not really sure what you're talking about dilbert - you didn't read my post, that's for sure (unsurprisingly).
i never said academics or old poems have created our modern civilization, though they have defined our modern western culture. nor did i ever say that what africa needs are more poems or academics in order to solve its civil and structural issues. my point about greek and roman civilizations 'surviving' and 'having much to show' today is that
that is all down to academics and high-cultural institutions preserving this sense of history, antiquity, and tradition. the hellenic 'golden age' is a romanticist german academic construction; it's a western reviewing and reordering of our own history that gives us our modern notions of western/european 'identity' and 'civic purpose'. that's all i said. no idea what your absurd counter-argument was about. great superpowers like america started out as ideas - they are idealistic projects - and those ideas were derived from a renewed (largely academic) interest in classical civilization and the ancient history of the romans and greeks. it's not for nothing that the american mythos is full of ancient roman signs, symbols, and phrases. it's a conscious re-creation or emulation based on the existing impression of the culture that we have... derived from academic scholarship and research, of course. if you're talking about infrastructure and surviving artefacts... pretty hilarious to suggest we in the west are the only ones to ever build roads or big buildings. there are plenty of ruins from other civilizations, you moron.
the fact is you're trying to claim some racial-phenotype for 'intelligence', or some biological and inherent genotype crudely relating to area of origin. that doesn't make any sense, nor is it supported by ANY scientific or positivistic basis. it's all your bias, in short. to defend this you say "where are they now?", but this is historically blinkered to the point of blindness. we have only significantly pulled ahead of africa and the middle-east (which is arguable in-itself) in the last 400 years or so. this is a tiny timeframe even in the history of human civilization, let alone to support your ridiculous 'biological-evolutionary' hypothesis. is it true that capitalism and the technology that it fostered and helped to develop and accelerate has created the greatest leap forward in human history? quite possibly, yes. but this doesn't mean we are at the logical endpoint, 'perfection', 'superior'. african and middle-eastern civilizations in the past enjoyed their own glory days for many more centuries. in fact, it is plausible that capitalism and this current 'phase' of human civilization could end or experience major crisis in the next 100 or 250 years. in the wide-angle shot of history, that would mean that this capitalist-technological phase of human civilization actually lasted for less time than many great african and arabic civilizations from the middle-ages. in fact, this weakness inherent in our current system and its associated paradigmatic flaws is underscored exactly by many dominant discourses today: global warming, population concerns, nuclear war, etc. just because we have pulled ahead for a mere 4-5 centuries (and managed to exploit non-western civilizations very effectively to further this purpose), it does not mean we are immune to criticism or collapse... and we are far from fucking being able to declare our
biological advantage. this is nuts. you are arguing for a darwinist/evolutionary type of superiority based on the material gains and developments of 400 years. how can you even entertain this idea as a STEM graduate? oh yeah, that's right, you're also a racist bonehead.
the essential fallacy of your argument is that you view history as squashed-flat, linear, and diachronous. your conception of history is univocal - there is only 'one' history and only 'one' time, and that is measured by the current western successes today, in the era of global capitalism. this is extremely dumb. with your standard of measurement, everything must measure up to the standards of western society today, with no consideration for the shifting sands of time, contigency, temporary leaps and collapses etc. in the background. by measuring every other culture and civilization to our 'benchmark' now, you are making an erroneous assumption, in that all civilizations develop and share the same timeline. they do not. it is better to consider every civilization each as its own respective history, as part of a polyvocal and specific whole, not a flattened general-universal 'rule', established by your white-western perspective. 250, 300, 500 years... this is nothing. you are expecting every society to have got on board with industrial revolution and technological innovation in the space of - what? - 200 years? so the europeans got there first 2 centuries ago, you expect the other societies to organically reach this point post-haste? your thinking is absurd. 1,000 years is nothing in the history of civilization. apart from our new technology, our ideals and culture and social values are essentially the same as they were 2,000 years ago. to declare other societies 'backwards' or 'biologically inferior' because of a (largely technological) gap that has opened in the space of several generations... belies only your racist bigotry and dumb arrogance.
Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-10-23 10:22:50)
