Yulaw has reported a post.
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Again, by your rules, what part of calling an entire group racist is respectful
Post: Libya uprising
Forum: Our Community - the Off Topic Forum
Assigned Moderators: N/A
Posted by: Nietzsche
Original Content:
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;55047]It is true Neitzsche, the West does indeed teach that it invented democracy, philosophy, science, art, technology or basically all that is good. When I was studying world philosophy this is exactly what we were taught. The East were portrayed as authorarian, superstitious and mystical and non-progressive. In contrast the West were portrayed as democratic, rational and progressive. The limit of tolerance of this racist education broke for me towards the end when it was said that the love for truth is a Western thing, and all other cultures and philosophies can survive by following the Western way.
I was considered a huge threat in my class because I had strong knowledge on both traditions, particularly Indian philosophy. So I could spot the BS easily. So let us break the myths:
The West invented democracy: The invention of democracy is traced to the Greeks, but the facts are most Greek states were not democratic but authoratarian. It was Athens that shifted to democracy and it implemented democracy with the party system - elect your government every so often. This did not stay for long, it was quickly replaced by the authorarian Roman empire and then later the feudal system where aristocrats saw it as their birth right to rule, while everybody was a peasent that slaved for them.
Democracy is a much older tradition in India, but was not implemented as a party system. The first kingdoms of India were all republics. Each kingdom was divided into hundreds of villages and each village was self-sufficient and had a village panchayat, a government set up by the people. Every week people would convene at the panchayat meeting to discuss the affairs of the village and the matters would be resolved through discussion, debate and voting by the village. In addition to this there was a central government(a monarchy) of the kingdom which had to liase with the panchayats of the village.
The West invented rationality: The invention of rationality is traced to the Greeks, beginning with the presocratic philosophers and coming of age with post socratic. There were pythogeans, epicurians, stoics, platonists, atomists, artistotlians. But this not a healthy cuture of philosophy because bear in mind Socrates got killed. It did not last very long either, again because the Roman empire took over and later declared philosophy, “a pagan activity” and all free thinking was silenced.
Rationality is a much older tradition in India. The earliest schools of rationality was Vedanta the study of the Upanishads. The Upanishads contained several logical arguments to prove its assertions. The Mahabharata mentions the science of logic, and this is very clear from reading the Mahabharata and the Gita which is part of it, that everybody speaks very logically. The classic Indian logic is: provide empirical evidence, draw inference from the empirical evidence, provide several examples to establish your case. Later, the six darsanas arose which were all logical and dealt with different subjects: linguistics, epistemology, metaphysics, physics, psychology and logic. A culture of rigorous formal debate arose between the darsanas and the heterodox schools materialism, buddhism, jainism. The standards of how precise your arguments had to be were hairsplitting.
The West invented technology: Again, traced to the Greeks and the myth of prometheus. The West were actually very behind in more important industrial technology. They did not know how to manfacture steel, zinc, medicines, hospitals, textiles, mass sanitation and plumbing systems until the late medieval ages. Nobody understand the importance of bathing until after the black death(King Louis only bathed a few times in his life) and Europe was an open sewer. Steel and zinc were not manufactured until the secrets were learned from the Indians in the 18th century. Similarily textiles were not manufactured until they adopted the cotton gin and other textile machinary from India. Medicine had not properly formed until the 19th century and many diseases were not recognised.
It is saddening that the West is inculcated with such garbage to the point where Westerners call those who condemn THEIR racism, racist![/quote]