#32 Verlaine - Glad to hear you made it and, apparently, doing okay. Stay safe, bro, and thanks for the encouragement, lol!
HV - instead of a direct answer, how about this...
And who fucking cares what "murat" - no matter who's playing the role today, has to say. He / They don't get it, so fuck 'em.
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I'm just winging it, here, and whacking it out. Be gentle with me, heh heh.
I saw pretty clearly that there was a fundamental difference between what I knew of Western societies and what I was experiencing in Saudi Arabia in 1992. I played with how it could be best described and also tried to add in the generic Asian social model and the Marxist BS. I came up with only Guilt vs Blame vs Face vs Collective as descriptors - no deep underlying theory. I spent my time working and sleeping, mainly, with little time for recording philosophical musings. So that's where it sat for a decade.
Then I ran across this Sharkansky Blog entry via LGF which was a quick translation of an article in Die Zeit - and the author Mordechay Lewy had put it into words better than I had managed in my mere musings. At the time it was published, I was back in Saudi again, though I was preparing to end my second tour (3 yrs that time) and get out permanently.
The article, assuming the translation is clean, does a damned good job of explaining why the Guilt society progresses, changes, improves the behaviors of its individuals... and why the Blame society is stagnant, cast in amber - a Darwinian Box Canyon. If I took the time I could pick out the bits and pieces with which I disagree - but they're minor and actually more the quibbles of an atheist who knows the discussion could easily be couched sans the religious references - it's simple Darwinism in the end: successful strategies survive because they evolve and progress, failed strategies die out - for a myriad collection of reasons.
It used to be a big planet. It took a long time for the technologies to mature which allow for true global conflict to be decisively ended. And, at long last, a champion with the wherewithal to back up its assertions has come along. America. It is the first nation to stand for the progressive liberal society sans the imperialism. It is the current Darwinistic result of Western philosophy. It's not perfect, of course, but it succeeds for precisely those reasons that it is hated by the other Western / modern societies. It allows for diversity of thought, opinion, religion, ideology, and heavily promotes individualism. It evolves - rapidly. Its prime directive is to beg, borrow, steal or, better yet, invent the best good ideas available and meld them into a successful ongoing changing model. It is aggressive in the idea market. It has evolved in tandem with the lethality of weapons - a unique survival strategy. Once, it was isolated and could afford to be isolationist at heart. Technology, much of its own invention, has changed that - so it has evolved its success / survival strategies accordingly. There are fools who fail to grasp the fact that we must synch policy and action with technology. They would love to go back and hug isolationist trees or pretend that we should all kick back and enjoy espressos on the Left Bank and all will be well. They're morons. When they are in control of our government, we are vulnerable and blind. Those who see the connection also see the problem looming: the planet has become dramatically "smaller" due to the technology and there will be no more "glancing blows" when the competing societal models clash. One will begin to die and the other will continue to grow.
I have been rather ostracized for it (quick summary: "fry 'em up"), but I believe that the Islamic flavor of the Blame model, which has been sustained by its uber-aggressive accompanying religio-socio-political ideology, has run its course (soon to die, per Darwinian Laws) by running headlong into the brick wall of the American flavor of the Guilt model: a hardcore scientifically and technologically based Jacksonian / Jeffersonian / Wilsonian version of the Guilt model. It's Them or Us. I pick Us.
Next up, the Collective model. More Science HS vs Golden Dragon HS (the last surviving Collective model of significance).
Well, that's the "quick" and dirty view from Sin City. It took me almost exactly an hour to type this out. I know I'll regret doing it as I'll be sniped for a statement here or there without the whole picture being kept in frame and the fact that it was a quickie. But hell, it's RB. Let the games begin. |
Turkey warned yesterday that it could take action if Kurdish attempts to take control of Kirkuk in northern Iraq plunges the oil-rich city into ethnic turmoil while a top US envoy sought to ease Ankara's security concerns. In comments published in a newspaper interview, Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul renewed concerns that more Kurds than those expelled under Saddam Hussein's rule had settled in Kirkuk, altering the demographic structure of the city which is also home to large numbers of Turkmens, a community of Turkish descent backed by Ankara. "We are observing that the situation has reached dangerous proportions," Gul told the English-language Turkish Daily News newspaper. "Now our fear is the possibility that these gross changes in the demography of Kirkuk could trigger an ethnic confrontation, which has not been seen so far." "If our brothers (Turkmens) are not treated well, if they are subjected to oppression, such developments will hurt us deeply, and in a democratic society administrations cannot remain indifferent, or merely spectators, to such developments," Gul said.