Boundaries of Western Civilization?

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BlueKumul

BlueKumul

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Do you think Orthodox Slavic countries and South America are a part of Western Civilization?

For the Orthodox Slavs (Russia/Ukraine/Belarus), they are white, speak an Indo-European language and are Christian.
Moscow even styled itself as “Third Rome”. Sounds Western. Russian literature and music is definitely a part of the Western heritage.
The non-Western aspect would be their non-democratic political culture, but this was a thing in Germany before 1945 as well, and in France before the Revolution. So I’m inclined to regard them as a part of Western Civilization.

South America is more complicated. The prevalence of Spanish and Roman Catholicism is as Western as you can get.
But there are parts of the continent where non-Western culture predominates, voodoo in Cuba or the worship of Pachamama in the Andes. And native languages are still in use in parts of the continent. So I would consider Argentina a completely Western country, but not Cuba, Venezuela or Guatemala. They form their own civilizations.

What’s your opinion?
 
I cannot speak on behalf of others, but I am not at all sure that Slavic and Russian friends want to be considered Western, even in the sense of Western civilization.
 
White? What is being white got to do with a question about ‘civilisation’?
 
Are the the US or Canada completely western by your terms? Canadian First Nations and US Native Americans aren’t Western.

Colonialism has affected every country on earth to some degree or other, I’m not sure you can give a specific cultural boundary.
 
BlueKumul said:
they are white,
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Missed this little gem on the first pass. Is Jamaica western? It’s not majority white but HM Queen Elizabeth II is head of state, and she’s western (and white, for what ever that has do with anything).
 
BlueKumul said:
voodoo in Cuba or the worship of Pachamama in the Andes.
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Voodoo or santeria or whatever the name is in other countries was a Western import. The British, Spanish, and Portuguese slave traders brought it across the Atlantic on their ships.

As for Pachamama, hardly anyone in South America had even heard the name until the television networks showed them last year’s worship ceremonies staged by the Holy See.
 
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I think the only 100% white country in the world is Iceland, but being majority white is enough to be called a Western country.

Slavs… do they more common with France, Germany and Britain, or with India and China? By cold war era criterions, they were not western because they were under commie rule. But now communism is gone. They are more committed to Christianity than West Europe or Canada.
 
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More of an African import. They even use Nigerian names for their deities.

Pachamama is definitely known. Belief in Pachamama features prominently in the Peruvian national narrative. Former President Alejandro Toledo held a symbolic inauguration on 28 July 2001 atop Machu Picchu. The ceremony featured a Quechua religious elder giving an offering to Pachamama [from Wikipedia]
 
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As I asked myself this question, I went full weird with my answer, but here we go. Western civilization doesn’t exist. We invented it as a way to slighty but not too narrowly focus the study of history and historical developments. There are no true boundaries of western civilization because there is no true West. We live on a spherish planet where you can always go further West.
 
BlueKumul said:
They even use Nigerian names for their deities.
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Yes. More specifically, the language is Yoruba.
BlueKumul said:
Former President Alejandro Toledo held a symbolic inauguration on 28 July 2001 atop Machu Picchu.
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Peruvians are only a small proportion of South Americans, not as much as ten percent. Was President Toledo’s ceremony at Macchu Picchu seen as a newsworthy event, at the time, in Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela? How prominently did it feature in their television news programs that night, compared with the same networks’ coverage of the Amazon Synod last October in the Vatican?
 
BlueKumul said:
Do you think Orthodox Slavic countries and South America are a part of Western Civilization?
… I’m inclined to regard them as a part of Western Civilization.
…
So I would consider Argentina a completely Western country, but not Cuba, Venezuela or Guatemala. They form their own civilizations.

What’s your opinion?
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Every place that colonization occurred from Europe there is predominately western civilization in the larger cities, but not necessarily everywhere in the countryside.

western adjective
2 living in or originating from the West, in particular Europe or the United States.
“Western society”
(Oxford)
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western civilization, n (Synonym: western culture)
1 the modern culture of western Europe and North America
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culture, n
1 all the knowledge and values shared by a society
(Vocabulary.com)
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Europe
A continent in the northern hemisphere, separated from Africa on the south by the Mediterranean Sea and from Asia on the east roughly by the Bosporus, the Caucasus Mountains, and the Ural Mountains.
(Lexico)
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The thirteen slavic countries are in Europe at least partly:
Czech Republic (Orthodox minority)
Slovakia (Orthodox minority)
Poland (Orthodox minority)
Slovenia (Orthodox minority)
Croatia (Orthodox minority)
Bosnia-Herzegovina (Orthodox minority)
Belarus
Ukraine
Russia
Serbia
Montenegro
Bulgaria
North Macedonia
 
BlueKumul said:
Do you think Orthodox Slavic countries and South America are a part of Western Civilization?

For the Orthodox Slavs (Russia/Ukraine/Belarus), they are white, speak an Indo-European language and are Christian.
Moscow even styled itself as “Third Rome”. Sounds Western. Russian literature and music is definitely a part of the Western heritage.
The non-Western aspect would be their non-democratic political culture, but this was a thing in Germany before 1945 as well, and in France before the Revolution. So I’m inclined to regard them as a part of Western Civilization.

South America is more complicated. The prevalence of Spanish and Roman Catholicism is as Western as you can get.
But there are parts of the continent where non-Western culture predominates, voodoo in Cuba or the worship of Pachamama in the Andes. And native languages are still in use in parts of the continent. So I would consider Argentina a completely Western country, but not Cuba, Venezuela or Guatemala. They form their own civilizations.

What’s your opinion?
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Like any other broad label, it of course boils down to personal interpretation. Even within staple Western countries, there is a growth of neopaganism or an importation of Islamic culture, Asian Indian culture, etc., so staple Western countries aren’t necessarily altogether Western.

Academics often don’t use those kind of terms anymore.

Peace.
 
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In as much as those regions share a European heritage and common cultural characteristics and values, I would say yes.
 
BlueKumul said:
I think the only 100% white country in the world is Iceland, but being majority white is enough to be called a Western country.
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I don’t know why everyone keeps going on about ‘white’. But as a matter of fact, DNZ has established the certain descent of a huge percentage of the people of Iceland from an indigenous North Emerican, presumably returned with Leif Erikson.
 
Russians/Slavs are a strange hybrid of East and west. Not truly either.
 
In general, I would reiterate what I posted on your other thread on a similar topic:
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Protestant vs Orthodox - who's closer? Non-Catholic Religions
He is almost certainly referring to a theory proposed by Samuel P. Huntington in The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). You have to understand that Huntington was concerned with the field of international relations, not with theology. Huntington proposes that Europe is divided between two civilisations, western civilisation and Orthodox civilisation. He argues that western civilisation is coterminous with what was once western Christendom,…
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I would also echo those who say that being white is not really an aspect of western civilisation. In fact, if you go back to the origins of western civilisation in classical antiquity, the concept of race is quite alien to those cultures and is largely irrelevant to our study of them.
 
India was colonised from Britain, and is by no means a Western nation. It might have to do with high level of development before colonisation. Jamaica might be Western to some extent, but Rastafarianism is explicitly anti-Western, calls the West “Babylon”, and sees Ethiopia (certainly not a Western nation) as abode of true Christianity.

Yes, I shouldn’t have mentioned the concept of race at all. It is relevant only when people see it as relevant. For example Rastafarians or Mexicans who support “La Raza” definitely see it as relevant, and despise White people. On the other hand, Jews don’t. Pale Jews from Belarus and swarthy Jews from Ethiopia see each other as fellow Jews and nothing more.
 
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People like Alexei Navalny are definitely Westerners with their concern for democracy, and Putin or Lukashenko are just barbarians. I’m not sure where is the oriental component in Russian culture. National minorities like the Chechens are oriental, but they don’t see themselves as Russians at all.
 
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Democracy isn’t necessarily western. It’s only be in vogue for a few hundred years. That’s nothing in the grand scheme of history.
 
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