to step things up in Pakistan and that we are first going to keep trying to work with the Pakistani government to do so but that we are willing to escalate if they won't work with us. As mentioned I don't like war, I wish we didn't need war, but I realize that humanity isn't at my ideal. I served in the US military, even if it was just the National Guard. I would not have done so if I didn't believe that war was really the best answer in this imperfect world.

I do think the war in Iraq was a big mistake though. But at least most of the execution hasn't been too bad (though there have been issues). The mess we are in now, we are stuck with for awhile. I don't like paying to keep troops over there but we can't just leave yet either. It's a crap situation and we created, we need to have the guts to fix it too.

[Bun-Bun]

The criteria are slippery.

Indeed, there is a high probability of inclusion in the wrong group, simply by Occident.

[kandrathe]

So, yes, those are "Western" ideas in terms of having Greek origins, and "Western" in the sense that they happened in Europe rather than, say, India, but the yawning historical gap between Athens and the rise of democratic rights in Europe makes it seem suspect to me.

Philosophies are yes, just ideas, that rarely get implemented, and when they do are often found to be idealistic and short lived. I probably confused things by making a statement about individual equality, which yes, are an enlightenment concept. Yet, we stand on the shoulders of many great thinkers who have brought us to where we are at today. Yes, Greeks had a distinct classes in their society, and they had a slave class. Yes, the Romans extended it, but also allowed non-Romans to become citizens of the Empire and to be ruled by laws rather than dictum's. The ideas survived for hundreds of years until aristocracies could be toppled, and governments might be controlled again by citizens. Western society has evolved to include an ever expanding definition of law, rights and freedom. Universal suffrage is an even more modern concept. This is in contrast to Somalia, which yes, is at worse Islamic, and at worst anarchic.

Somali piracy works because it achieve the goals of its financiers, earns them money, and disrupts non-Islamic nations trade.

[Jester]

Somali piracy works because it achieve the goals of its financiers, earns them money, and disrupts non-Islamic nations trade.

It also disrupts Islamic nations' trade. The pirates are, well, pirates, not Islamists. They prey on everyone they think they can make a buck from. Westerners pay ransoms, so they get high priority, but they're hardly picky about it.

Besides, Islam prohibits the consumption of alcohol. Can't rightly have Piracy without booze, now can you?

Western society has evolved to include an ever expanding definition of law, rights and freedom.

It hasn't been "ever expanding". There were a remarkable series of experiments in Athens over two millenia ago, followed by a somewhat-better mostly-worse Rome, followed by a thousand years of unfreedom. Now, sure, we've done pretty well in the last few hundred years, and the Islamic world has not. But, in the biggest of pictures going all the way back to ancient times, that's pretty recent, whereas the cultural and geographical unit of "the West" (well, Europe, really) is not recent.

-Jester

[Jester]

Indeed, there is a high probability of inclusion in the wrong group, simply by Occident.

Well, that's inevitable. The whole topic is disorienting.

-Jester