my remarks were explicitly phrased as concerning the sources of Western culture. that is perfectly consistently with the proposition that chinese and indian and african and indifenous american, etc. cultures just as 'valuable' as the west. they are just different streams feeding the contemporary postmodern hybrid global culture. i will happily include the Buddha and Lao Tzo (if he existed), for example, in the pantheon along with Socrates. And clearly the Africans who invented language itself are even more crucial for human history . . . . my remarks about what is great in Western culture are perfectrly consistent with a) the fact that evil elements such as capitalism, racism, and military-technology also existed in the West, even to the extent that on the whole, the West is possibly more a force for evil than good; and since you referred back to my critique of 'us' vs. 'them' thinking i should be clear that the 'us' referred to as the 'sane, basically moral people worldwide' includes Western as well as Eastern and Southern influences and elements; whereas the 'them' referred to the dual terrorism-syatem of Bush and Bin Laden are basically perversions of Western and Near/Middle Eastern ideas."edog, you seem to be explicitly excluding chinese and arabian culture. is that what you want to do there?"
did you mean, "can't see condoning...."? if so, i fully agree. too many self-proclaimed, violent deputies of god out there...firsty wrote:my main point is that blasphemy isnt hurting anyone, and i can see condoning an organized religion if it's going to justify these kinds of responses to the sins of other people, which will be dealt with by the god of the religion anyway.
you're right. i chose the wrong word. i meant 'violent protest', or something along that line. sorry.mnaz, i didnt think we were comparing atrocities. i thought we were comparing protests, these are organized statements of protest. if you're going to insist that a cartoon is as bad and justifies the same response as, i dont know, what? the crusades? carpet bombing? slavery?, then i dont think we're speaking the same language on this particular issue.
True. It's a sprawling, eneven, disturbing, perplexing anthology; its canon tampered with over the ages and subjected to questionable translations as well. Why were the gnostic gospels removed by Catholic church hierarchy, for example?e_dog wrote:the Bible (whichever of several versions you pick) is no more coherent than the Norton anthology of literature. you can't fault Joyce for the fact that, say, Pound sucks ass-jawbone.
It's funny how the Bible got injected into this discussion. My fault, I suppose. But while we're on the subject, I think a major key to reading the Bible is to grasp its symbolism; to distinguish metaphor from literal historic fact or prophecy to be fulfilled. I can believe in the ascension, if I allow the wisdom of Jesus to ascend into inner heaven, for example.The Bible is a window into the fate of human civilization. It's like Star Wars. Worlds end.
Impossible to argue with that, other than a note of caution about your description, "framing issues correctly", since "correctly", in this case, will always involve a degree of subjectivity, potentially in both the chosen scope of frame, and/or "lean" of the framer.firsty wrote:i'd like to believe that framing issues correctly and answering the questions is a better way to approach it than just to say it's not going to get any better until we're all dead. at least it would give us something to do until we blow ourselves up.
Makes sense to me. The perversion of Islam was apparent mere hours, if not minutes, after the towers came down, the utter failure. But the perversion of Bush's response, at least how I see it, came on more slowly, steadily, in the months to follow, where the mobilization built quietly as we continued to work hard and cowered under the mounting rhetoric-- a slow realization. Too slow. When the Iraq invasion came, I protested it. But where was I, earlier?e_dog wrote:....the 'us' referred to as the 'sane, basically moral people worldwide' includes Western as well as Eastern and Southern influences and elements; whereas the 'them' referred to the dual terrorism-syatem of Bush and Bin Laden are basically perversions of Western and Near/Middle Eastern ideas.
... not sure about this. I hesitate to 'shoot the messenger'. I'm more interested in the ones who sent the message....as for the 'zero' that someone mentioned. the problem is that i see math as a force for evil. just a way to create more effective killing machines and sophisticated forms of economic exploitation.
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