|
Phoenix magazine sneers
|
Abandon the culture of your ancestors
|
The Western world has invented something remarkable, something that might be called a universal culture of freedom, a sort of "meta-culture". Under this "culture", you can keep alive your inheritance of language, art, literature, religion - all your ancestors' beliefs - provided that it is voluntary. Under the Western model, you can choose what "culture" to follow today, and choose another one next week.
The Western model of freedom for all ideas, open debate, individualism and reason, is superior to all other models, and hopefully will be adopted by every country. It does not have to belong only to the West - it is the birthright and greatest hope of every human on the planet.
Throughout the world, the Western model is destroying traditional cultures using seduction, not force. Traditional cultures are under attack on two fronts:
"Cultural imperialism" is a term for something good, something that the world needs more of.
The lowbrow: The West's temptations.
"I Kissed a Girl" (2008)
by
Katy Perry.
Beaming heretical ideas about love and sexuality into the heads of young people in the Islamic world.
Vulgar
western advertising, sex-obsessed,
objectifying women,
spreading round the world.
Imposing itself on traditional cultures,
destroying ancient ways of life,
corrupting morals,
undermining traditional religion,
and leading youth astray from the ways of their elders.
Hurray! Let's have more of it.
The world needs more threats to traditional cultures, not less.
Traditional cultures are perhaps the
major source of violence and oppression
in the world today.
And oddly enough, those cultures that "objectify" women
give a far better life to women
than traditional cultures do.
Ad poster in Sydney, Australia.
See full size.
Image from here.
See terms of use.
My ancestors didn't invent this culture either. But I have adopted it. My ancestors were Gaelic Catholic Irish peasants. Modern scientific culture was invented by the likes of English Protestant gentlemen. I don't care. I recognise something good when I see it. What I say to the non-western world is: Abandon the culture of your ancestors, like I have, and adopt something better.
between liberal Syrian author Nidhal Na'isa
and some idiot Egyptian cleric, October 30, 2007,
contains this amusing exchange:
The West casually and arrogantly displays its vast intellectual and scientific superiority
over traditional cultures.
Above is the
moon rover
on the
Apollo 16
mission in 1972.
Ibrahim Al-Buleihi,
a rare Saudi
who actually thinks about the superiority of western culture.
Transcript:
"we don't know that we are backward. On the contrary, we treat [Western] people are if they were carpenters or blacksmiths. We treat the people who created this great and lofty civilization as if they were carpenters and blacksmiths. We view them as mere laborers, while we consider ourselves to be men of thought, science, and culture, who embody everything you aspire to in life. This is the exact opposite of how things should be.
...
The oil came from Allah, and on top of that, we need the West to extract it. If not for their industry, our oil would be worthless. It had been in this land for centuries, yet we did not benefit from it in any way. Oil became valuable only when others came up with inventions, and later came here to extract it from our land.
...
When I talk about the development of the West, some people say to me: What about Japan and China? If these countries had not emulated the West, they would not have progressed. Their progress was determined by the extent to which they borrowed from the West."
The West is not waiting for the Islamic world to invent cures to disease.
It's the other way round.
From here.
During the
coronavirus pandemic of 2020.
The West is
the least racist part of the world.
The rest of the world is more racist.
Jewish and Muslim Nobel Laureates compared.
Posted here.
Israeli and Palestinian Nobel Laureates compared.
From here.
Throughout this site I encourage people in the non-western, tribal and traditional world to abandon the culture of their ancestors, and adopt the western ideas that have proven so powerful and universal. Dump your tribal and traditional beliefs, and betray your ancestors, is my simple message.
Why is this so shocking? We have all abandoned and betrayed the culture of our ancestors. Everyone on this planet has done this. Certainly all Muslims have. It is simply a matter of choosing which ancestors to betray.
Studies of the Common ancestors of all humans show that almost all Muslims on earth descend from Jews, and almost all Jews on earth descend from Muslims. Everyone on earth, without exception, descends from people who would be horrified by the religious and political beliefs of their descendant. Everyone on earth has betrayed their ancestors. It is simply a matter of choosing which ancestors to betray.
So there should be nothing shocking in dumping your family's culture and adopting a different culture. For your family's culture is itself a betrayal of their ancestors, who would be horrified by it.
In fact, the idea that this Islamist bullshit even is
their "ancestral culture"
is questionable.
In many Islamic countries, this "culture" hardly existed a few decades ago.
From here.
"We must be aware of the superiority of our [Western] civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and - in contrast with Islamic countries - respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its value understanding of diversity and tolerance."
- Silvio Berlusconi's
simply true statement, 26 September 2001, of the superiority of Western civilization
over Islamic civilization
bizarrely caused some controversy
among "right-thinking" people, who rushed to condemn it.
But people, whatever pious hypocritical platitudes they mouth,
vote with their feet.
I note that millions of Muslims are trying to get into the West.
And almost no Westerners are trying to get into the Islamic world.
It's obvious which one is superior.
"Back then .. I was more inclined to accept the "Noble Savage" worldview, that primitive cultures were inherently superior to the horrors of Western civilization, and thus we should protect and admire non-Western societies, like exhibits in a museum.
Since that time, however, my views have evolved ... I see much more clearly now that primitive societies, with their "non-Western" values, are often oppressive and unnecessarily brutal for the people living in them. Not always, but often. Furthermore, as the globe's population grows, many formerly "quaint" ethnic cultures are growing in dimension and scope, and they no longer need protecting - they need suppression.
...
I also know too much about history and anthropology to continue the bankrupt charade that all cultures are equal
...
The accumulated Judeo-Christian/Greco-Roman/Renaissance-Enlightenment/you-name-it wisdom that Western culture has integrated over the millennia is without any question the best bet that the human race has going."
-
Zombie
on his/her evolving view of world cultures.
"I had decided I wanted to study political science.
...
I wanted to understand why life in Holland was so different from life in Africa. Why there was so much peace, security and wealth in Europe. What the causes of war were, and how you built peace.
...
Every contact I had with government, I thought,
"How do you get to have a government like this?"
...
This was an infidel country, whose way of life we Muslims were supposed to oppose and reject. Why was it, then, so much better run, better led, and made for such better lives than the places we came from? Shouldn't the places where Allah was worshipped and His laws obeyed have been at peace and wealthy, and the unbelievers' countries ignorant, poor, and at war?"
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali,
on arrival in Holland from the Islamic world.
From her book Infidel.
If only every Islamic and third world radical had such humility and willingness to learn new ideas. All their problems would be solved.
"It is always difficult to make the transition to a modern world. It was difficult for my grandmother, and for all my relatives ... It was difficult for me, too. I moved from the world of faith to the world of reason - from the world of excision
and forced marriage to the world of sexual emancipation. Having made that journey, I know that
one of those worlds is simply better than the other. Not because of its flashy gadgets, but fundamentally, because of its values. The message of this book, if it must have a message, is that we in the West would be wrong to prolong the pain of that transition unnecessarily, by elevating cultures full of bigotry and hatred toward women to the stature of respectable alternative ways of life."
- Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Return to What is wrong with the Islamic world?
