Non-Western Worldview

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Agnimitra
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Agnimitra »

ramana wrote:Can we follow up the CCBP path here?
ramana ji, the mainstream educational and political discourse in Western societies is shaped by the idea that they are descended from Greco-Roman 'ancestry'. Of course, many of them acknowledge that racially, Anatolians, Syrians and Iranians are closer to Greeks and Romans than most Europeans (esp. N. and W. Euros) are today. But then, what they mean by 'descent' or 'heritage' is not as a Protoplasmic Entity but as a Genetic Entity in terms of mainly cultural conditioning, and also some bloodline. So in this sense, all Westerners acknowledge this Greco-Roman heritage as primary.

But they also acknowledge another Genetic Entity as the other parent - the Judeo-Christian heritage. In this second parent, they subsume an ancient Babylonian and perhaps Egyptian contribution. There is even constant speculation on the racial origin of Abraham, since he wasn't Jewish by some accounts. He must have been a "white middle easterner", they say. The definition of 'white'/'Aryan' can be stretched as and when convenient, to include the Meditterrannean races, or the Zoroastrian Magi, or even as far as the obliging South Indian Brahmin. So apart from the mainstream educational discourse, if one goes into the cultural and religious discourse, and even into the 'occult' discourse in the West, one sees it going further east.

However, even here there is some acknowledgment that India (and perhaps Egypt) were incidental influences on this Genetic Entity. The main axis of this Genetic Entity were the cultures that created great empires and mastered social control, built impregnable muscle, and became a force for civilizing the world. In this sense, no civilization on Earth can boast the political continuity (not cultural continuity) that China historically has. That continuity of the political image - despite invasions and takeovers - the continuity of China as 'China', is an important component of the Western aspiration.

In the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean epoch, the art of manipulating populations via the nexus of religious priestcraft and science was taken to a very high degree. Chaldea is supposed to be the original homeland of Abraham. In the temples of Babylon, devices to observe and predict celestial events like eclipses have been unearthed - but these were guarded from the population and manipulated by priests and politicians. For example, people were made to fear these occurrences, and cough up extra tithing on such an occasion, as well as keep them in awe of the priestly class that could predict such events. Thus, a nexus of religion, science and politics is seen here. In many ways it was pursuit of power via force, lies and manipulation, but in other ways it was supposed to be good. E.g., it advanced science because of its benefit for social control and increasing the power and prestige of the aristocracy. Its similar to the argument that war, MIC and constant colonial expeditions were good for the progress of science and R&D. The Chaldeans merged with the Assyrians and had raided Egypt several times.

In the Persian epoch, both, the idea of imperium and also religious consolidation was included, but to that was added a multicultural dispensation that allowed other priesthoods to be protected and sometimes flourish within the overarching imperium. So this was a multi-priesthood level of organization. It also produced a more modern charter of human rights, and the drum of Cyrus is showcased by the UN. The combination of these soft-power incentives and the relentless hard power development produced massive expansion, creating the largest contiguous land empire in history. Nevertheless, the commanding heights of political power was still retained by the proverbial "7 bloodlines/families".

The Persian and general ME has also always had a line to China. They also always had a line to India. But noticeably, they seem to have admired China in a different way from India. Perhaps the tribal and totalitarian memes of China are much closer to their own culture. I am not clear about the China-ME link in ancient times. Even in the IV civilization we find seals and artifacts with East Asian features. So there was commercial and other intercourse.

From Persia the Greeks mainly absorbed many of these combined memes. Alexander's ambition was to be like Darius of Persia, whom he admired via enmity. After the Sassanid comeback, the Zoroastrian priesthood-ruler nexus became even more like an organized religion, conservative, intolerant and irredentist. Constantine's Christianization might have been a counter measure. In this way, Greco-Roman civilization absorbed many of the memes from the Middle East via enmity, i.e., othering-and-emulation. It is the same dynamic that Christophe Jaffrelot wrongly or rightly thinks the present-day 'Hindutva' dynamic is based on. It is also noteworthy that in the case of Islam, their link to this Genetic Entity was similar to the West - emulation via enmity with Persia, and by identification with Judaic and even Greco-Roman memes.
svinayak
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by svinayak »

Greco-Roman civilization absorbed many of the memes from the Middle East via enmity, i.e., othering-and-emulation

They have done the same thing from China and India in the last 100 years.
From India they have done the othering on Vedanta, Science ,multiculturism, human rights, logic and reason
Rony
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Rony »

Agnimitra wrote: In this sense, no civilization on Earth can boast the political continuity (not cultural continuity) that China historically has. That continuity of the political image - despite invasions and takeovers - the continuity of China as 'China'..
This is a myth created by the Chinese historians right from the days of Sima Qian which the Western translators internalized and propagated. In India's case, the Indians never had "their" historians telling their story.So the Western historians interpreted it and the Indians internalized western propaganda. The Chinese never had a concept of "China'. They only had a concept of dynasty. The dynasty IS 'China' for them and the political boundaries of the dynasty are the political boundaries of "China".So they have many "China's" during same period ( the warring states period or three kingdom's period or qin/eastern jin period, northern wie/liu song period, jin/song period etc. China has a political continuity ONLY if one considers China as just the yellow/yangtze river valleys. By the same token, India too would have political continuity, if one considers India as just the Gangetic plain.
Agnimitra
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Agnimitra »

Rony ji, that's interesting. I guess I need to better understand what they mean by political continuity. I don't think they mean boundaries.
Klaus
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Klaus »

Rony wrote:The Chinese never had a concept of "China'. They only had a concept of dynasty. The dynasty IS 'China' for them and the political boundaries of the dynasty are the political boundaries of "China".
It is this lack of a concept which modern-Chinese are in denial about and want to push and project it as specifically applicable to the Indian case. They see India as the 'dynasty' and vice versa, while they have successfully avoided the equal-equal with themselves.

Need to reverse the gaze and up the ante on the Chinese in this aspect.
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Manny wrote:Its common nonsense to say that western civilization is the same as christianity or christian culture... Christianity is from the middle east... many are unable to distinguish between western civilization's contribution of philosophies of John Locke, Thomas Paine et all, all the way back Aristotle and Plato (the Greeks) vs the middle eastern culture of Christianity. Remember the christians who burned down the Egyptian library of Alexandria... they were like the Pol Pot of those days who went after any educated people... It was mob rule. The uneducated and the peasants wanted equality with the smart people. You can read about it in Nietchie's "Anti Christ".

The Western civilization survived in spite of christianity. Not because of it. The catholic Vatican hunted and persecuted thinkers and people of science.

They were using the Roman I, II, III, IV system. How far in science could they have gone with that? It was the Hindu's contribution of numerals ...1...9 and the ingenious Zero (nothing//Null) that contributed and helped the west to prosper in science.

Even the US, the founders had to keep christianity at bay to build a nation on the idea of liberty and equality of John Locke, Thomas Paine. Not Christianity.

and
ShauryaT wrote:
Manny wrote: The Western civilization survived in spite of christianity. Not because of it. The catholic Vatican hunted and persecuted thinkers and people of science.
This is a good point. There is a constant debate in western academia on this topic with an increasing consensus that the roots are indeed in Greek thoughts. More so, even the vatican was forced to acknowledge the power of Greek thought amongst its peoples and make room for enough artifacts amongst its ill gotten wealth, stored in the smallest country of the world. I was surprised to learn about this aspect. There is some evidence to indicate that these Greeks were aware of Indian ways. To what degree, did our ways influence them is a matter of debate.
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Agnimitra,
Western Civilization is Christian civilization. It had a pre-Christian phase called Greco-Roman (though the Greek phase was a brief flash so to speak in the long period). It is now in post Church phase with the mask of secularism which codified most of the Church practices into law and hence can retreat for the time being.

In future it might make a comeback with the US leading the believers. You cant be new Rome without your own Church.

So the reason the West appeals is due to its underlaying religious layer and not any liberal underpinnings.

Abraham-Yahweh believers (Near East interlude-Chaldea etc.)->Moses-Judaism(Egyptian interlude)->Darius- Modern Judaism(Persian Interlude)->Jesus/Peter-Christianism (Greco-Roman interlude)->Paul/Romans-Christianity (Roman control)->Rome-Christian Western Europe->Secularism-Modernity.

Modernity-> Communism

Modernism will also lead to the christianity without the Church. Note the lack of capitalization.

The Eastern Europeans came from the Roman Church split on iconography which in turn was a result of Peter's brother Andrew or Andreas going to Greece to develop the Orthodox Church.


"End of history" is the defeat of Communism in Former Soviet Union as an alternative to Modernism. So what prevails is Modernism.


Need to study this subject as political doctrine instead of a religion.
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Connected to my above posts....


Spartacus

Author: Aldo Schiavone

Publisher: Harvard University Press, $19.95

The book by Aldo Schiavone, a noted Italian historian, places Spartacus and the slave revolt he led in the context of the prevalent agrarian economy and political thinking of the early Roman Empire, writes Gautam Mukherjee

Real people who become legendary do end up living forever. Spartacus, who led a revolt of gladiators and slaves against the might of Rome in the first century BCE, is one such. Several movies have been made on him over the years. And most recently, a rip-roaring sword and sandals TV series that ran into three highly popular seasons. And this latter, though highly commercialised, did cover the historical ground quite diligently, as this book by Aldo Schiavone reveals.

Spartacus by Aldo Schiavone, a noted Italian historian, places the man and the slave revolt he led in the context of the economy and political thinking of the early Roman Empire. It was an economy, largely agrarian, skewed to serve a patrician elite, and some Roman plebians, that would not have been sustainable without slave labour.

The free men, the Romans, patricians and plebians alike, had to be mainly soldiers, invested with the duty to conquer, expand, consolidate and sustain the Roman Empire. They were few, the slaves were many, hence the need for an iron fist. And so, the revolts, not just of Spartacus and his followers, but several other eruptions unconnected with his, were a threat to the very existence of Rome.

But fortunately for the Romans, almost all the revolts had no game plan beyond the first flush of rebellion. In Spartacus’s case, he had some experience of governance as he was once a Thracian mercenary and then a Roman soldier before being sold into slavery and becoming a gladiator at Capua.

Because of his Roman military training and his natural gifts as a strategist and tactician, Spartacus managed to keep his variegated flock together and focussed for much longer than usual. But his followers, even those with gladiatorial experience, were not much good for essential unity or administration. They were also disparate in origin, with differing personal aspirations on what to do with their hard won freedom.

Nevertheless, Spartacus and his band of rebels won a number of military victories in the early stages when Rome did not take his insurrection very seriously. But eventually, Rome sent its richest man Crassus, with 50,000 battle-hardened Roman soldiers after them. The Roman Senate also directed Pompey, returning from a victorious campaign in Etruria, to help Crassus. The end of the slave revolt thereafter, was inevitable.

The Romans were disciplined, organised and motivated to defend their republic and way of life. This, along with an attitude and belief in arch-militarism as the route to power, glory and riches, animated their worldview. So conquest, plunder and dominion were an economic necessity. But consolidation and viability thereafter necessitated the acquisition of defeated peoples as slaves. Slaves, to be put to work for the sustenance of Rome.

Today it may seem that Spartacus and others of his ilk were early martyrs to the ideal of democracy, equality, liberty, natural justice and so forth, but in imperialist Roman times, revolting slaves were subversives to be captured and killed. But the slaves who revolted were themselves not very clear as to what they wanted to do with their freedom. They had no ideology or bigger purpose. They did not want to form their own independent country. This divisiveness among slaves always worked to the benefit of the enslaving order.

The slave labour-based economic model, not just in Rome but throughout the various European empires that followed it, and even in slave-keeping America, believed that slaves were property much more than they were human beings, which was an incidental in that entire scheme of things. And the fact that as an “unfair” way to organise society, it persisted for so many centuries under diverse stewardship, only goes to show how times have changed. The major difference today is, of course, the effect of an industrial age that ended up empowering labour of both genders. And the technological revolution, the mechanisation that grew alongside, democratised and gave a modicum of dignity to the labouring classes.

Back in the lifetime of Spartacus though, he walked along the fault lines of both the individual aspiration cruelly suppressed, and the tensions caused by an expansionist military empire. The last element of that evolutionary system was the limitations of a republic. As it was constructed then, it was ideal for a city state, where the people could all assemble in the city square, but not an empire stretching over vast geographies and peoples.

The attempt to run things better as the time went on, took the shape of a dictatorial triumvirate soon after Spartacus’s death; then a Caesar all powerful; and later, a far flung autocracy.


And this shared imperial power, under an Emperor, a Caesar, with his largely advisory Senate, did keep the Roman Empire going for centuries. When it ended in the West at Rome, it lived on in the East from Constantinople for several centuries more before finally giving way to the Ottomans.

devesh
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by devesh »

incidentally, 2 members of the "Triumvirate" that played a role in crushing Spartacus' rebellion, all suffered ignominious ends.
the 3rd one went the same way eventually.

Crassus beheaded and paraded on a donkey posthumously in Persia.
Pompey hounded like a dog by Caesar and ultimately beheaded by some nameless Egyptian.
Julius, the all powerful conqueror, stabbed to death by civilian senators of all things.
member_19686
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_19686 »

Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: The Case of Japan (Richard L. Rubenstein)

Few, if any, developments in the postwar era possess as great a significance as the rise of Japan. Normally, Japan’s rise is discussed in economic or political terms. Its religious significance, especially for a nation such as the United States whose cultural inheritance is so deeply rooted in biblical religion, is seldom discussed, much less understood. Japan is the world’s most successful nation with non-Christian roots. Even the Soviet Union has Christian roots. Marxist atheism is grounded in the very biblical tradition that Marxism negates. Moreover, the apparent conflict between the Western proponents of a biblically grounded attitude and a secular ethic takes on the appearance of a family quarrel when seen against the horizon of Japanese religion and culture. Far from being the antithesis of biblical region, the secular spirit that pervades so much of Western life is its unintended consequence. Wherever the biblical faith in a unique, exclusive, extramundane God penetrated, it was utterly destructive of indigenous gods and traditions. Sooner or later this polemical, desacralizing faith was bound to give birth to a consciousness that would not rest until all the gods without exception were dethroned. Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that a civilization as determined to preserve its own integrity as that Japan should marshal all its forces to resist both the believing and the secular manifestations of biblical religion.

The Japanese have created a thoroughly modern, highly technological, capitalist civilization whose religious foundations rest upon animistic and polytheistic traditions that adherents of the biblical regions normally assume to be discredited, primitive, and idolatrous–a remnant of a far earlier stage of religious “evolution.” From the Japanese perspective, such views are, of course, utterly without substance...

Modernization and Tradition

That thoughtful Japanese leaders of the Meiji era were concerned lest too great a reliance on Western ways lead to the destruction of the value of filial piety is evident in the “Imperial Rescript: the Great Principles of Education, 1879,” written by Motoda Eifu, the Confucian lecturer to the emperor. The rescript reads in part:

Although we set out to take in the best features of the West and bring in new things in order to achieve the high aims of the Meiji Restoration . . . this procedure had a serious defect: it reduced benevolence, justice, loyalty, and filial piety to a secondary position. The danger of indiscriminate emulation of Western ways is that in the end our people will forget the great principles governing the relations between ruler and subject, and father and son. Our aim, based on our ancestral teachings, is solely the clarification of benevolence, justice, loyalty, and filial piety.

Men like Motoda saw the need for modernization. Nevertheless, they also understood one of the principal dangers of Western-style modernization–destruction of the historic continuity of Japanese civilization–and this the leaders of Japan were determined to resist.
The Imperial Rescript on Education of 1890 gives expression to the determination of Japan’s leaders to preserve the historic continuity of Japanese civilization and its values at a time of the most revolutionary socioeconomic transformations in all of Japanese history. Few, if any other documents are as instructive in exhibiting the contrast between the Japanese and Western responses to modernization. Whereas the West initiated modernization with a rejection of the highest religious and political authorities, not excluding regicide, and tended to equate modernization with secularization, Japan undertook modernization under the authority of its supreme religio-political authority and in defense of the values of its traditional civilization. The document reads in part:

Know ye, our Subjects!
Our Imperial ancestors have founded our empire on a basis broad and everlasting and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; our subject, ever united in loyalty and filial piety, have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the fundamental character of our empire, and herein also lies the source of our education. Ye, our subjects, be filial to your parents, . . . pursue learning and cultivate arts, and thereby develop your moral powers; furthermore, advance the public good and promote common interests; always respect the constitution and observe the laws; should any emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the state; and thus guard and maintain the prosperity of our imperial throne, coeval with heaven and earth. (Italics added)

The religious traditions fostering modernization in Japan and the West can thus be seen as polar opposites. Where one is Jewish, Christian, or Moslem, it is impossible to worship the God of Abraham without rejecting the gods of one’s earliest ancestors. When Joshua assembled the Israelite tribes at Shechem to swear fealty to the lord, he reminded them: “Long ago your forefathers Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor lived beside the Euphrates and they worshipped other gods” (Johua 24:2). In order to worship the God of the Bible, somewhere in history a drastic uprooting process had to have taken place. The old pagan gods had to be forsworn and the ways of one’s oldest ancestors abandoned. This was as true of Moslems and Christians as it was of Jews. Here again, Catholicism sometime mitigated the harshness of the process by identifying local deities with Christian saints. Not surprisingly the young Hegel, although Lutheran by tradition, expressed his bitterness at this alienation from his own archaic religious inheritance:

Every nation has its own imagery, its gods, angels, devils or saints who will live on in the nation’s traditions . . .
Christianity has emptied Valhalla, felled the sacred groves, extirpated the national imagery as a shameful superstition, as a devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation whose climate, laws, culture, and interests are strange to us an whose history has no connection whatever with our own. A David or a Solomon lives in our popular imagination, but our country’s own heroes slumber in learned history books . . . . Thus we are without any religious imagery which is homegrown or linked with our history . . . all that we have is the remains of an imagery of our own, lurking amid the common people under the name of superstition.

Hegel concluded his complaint by asking: “Is Judaea, then, the Teutons’ fatherland?”


The young Hegel understood the profoundly destablizing character of the uprooting involved in the conversion of the Germans to biblical religion. He also appears to have grasped that biblical religion is inherently uprooting, at least in the first generation. Biblical religion effectively begins when God commands Abram, “Get thee out of thine own country, and from thy kinsmen, and from thy father’s house, and go unto a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1) It is instructive to recall the young Hegel’s bitter condemnation of Abraham’s voluntary uprooting:

Abram, born in Chaldea, had in youth already left a fatherland in his father’s company. Now, in the plains of Mesopotamia, he tore himself free altogether from his family as well, in order to be a wholly self-subsistent, independent man, to be an overlord himself. He did this without having been injured or disowned, without the grief which after a wrong or an outrage signifies love’s enduring need, when love, injured indeed but not lost, goes in quest of a new fatherland in order to flourish and enjoy itself there. The first act which made Abraham the progenitor of a nation is a disseverance which snaps the bonds of communal life and love. The entirety of the relationships in which he had hitherto lived with men and nature, these beautiful relationships of his youth (Joshua 24:2), he spurned.

As noted, Abraham’s departure from his native land entailed unconditional rejection of the gods of that land; and all Jews, Christians, and Moslems are the heirs of their spiritual forefather’s primal uprooting...

When in 1945 the victorious Americans used their political leverage to secure the emperor’s denial of his divinity, they were responding to the institution of divine kingship in a way that accorded with their age-old biblical tradition. Because of the cultural predominance of sectarian Protestantism in the United States and the absence of feudal inheritance, American culture has been more strongly influenced by biblical religion than any other Western country. According to William P. Woodard, who served as an adviser on religion to Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s occupation administration, the general was conscious of being called by the biblical God for the hour, and regarded himself as the leader of the Protestant world “as the Pope was the leader of the Catholic world.” Although the general later moderated the tone of his remarks, in the early years of the occupation, MacArthur made unfavorable comments about both Buddhism and Shinto. He favored the return of Christian missionaries in large numbers to Japan and saw the occupation as an unparalleled opportunity for the conversion of the Japanese to Christianity. MacArthur saw himself as called by the God of the Bible to lead the Japanese out of what he, as a believing Christian, regarded as their spiritual ignorance.

In spite of apparently favorable circumstances, the postwar missionaries who came to Japan quickly discovered that few, if any, free countries offer less promise to Christian missions than Japan. After more than a century of strenuous efforts, with one of the world’s largest concentrations of foreign missionaries, almost 5,200 in number, Japan remains more resistant to Christianity than any other developed country. Less than 1 percent of the population is Christian and the numbers are declining. By contrast, many observers anticipate that neighboring South Korea, whose Christian population comprises almost 25 percent of the whole, will have a Christian majority by the year 2000. Apart from the fact that Christianity is rejected as “un-Japanese” by a population with a very strong sense of group identity and a strong distrust of anything foreign that cannot be readily assimilated, the Japanese find the biblical conceptions of an omnipotent, extramundane Creator who establishes a covenant with a non-Japanese group utterly lacking in credibility. Japanese believe themselves to be descendants of a race of gods and their emperor a direct descendant of the sun goddess, but as we have seen, descent is an organic rather than a conditional relationship as in the case of the covenantal relationship with the transcendent Creator God.

Another respect in which the paths to modernization taken by Japan and the United States have been profoundly different has been the “disenchantment of the world.” As noted above, biblical monotheism, with its affirmation of one sovereign Creator god and its persistent tendency to desacralize both the natural and political orders, led to “disenchantment,” that is, the rejection of animism, polytheism, and magic in the civilizations that derived from biblical religion. Contemporary sociologists of religion tend to concur in Weber’s judgment that biblical “disenchantment of the world” was an indispensable precondition of the rationalization of the economy and society characteristic of Western capitalism. It is precisely that which a “disenchanting” religion rejects, namely, animism and polytheist, that Shinto affirms. Here again, indigenous Japanese religion the polar opposite of the biblical tradition. Moreover, it should be noted that, in spite of its animism and polytheism, Shinto plays a significant role in contemporary Japanese business, science, and technology. For example, among the leading corporations that have Shinto shrines at their headquarters, branches, and industrial establishments are the Sanwa Group, Toyota, the Mistsubishi group, Hitachi, Toshiba, and Matsushita. Konosuke Matsushita, founder of the giant Mastushita Electric Company (Panasonic, Quasar) and one of this century’s preeminent Japanese business leaders, has served for many years as president of the Worshippers of Ise Shrine, Japan’s most sacred shrine. Groundbreaking ceremonies for new factories usually involve a Shinto ritual, as was the case at the groundbreaking ceremonies for Mazda’s new automobile factory in Michigan and the jointly owned Chrysler-Mitsubishi American factory. The governor of Michigan was in attendance at the two-hour ceremony for the Mazada factory...

Nevertheless, if Japan did not have a value system capable of initiating a fundamental breach with the past, it did have the religious and cultural resources necessary to defend its civilization against the West. And it has done that with astonishing success. As noted, modernization in Japan was essentially a defensive strategy. Its first objective was to secure Japan against against Western military aggression, its second was to defend Japan against Western economic aggression. Its ultimate purpose was to defend Japanese civilization against the destruction of its historic values that would most assuredly have ensued if Japan as a nation had been converted to any form of biblical religion. Japan would have been compelled to abandon the gods and ways of its ancestors as surely as had Abraham’s progeny in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

If Japan is not yet the world’s richest nation, it soon will be. Its extraordinary achievements have a meaning, both for Japan and the world, that transcends economic success. There is, for example, the question of whether Japan will become the leading military superpower in the twenty-first century. This writer has discussed that issue elsewhere. Here, we are interested in the cultural and religious rather than the possible military consequences of the Japanese “miracle.” One consequence is already apparent. The majority of Japanese have interpreted their postwar economic and technological achievements as confirming the superiority of their civilization over that of their trading partners and competitors. If ever the Japanese were amenable to conversion to a biblical religion, that time has passed. Recently, the prime minister’s office published a translation of a dialogue between Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone and Professor Takeshi Umehara, one of the country’s leading Japanologists. In the course of the dialogue, the prime minister offered the following comment on Japanese religion:

The Japanese tend toward polytheism rather than monotheism. We believe in many gods and consider ourselves part of nature’s unending cycle. There is broad and general acceptance of the idea that a man’s fate is inseparable from that of every animal, tree, and blade of grass.

Side by side with this is the Indian concept that each man is the whole of nature unto himself–as is evident in Zen philosophy as well. The Japanese combine both of these concepts, oneness with nature and the individual as the whole of nature, within their being. It is my belief, however, that our sense of oneness with nature is indigenous and goes back to our Jomon roots. Japan’s ancestor worship is thus quite different from Christianity’s contract between man and his monotheistic god. In the process of honoring our forefathers, we create the harmony which is such an integral part of our life-style.


According to Umehara, Japan’s “Jomon roots” cover a period that preceded the introduction of agriculture and lasted almost 10,000 years, coming to an end about 300 B.C. The prime minister thus asserts that Japan’s religious culture goes back to her earliest roots. This is not a heritage he or any other Japanese is likely to abandon. Nor do all Japanese regard the emperor’s postwar denial of his divinity as having really changed his “divine” status. In a document prepared for the Ninth International Congress for the History of Religions (1958), the Shinto Publications Committee declared,

Since the change was merely a change in outward treatment, it is only natural that the Shinto of the imperial House and Shrine Shinto should still be considered orthodox. It is one of the noteworthy peculiarities of Shinto as a religion that, since these types of Shinto are not bound by dogmas and scriptures but preserve their life in traditional form, [insofar] as there is no great impediment in the continuation of the religious rituals, the wounds inflicted by this change are not too deep.

The divinity of the emperor was never considered comparable to that of Jesus in Christianity or God in biblical Judaism. The emperor was thought of as ikigami, “a living human kami.” The term refers to outstanding servants of the nation who might be enshrined and worshipped while still alive. Imperial princes, national heroes, Shinto priests, and the emperor can all be reverenced as ikigami. To the Japanese, the emperor remains the supreme living kami. At present, his status is somewhat ambiguous. As Japan’s power continues to grow, there is every likelihood that the ambiguity will be clarified in favor of the traditional understanding of the emperor’s divine status.

http://www.amerika.org/globalism/religi ... ubenstein/
More at above link.
SwamyG
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by SwamyG »

An important article that many of us can resonate with.....x-posting in several dhaagas.

One more knock on the right-left dialog. http://www.firstpost.com/blogs/3-indias ... 76705.html
Bharat is the term that refers to traditional India. Whether one thinks of pre-colonial Indian native society as good or bad, there is no doubt that such a society has survived for a very long time, and that many pockets of India still live in traditional lifestyles deeper than mere symbolism and ornamentalism. Today, Bharat has been invaded by both Sensex India and Maoist India, albeit using different reasons and different methods. The Sensex Indians are following imported right-wing capitalist models that are said to have emerged from the Protestant Ethic in the West, and they are frantically “developing” the civilisation of Bharat by westernising it. The Maoist Indians are following imported left-wing models to redress their grievances. Each attacks Bharat with its own imported theories, and each offers its own kind of promise for a better society. The important thing is that both are foreign nexuses based ideologies, and both are tearing Bharat apart. I predict that neither Sensex India nor Maoist India will score an absolute victory, but that this war will break up India sooner than most Indians are willing to admit.
However, I do suggest that civilisation models from classical India must be put on the discussion table alongside all other models, and considered on a case by case basis as the building blocks for a Navya Bharat (New Bharat). Good ideas from all sources, including from Sensex India and Maoist India, ought to be assimilated as part of this exercise, which should be seen as the development of new smritis and adaptation of old ones. This would not be the first time that Indians have modernised their own traditions. It surprises me that such approaches to nation building have not been started on a large scale, at least not persistently with enough competence. (I am excluding proclamations that are political manoeuvres to grab power under such pretexts, and I am referring here to thought leaders who ought to not have political ambitions or others selfish motives.)

Seen in this framework of three Indias, today’s blatant and massive corruption is a result of the breakdown of the ethos of Bharat, replaced by materialistic greed that cannot be satisfied within the Sensex India model. The media has propagated western-style desires among the masses which the system cannot deliver on such a large scale. This leads to all out selfish frenzy to get ahead at any cost, using any means. I do not think that Sensex India could deliver the American middle class lifestyle on which it is premised. Given that India’s population density is 10 times as large as USA’s, India simply lacks the natural resources (e.g. water) to sustain the same level of per capita consumption as the USA. It would have to be based on huge importation of resources (like energy). This would bankrupt the country, while the Sensex billionaires would be cheered as heroes flying in their private jets to enjoy greater foreign assets and fame.

If the US social security system cannot afford to pay for its old people’s retirement, why should India dismantle the traditional family and jati structure of looking after the aged, in the wild hope of “becoming like Americans”? Even if the dream based on Sensex India’s development model were viable, where would so much capital come from and who would pay the debt? Where are the foreign lands India would have to conquer and colonise in order to develop itself, in the same way as the West plundered others to develop itself? My point is that the Sensex India model needs to be augmented with a good dose of ideas from Bharat
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Sushupti wrote:Indian cotton textiles in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/indiaatlse/2013/ ... c-economy/

Interesting blame blog. Blame Indian textiles and the desire for them amopng Africans but not the purveyors of the misdeed.
Indian cotton textiles in the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy

Posted on June 27, 2013 by Editor

Kazuo Kobayashi explains how the demand for Indian cotton textiles among Africans underpinned the trans-Atlantic slave trade in the eighteenth century.

The eighteenth century saw the rapid development of the Atlantic economy, which was characterised by slavery-based plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean Islands producing profitable commodities such as sugar and tobacco for European consumers. There were harsh working conditions on the plantations and the mortality rate among labourers was high. The constant supply of labour from the African continent, mostly West Africa, was therefore key to maintaining commodity production.

Colonial trade routes

According to a recent project on trans-Atlantic slave trade, 6.5 millions slaves were exported during the eighteenth century from Africa across the notorious ‘middle passage’ to the Americas; 2.5 million of these were transported on British ships and 1.1 million on French ships.

European merchants bartered with local brokers along the African coast for slaves and other African products. They had to barter with highly desirable goods since discerning African brokers were known to reject the goods that Europeans brought across. The list of commodities imported from Europe into Africa included textiles, iron, brass, military goods, cowrie shells, beads, and alcoholic beverages. Indian cotton textiles comprised a large proportion of the imports. In the case of Anglo-African trade, piece goods of Indian cottons were the most important trades in exchange for African slaves, making up 30 per cent of the total export value in the mid-eighteenth century.

The value of Indian textiles was well established in pre-colonial Africa. Indian cotton fabrics dyed with indigo, often called ‘blue goods’ in English and ‘guinée’ in French, were an important exchange medium in the trade with African brokers, especially by Arab traders. In the Senegal River region, Indian textiles replaced an earlier currency of locally woven textiles and were established as a new regional currency in the late-eighteenth century. S. M. X. Golberry, who visited West Africa in the 1780s, observed that the distinct smell of indigo guaranteed the blue cloth as authentic currency, one the Europeans could not imitate.

In the early modern world, Indian cotton textiles continued to be highly reputed because of their affordability and quality, particularly their bright colours that did not fade when washed and exposed to sunlight. West Africa imported Indian textiles of various kinds such as bafta, brawl, calico, chintz, guinea stuffs, nicanee, photaes and tapseils. These textiles were used not only for men’s turbans and loincloths and women’s skirts, but also for conspicuous consumption. The wide range of imported textiles reflected the diverse preferences of African consumers, which varied over time and from place to place. It was essential, therefore, for European merchants to understand the changing tastes of African consumers, and Indian artisans were expected to customise their textiles to cater to regional demands.

Oscillations in the demand for slave labour in the New World directly affected the Euro-Asian trade in Indian textiles. For example, after the Seven Years’ War (1754-63), there was growing demand for slaves in British plantations in the Caribbean islands where Britain had acquired French colonies such as Guadeloupe and Martinique. The English East India Company therefore wrote a letter to Fort William in India (15 February 1765) requesting that more textiles be sent to London for use in African markets to purchase slaves.

In the City of London, the Company auctioned the textiles to wholesalers and merchants, both British and foreign. Thomas Lumley, a major London merchant at the turn of the nineteenth century, bought Indian cotton textiles from the Company and resold them to merchants in London and Liverpool who in turn invested in the Atlantic slave trade. This was one route through which Indian cotton textiles travelled from India to West Africa.

Indian manufactured textiles also reached African consumers via other European ports. In the eighteenth century, merchants had extensive business networks that were based on kinship beyond their home countries. In the case of English merchants, for example, the Dutch port cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam played an important role in supplying Indian fabrics and military goods to be exchanged in Africa. Similarly, Manx merchants imported Indian textiles and cowrie shells from Holland to Douglas in the Isle of Man, which was known for being a tax haven until the mid-eighteenth century. Douglas attracted Liverpool-based slave traders, and trade there helped the city emerge as a major hub of the slave trade.

Maritime connections with India and trade in Indian cotton textiles, which enabled Europeans to purchase slaves in pre-colonial Africa, thus played a key role in the development of the eighteenth-century Atlantic economy, and the subsequent rise of the West in the following century.

Kazuo Kobayashi is a PhD candidate at LSE’s Department of Economic History.
This post is based on Kobayashi’s Japanese-language publication, “The British Atlantic slave trade and Indian cotton textiles: The case of Thomas Lumley & Co.” in Socio-Economic History (Volume 77, Number 3, November 2011).
The key point that ithe control of maritime routes and the access to Indian markets enabled the Europeans to promote slave trade is buried at the bottom of the blog!!! I submit the desire for free labour to work the American plantations drove the trade more than any thing else. If not Indian textiles it would ahve been another commodity.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Vayutuvan »

From the article posted by SwamyG
> If the US social security system cannot afford to pay for its old people’s retirement, why should
> India dismantle the traditional family and jati structure of looking after the aged,
in the wild hope of
> “becoming like Americans”?

I am not sure what the author wants to convey through the above poorly constructed rhetorical question. There are two assumptions - there is an agency called "India" (GoI? Local, federal? Indian citizens? what? the author doesn't say) is actively dismantling traditional family and jati structure and secondly that the well being of "the aged" is guaranteed under such a structure.

First assumption itself is incorrect and the second one is baseless. Sorry to say that the world has changed from the days of the old and the clock cannot be pushed back.

Today we see advertisements of no other than Femina (which is supposed to be one of the leading torch bearers of the feminist cause in India) which advises modern day working women that their best support structure is a maid servant and old mom/mother-in-law. Chances are that the former is a malnurished, underpaid, woman child and the latter is a retired old woman who is physically not in the best shape to slave in the kitchen and baby-sit.

The cause is unbridled consumerism coupled with limited resources which are managed poorly by the greedy politico-buerocrats - not "dismantling of traditional" anything.
Last edited by Vayutuvan on 28 Jun 2013 00:56, edited 1 time in total.
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

surasena wrote:
The religious traditions fostering modernization in Japan and the West can thus be seen as polar opposites. Where one is Jewish, Christian, or Moslem, it is impossible to worship the God of Abraham without rejecting the gods of one’s earliest ancestors. When Joshua assembled the Israelite tribes at Shechem to swear fealty to the lord, he reminded them: “Long ago your forefathers Terah and his sons Abraham and Nahor lived beside the Euphrates and they worshipped other gods” (Johua 24:2). In order to worship the God of the Bible, somewhere in history a drastic uprooting process had to have taken place. The old pagan gods had to be forsworn and the ways of one’s oldest ancestors abandoned. This was as true of Moslems and Christians as it was of Jews. Here again, Catholicism sometime mitigated the harshness of the process by identifying local deities with Christian saints. Not surprisingly the young Hegel, although Lutheran by tradition, expressed his bitterness at this alienation from his own archaic religious inheritance:

Every nation has its own imagery, its gods, angels, devils or saints who will live on in the nation’s traditions . . .
Christianity has emptied Valhalla, felled the sacred groves, extirpated the national imagery as a shameful superstition, as a devilish poison, and given us instead the imagery of a nation whose climate, laws, culture, and interests are strange to us an whose history has no connection whatever with our own. A David or a Solomon lives in our popular imagination, but our country’s own heroes slumber in learned history books . . . . Thus we are without any religious imagery which is homegrown or linked with our history . . . all that we have is the remains of an imagery of our own, lurking amid the common people under the name of superstition.

Hegel concluded his complaint by asking: “Is Judaea, then, the Teutons’ fatherland?”


The young Hegel understood the profoundly destablizing character of the uprooting involved in the conversion of the Germans to biblical religion. He also appears to have grasped that biblical religion is inherently uprooting, at least in the first generation. Biblical religion effectively begins when God commands Abram, “Get thee out of thine own country, and from thy kinsmen, and from thy father’s house, and go unto a land that I will show you” (Gen. 12:1) It is instructive to recall the young Hegel’s bitter condemnation of Abraham’s voluntary uprooting:

Abram, born in Chaldea, had in youth already left a fatherland in his father’s company. Now, in the plains of Mesopotamia, he tore himself free altogether from his family as well, in order to be a wholly self-subsistent, independent man, to be an overlord himself. He did this without having been injured or disowned, without the grief which after a wrong or an outrage signifies love’s enduring need, when love, injured indeed but not lost, goes in quest of a new fatherland in order to flourish and enjoy itself there. The first act which made Abraham the progenitor of a nation is a disseverance which snaps the bonds of communal life and love. The entirety of the relationships in which he had hitherto lived with men and nature, these beautiful relationships of his youth (Joshua 24:2), he spurned.

As noted, Abraham’s departure from his native land entailed unconditional rejection of the gods of that land; and all Jews, Christians, and Moslems are the heirs of their spiritual forefather’s primal uprooting...
In India-Froum Journal there was an article by Husky and Acharya on how Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) was a quest by Germans to find an alternate ancestry or fatherland.

Above is a very good description of de-racination that afflicts modern India without understanding the why.

When we first introduced the word de-racination (it was I how first brought it here) it was in the context of the Colonialism. However we see tht its true origins are in the Bibile.

If India is a secular country how come deracination is demanded and promoted vigorusly by the State?

In another context I had said 'Secualrism is the Christianity without Church.'
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_19686 »

"a break, they talk about Greek mythology and about Goethe and Shakespeare. It is imperative that our Japanese politicians talk about Japanese myths and thought, such as those written about in Genji Monogatari (The Tale of Genji) and in the works of Basho. A need exists for a research institute that can teach politicians and foreign diplomats to do so. However, Japanese politicians regard this kind of feeling (thing) as distasteful, but in Europe it is only natural."

- Nakasone and Umehara 1996: 73-4

"You all think that robots are some kind of strange beings, monsters, or some kind of Frankensteins, but the Japanese think that robots are mates who work for them and, like they themselves, toil hard. That is why at commemoration days and festivals, the workers, when drinking beer, pour some for the robots and say to them 'Oi, brothers, let's drink'. This is when Thatcher said, 'can't you offer them Scotch?'

- Nakasone and Umehara 1996: 75-6

"We Japanese are not monotheists. We go through a cycle that draws us into the world of polytheism, being born into Nature and returning to Nature at death. The mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees are our brothers: this is the origin of the notion that "mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood." ...In a larger sense, however, the idea that "mountains, rivers, grasses, and trees all attain Buddhahood" belongs less to Buddhism than it does to a transmission of the Japanese people dating from the Jomon period."

- Prime Minister Nakasone
member_19686
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_19686 »

"Is there one maker of all things amongst you Europeans? Is not one a carpenter, another a blacksmith, another a shipbuilder and another a house-builder? And so it was in the beginning; one made this, another that: Tane made trees, Ru mountains, Tangaroa fish, and so forth. Your religion is of today, ours from remote antiquity. Do not think then to destroy our ancient faith with your fresh-born religion"

- Heu-heu a Maori chief in New Zealand to a Christian missionary.

Source: A Study of Shinto: The Religion of the Japanese Nation By Genchi Katu, pg. 36
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by johneeG »

X-posting from off-topic thread: Link to original post
-------
abhischekcc wrote:
As for Jesus' 'virgin birth.' Who says it really needs to have happened? Some other biological pathway to pregnancy could have been activated
I disagree with the virgin birth concept - until there is evidence or cultural precedence to show it.

And the only cultural precedence of virgin birth is in ancient European mythology, not in Jewish or Hindu or Arab or Central Asian lore. So the logical conclusion is that while Jesus was born normally, the virgin birth idea was superimposed on his life when Xnism was adopted by the Roman empire.
Saar,
there is nothing in the world which does not have its source in Bhaarath(specially, Sanathana Dharma). Directly or indirectly, all ideas have their roots in Bhaarath.

As for virgin mother, there are cultural precedence in India. It is just that, in India, it is not considered such a big miracle. Because, in Indian literature, there are several miraculous births. So, virgin mother becomes just another extra-ordinary birth. But, X-ism puts too much emphasis on this. Infact, abrahamism puts too much emphasis on some really small (miraculous) deeds. Even if it is just fiction, they put too much emphasis on these miracles(specially, X-ism). Mo-ism puts too much emphasis on the self-acclaimed revelations(which are stored in naroK).

Again, 'revelations' is not really an original idea. In fact, the oldest literature that claims to be revelations are Vedhas themselves. So, this idea also has a precedence in Bhaarath.

X-ism is simply a distorted version of crypto-Buddhism. So, there is nothing in X-ism that cannot be directly traced back to Buddhism. Following that pattern, virgin mary(mother of Jesus) is also copied from virgin maya(mother of Gauthama Buddha). Jesus is simply a crypto-Buddha figure. Nothing more, nothing less.

Buddhist version of virgin mother:
The Virginal Conception – Virginal Before the Birth of the Future Buddha.

As Thundy explains in Buddha and Christ (pp. 84ff.), the conception of the future Buddha was considered to be a ‘virginal conception’ in the sense that his mother, Queen Mäyä, was believed to have conceived him without sexual intercourse with any man: . . .

Änanda, the favorite disciple, recites . . . the events of conception and birth . . . that he heard from the Lord:

Änanda, when the future Buddha is descending into his mother’s womb, she is pure from sexuality, has abstained from taking life, from theft, from evil conduct in lusts, from lying, and from all kinds of wine and strong drink, which are a cause of irreligion. She abided in penances like a hermit, always performing penances along with her consort. Having obtained the sanction of the king, he had not entertained carnal wishes for thirty-two months. In whatever place she sat . . . there dazzled her celestial nature, resplendent by her attachment to virtuous actions. There was not a god, nor a demon, nor a mortal, who could cast his glance on her with carnal desire. All of them, throwing aside all evil motive, and endowed with honorable sentiments, looked on her as a mother, or a daughter. . . . Like unto her, there was none to be seen worthy of the venerable being, or one more fully endowed with good qualities, or compassion – that mother is Mäyä (Lalitavistara, iii).



The Virginal Conception of Jesus As narrated in Luke 1:26-35:

In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, with a message for a girl betrothed to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David; the girl’s name was Mary.

The angel went in and said to her, ‘Greetings, most favored one! The Lord is with you.’ But she was troubled by what he said and wondered what this greeting might mean. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for God has been gracious to you; you shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall give him the name Jesus. He will be great; he will bear the title “Son of the Most High”; the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will be king over Israel for ever; his reign shall never end.’

‘How can this be?’ said Mary; ‘I am still a virgin.’

The angel answered, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy child to be born will be called “Son of God”.’

– The New English Bible
_______________
1Passage in the Majjhimanikäya, cited by Albert. J. Edmunds in Buddhist and Christian Gospels:
Being Gospel Parallels from Pali Texts, ed. M. Anesaki, 3rd ed. (Tokyo, 1905), p. 173.
18
II.14. Mäyä’s Dream: the descent of a white elephant (Bodhisattva) into her womb. Stone, Bhärhut, 2nd century B.C.
[The Way of the Buddha, p. 290]
Link

As one can see, virgin maya and virgin mary are similar, infact, they are X-ist version is copied from Buddhist version. In Lalithavistara, Deva-putris and Deva-putras visit Maya just before the birth of Buddha. In the X-ist version, the Deva-putris and Deva-putras become angels. Infact, the X-ist concept of 'son of god' is just a translation of 'Deva-putra'. Jesus is supposedly the 'son of god' and 'son of David'. The 'son of David' thing has confused many people and they have tried to understand the genealogy without much success. But, they are barking up the wrong tree. The 'son of David' is also a translation of 'Deva-putra'. Deva becomes Daueid(in greek, i.e. David).

Deva is a sanskrith word. It means 'God'. But, Deva also is used as a honorific for the male superiors(like Kings) and Devi is used as a honorific for the female superiors. Infact, there are also Kings use the word 'Deva' as part of their titles or names. For example, Krishna DEVA Raya. In buddhist literature, the word Deva-putra is used to describe Buddha in both its meanings: son of a King(shakya) and son of god(in heaven). Buddha resides in Tushitha heaven as on of the sons of god(i.e. Deva-putra) before descending on to the earth to take birth as the son of Maya and Shuddhodhana. Of course, Buddhist literature is also a pirate copy of Hindhu scriptures. The motifs from Hindhu scriptures are taken and remixed to compose buddhist scriptures and X-ism is again a remix of Buddhist scriptures(motifs). Jesus is nothing more than a fictional character. That character is based on Buddha. In fact, Jesus is like an alter-ego of Buddha... i.e. Buddha in disguise. The character of Buddha itself is created by copying the motifs of Hindhu scriptures(prominently Ramayana, Mahabharatha and Bhagavatha).

Hindhu virgin mothers:
Hindhuism is full of extra-ordinary births of people. So, virgin mother does not evoke so much spotlight.

Anyway, here is a list of Hindhu virgin mothers:
a) Sathyavathi is the virgin mother of Vedha Vyasa. The father in this case was Parashara Maharshi.
b) Kunthi is the virgin mother of Karna. The father in this case was Surya(Sun God).

c) If one is more liberal, then even Anjana Dhevi can be categorized as virgin mother of Hanuman. The father in this case was Vayu(who was in turn carrying the energy of Rudhra).

Infact, not just X-ism, but even Judaism seems to have copied from Hindhuism directly or indirectly. The story of Karna and Arjuna is very interesting in this regard.

For example, birth of Karna:
Karna was born to Kunthi by the grace of Surya(Sun God). But, at that time, Kunthi was an unmarried girl. So, Surya(Sun God) blessed her that she would remain virgin despite the birth of Karna. Karna was born with a natural coat of mail and ear-rings. Kunthi put the child in a box and floated it in river Ganga. That box was found by chariot-driver named Athiratha. He adopted the child. Athiratha was the chariot-driver of Dhrithrashtra. So, Karna went to the same school(first Kripa, then Dhrona) that Kauravas and Pandavas went.

birth of Krushna:
Kamsa, the king of Mathura, married his sister(Dhevaki) to Vasudheva. But, he heard a prophecy that 8th son of Dhevaki is destined to kill him. So, Kamsa tried to kill his sister immediately to save his own life. Vasudheva begged Kamsa not to kill her. Instead, he promised to deliver all their children to Kamsa. Kamsa agreed and imprisoned his sister along with brother-in-law. As promised, Vasudheva delivered his children as soon as they were born. Kamsa killed these children. At the time of birth of 7th child, the child was transferred from the womb of Dhevaki to Rohini(second wife of Vasudheva). Then, after some time, the 8th child was born. Narayana Himself was born to them. He instructed them to transfer Him to the house of Nanda and Yashodha. Then, He assumed the form of a normal child. Vasudheva tranferred the child to the house of Nanda and Yashodha, then he replaced his own son with the daughter of Nanda and Yashodha who was also born on the same day. No one noticed the swap. Kamsa thought a daughter was born to Vasudheva and tried to kill the child. But, the child assumed the form of Goddess and informed Kamsa that the one who is going to kill him is already born and safe. Immediately, Kamsa ordered persecution of all the newborns born at that time...

Now, the story of Moses:
This story is an interesting remix of Karna and Krushna.
wiki wrote: In the Exodus account, the birth of Moses occurred at a time when an unnamed Egyptian Pharaoh had commanded that all male Hebrew children born be killed by drowning in the river Nile. Jochebed, the wife of the Levite Amram, bore a son and kept him concealed for three months.[13][15][16] When she could keep him hidden no longer, rather than deliver him to be killed, she set him adrift on the Nile River in a small craft of bulrushes coated in pitch.[15] Moses' sister Miriam observed the progress of the tiny boat until it reached a place where Pharaoh's daughter (Bithiah,[13] Thermuthis [17]) was bathing with her handmaidens. It is said that she spotted the baby in the basket and had her handmaiden fetch it for her. Miriam came forward and asked Pharaoh's daughter whether she would like a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby.[13] Thereafter, Jochebed was employed as the child's nurse. Moses grew up and was brought to Pharaoh's daughter and became her son and a younger brother to the future Pharaoh of Egypt. Moses would not be able to become Pharaoh because he was not the 'blood' son of Bithiah, and he was the youngest.
wiki link

So, the birth story of Moses is a remix of births of Karna and Krushna. Then, this story again copied in the story of Jesus.
wiki wrote: Herod hears of Jesus' birth and, wanting him killed, orders the murder of young male children in Bethlehem. But an angel warns Joseph in his second dream, and the family flees to Egypt, later to return and settle in Nazareth.
wiki link

The story of Jesus has some close connections to the birth story of Karna and Arjuna:
Karna was the son of Surya from a virgin mother Kunthi. Arjuna was the son of Indhra from Kunthi. Surya is Apollo and Indhra is Zeus in Greek. In Hindhuism, Surya and Indhra are kind of alter-egos. This is a secret.

One would have to mix Arjuna and Karna into one figure and Surya and Indhra into one figure to understand these Greek and Abrahamic stories.

Anyway, Indhra is the King of Gods in Hindhuism. Zeus is the King of Gods in Greek. Indhra's vehicle is a white elephant named Airavatha. Indhra is also a Rain God. The white elephant symbolizes a white cloud. Indhra's weapon in Vajra, it symbolizes thunderbolt. Thunderbolt is the weapon of Zeus. According to Buddhist scriptures, when Buddha was about to be born a white elephant entered the womb of Maya signifying that she became pregnant. The same motif is found in Jesus copy also. Buddhists seem to have overlooked the fact that white elephant represents white cloud. So, to Buddhists, white elephant became a symbol of Buddha. In X-ist copy, white dove and white lamb become a symbol of Jesus(crypto-Buddha).

----
Actually, it seems to me that the whole Abrahamic tales are merely corruptions of Hindhu originals. More than one Hindhu figure is mixed to create an Abrahamic figure. Buddhism may have been the medium. Buddhism itself copies and steals many Hindhu motifs and figures to craft its scriptures. I suspect that Buddha himself is a copied Hindhu figure.

Brahma/Surya(Vivasvan) -> Abraham
Saraswathy/Sangya -> Sarah
Chaya -> Hagar
Rudhra(Isha)/Yama -> Isaac
Indhra/Shani -> Ishmael
Kubhera -> Jacob
Swayambhuva Manu -> Adam
Shatharupa -> Eve
Vaivasvatha Manu and Matsya Avathara -> Noah and his ark.

Brahma and Saraswathi relationship is presented as incest in Buddhism. Abraham and Sarah are most probably derived from this presentation of Buddhists. Abraham's Incestuous Marriage with Sarah

There is a misconception that Buddhism is against caste. It does not seem to be true. I don't know how to say this, but it seems that the stress of caste/Kula was so much that they were prepared to commit incest rather than marry outside Kula(more specifically Kshatriya).
In several places in the Pāli Canon, including the Ambaṭṭha Sutta (D.i.92), the progenitors of the Śākyas are related to King Okkāka. Pāli Okkāka is identified with the Sanskrit Ikṣvāku, who is known from Purāṇic stories, and in Jainism he is an ancestor to all of the Tirthaṅkaras. The king banishes his elder brothers from his kingdom and they make their home on the slopes of the Himalayas. But they can find no one suitable to marry, so they take their own sisters as wives, and these incestuous relationships give birth to the Śākyas. Given the prejudice against incest in India society generally it is remarkable that this detail was preserved, and this suggests that it might have a grain of truth. If so it points to Iran "there is good evidence for this practice called xᵛaētuuadaθa, so-called next-of-kin or close-kin marriage."
Wiki Link

As you can see, they believed incest was better than marriage outside caste. In fact, they continued to believe that they were progeny of pure castes.

This incest in Buddhism had curious effect. They justified it through their theology by ascribing this behaviour to many other figures in their theology. But, most of the figures in Buddhism were borrowed from Hinduism. So, essentially, Buddhism redefined these figures and some of them were ascribed incest to justify their own incestous behaviour.

For ex:
In the Udaya Jataka the Bodhisattva is a prince who is compelled to marry his half-sister. Although the two sleep in the same room for many years they remain celibate (Ja.IV,105). In the Dasaratha Jataka the princes Rama and Lakkhana marry their sister (Ja.IV,130). As with many ancient peoples the Sakyans, the tribe the Buddha belonged to, had a myth about their origins which included brother-sister incest. When the Koliyans were involved in a dispute with the Sakyans they taunted them by sayings that they ‘cohabite with their sisters like dogs, jackals and other animals’ (Ja.V,413). During the Buddha’s life there was an incident where a nun became infatuated with her son who was a monk and had sex with him, an offence entailing expulsion from the Sangha (Vin.III,35). When this was brought to the Buddha’s attention he said, ‘Does not this foolish man know that a mother shall not lust after her son or a son after his mother?’
Link

So, Buddhists created a version of Ramayana where Sita is both the sister and wife of Rama. All this for what?! Caste! It is ironic since, according to Valmiki Ramayana, Rama killed Vali for committing incest with his sister-in-law. Rama explains that a sister-in-law is equivalent to one's daughter and should never be thought of as wife material. And the only punishment for such incest is death. If incest with sister-in-law in punishable by death, then what is the punishment for incest with sister?

But, all that is irrelevant when one has an agenda. So, Buddhists tarnish Rama to justify their incest.

The same thing passed on into the story of Abraham and Sarah.

Carl wrote:Subhash Kak writes: Rigvedic roots of Semitic gods?
The different Semitic gods have cognates in the Vedic pantheon. Yam may be connected to the Vedic Yama who in RV 10.10.4 is seen as being born from the waters, and Mot to the Vedic Mrityu, death. But more to the point, Ila represents Agni as in Yajurveda (VS) 2.3, whereas Ilaa represents Earth, speech, and flow. There is also the Vedic Yahvah. As an epithet it is associated with movement, activity, heaven and earth; it means the sacrificer and Agni, the chief terrestrial god. It is associated with energy like the Yahwah of the Semites. The name Yahvah occurs 21 times in the Rigveda . It may be compared to Shivah, an epithet for auspiciousness in the Rigveda, that later is applied regularly to Rudra.

Are Ila and Yahvah like El and Yahweh just by coincidence? We don't know, but we certainly do know of the Vedic-god worshiping Mitanni of North Syria who could have served as the intermediaries in connecting the Indians and the Semites.

An example:

पर वो यह्वं पुरूणां विशां देवयतीनाम ।
अग्निं सूक्तेभिर्वचोभिरीमहे यं सीमिदन्य ईळते ॥ [RigVeda 1.36.1]

RigVedic meaning of Yahvah (a Name of Agni):

1 yahva mf(%{I4})n. restless , swift , active (applied to Agni , Indra and Soma) RV. ; continually moving or flowing (applied to the waters) ib. (= %{mahat} Sa1y.) ; m. = %{yajamAna} , a sacrificer Un2. i , 134 Sch. ; (%{I}) f. du. heaven and earth RV. ; pl. the flowing waters (with %{sapta} , `" the seven great rivers "') ib. (cf. Naigh. i , 15).

2 yahvat mf(%{a4tI})n. ever-flowing (waters) RV.

Predictably, EJ sources want to debunk any linkage of Semitic god to Vedic tradition. One website called "Karma to Grace" :lol: has this to say - link
Yahweh is the unique name given to the God who revealed Himself in the Old Testament.
[...]
Is Yahvah the same as Yahweh? Well, let us ask the question more correctly, “Is hwhy the same as यह्व?” Can you read these two? Do you know what they say? Is there a linguistic tie between the two? Is the “H” of Hebrew represented here (there are two “H” sounds in Hebrew) the same as the “h” in Sanskrit? Are the vowels the same? The vowels aren’t even written in Hebrew, so we can’t easily know if they are the same as the Sanskrit ones. The “v” of Jahvah and the “w” of Yahweh —are we sure they are the same? In English they are quite different—one is a fluid and one is a fricative, and they represent completely unique sounds in English. “Wow” and “Vow” are completely different words and though they could be connected phonetically, we still do not identify them as the same words. Do they represent different sounds in Hebrew and Sanskrit? ..... {on and on in this vein}


Link to Subash Kak's article
Link to original post quoting the post of Agnimithra

Yahvah is one of the names used for Agni(Fire God) in Rig Vedha. This connection between Yahvah and Agni(Fire God) will explain many of the miracles in Old Testament.

Elijah shows a miracle where fire is born from a transparent liquid. This is seen as triumph of Yahvah. Why is it a triumph? Because, Fire God won. Similarly, Moses sees a bush catch fire in desert. He thinks of it as manifestation of God. How can a bush catching fire be a manifestation of God? Because, it was Fire God that they were praying to.

Who is this Fire God? Rudhra is the higher Agni. Remember, Rudhra burns up Agni also during pralaya. So, Rudhra is the higher Fire God. It is Rudhra who is Yahvah. Rudhra is also Isha. Many Abrahamic names like Ishaac, Ishmael, Ishrael...etc have the cognate Isha.

Rudhra is also Girisha. Girisha means one who resides on mountains. Abraham goes on to the top of a mountain to sacrifice his son. His son carries the wood to lit up the fire. Why go to the top of the mountain? Because, top of the mountain is where the God resides: Girisha. Why lit a fire? Because, they are worshiping Rudhra/Yahvah, the Fire God.

Moses climbs to the top of the mountain to get the laws for his people. Why climb to the top of a mountain? Girisha...

Remember, the cows were also worshiped by the jews and egyptains at the time. Moses breaks the idol of a golden calf and kills many people who were worshiping it. Of course, these stories cannot be taken as real because they are simply remixing the older motifs from other scriptures.

So, who is Baal? Baal is water God or God of fertility or God of sea.
Baal is Soma i.e. Sa+Uma(Shiva with Uma). That means, in the worship of Baal, worship of Goddess is also inherent. On the other hand, in the worship of Yahvah, only the God without the Goddess is worshiped.

Eventually, the cult of Baal was digested into cult of Yahvah. Baal could also be viewed by the followers of Yahvah cult as Jaalandhara. Jaalandhara was born from Shiva. He became the ruler of Seas. Eventually, he was defeated by Shiva.

I think the root of iconoclasm in judaism is the worship of Fire. Because Fire is worshiped, there is no murthy/image. These people were opposed to the image worship because they were zealot fire worshippers.

These ideologies continue to be mutate and evolve(or devolve).

---
The essential point is that all ideas have their source in Hindhuism.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

X-post....
Hindu reports:

Spice Roots:Truth about Vasco Da Gama
A recently unearthed journal paints Vasco da Gama as a peevish, paranoid trader who failed to impress the Zamorin of Calicut.

The hero of the first Portugese contact on Indian shores is a degradado, or Portugese convict and exile, not Vasco da Gama.

One of the greatest navigators from the Age of Discoveries, da Gama, appointed by Dom Manuel, King of Portugal, for his “energy and high spirits” refused to take the initiative to go ashore on the morning of May 21, 1498. Instead, da Gama chose to wait in the depths of his ship, Sao Gabriel, while the convict Joao Nunes stepped out into the monsoon showers off the western coast of Kozhikode to meet, much to his amazement, a pair of multi-lingual Tunisian merchants.

What is known about the celebrated scene, engraved in Portuguese national mythology, is what Nunes told an unknown chronicler and author of the 15th century manuscript Journal of the first voyage of Vasco da Gama to India, 1497-1499.

“The Devil take you! What brought you here?” ask the merchants in both Castilian and Genoese tongues. The sprightly Nunes quickly shrugs off his surprise to reply, “We came to seek Christians and spices.”

Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, :mrgreen: a scholar on Portuguese history and author of The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama, explains the import of Nunes’ answer thus: “Christians here meant lost Christians from the ancient past whom the Portuguese hoped to find in order to build an alliance against the Muslims. As for spices, they would take the Portuguese beyond Kerala as far as eastern Indonesia, which they reached by 1511.”

The handwritten journal by an anonymous person who accompanied Vasco da Gama in his pioneering voyage to India is one of the latest entries to UNESCO’s International Memory of World Register of the world’s most precious documents. The logbook offers a real-time account of the journey in unadorned prose and leaves nothing to the chance of human memory.

The journal portrays Calicut as a melting pot full of the multi-cultural complexities of a trade-oriented society. It also lays bare the web of half-truths and falsehoods the Portuguese, starting with Nunes, spun on the Indian coast to gain acceptance.

The manuscript remained a mystery for over three centuries until Portuguese historian Alexandre Herculano stumbled upon a 16th century copy, rudely bound up in a sheet of parchment torn out of some book of ecclesiastical offices, in the dust-laden shelves of the monastery of Santa Cruz de Coimbra in 1834. The 79 folios in faded ink, the writing still legible, contain an irreverent chronicle of the voyage until they abruptly end with the arrival of the fleet on Rio Grande.


The journal sheds light into the frequent fits of “melancholy” that da Gama suffered from, of the antics of the captain’s brother Paulo da Gama, who almost capsized his own boat trying to harpoon a whale, and anecdotes of the Portuguese party blundering its way through Calicut.

It tells of how da Gama preferred to remain holed up in his ship for almost a week after Nunes returned. Finally a letter of invitation from the Zamorin, the ruler of Calicut, prompted da Gama to leave his vessel. On the way, the party stops at the house of a “man of rank” to have a meal. All but da Gama relish the meal of boiled fish, rice and butter. He, it seems, refused to eat, fearing for his life. :mrgreen:

“The writer makes it clear that Vasco da Gama was often extremely distrustful of those whom he met. He rarely went ashore until he had verified that no one had laid a trap for him. He also notes that da Gama would become ‘melancholic’, which means surly and annoyed in this context,” says Prof. Subrahmanyam.

Once inside the Zamorin’s court, the party is met with silence. The king hardly acknowledges them. Unlike the paintings of The Lusiad, the epic Portuguese poem singing paeans of da Gama’s maiden voyage to the East, the gallant explorer does not get a chance to grandly awe the Zamorin with his speech.

If at all anyone was in awe, it was the Portuguese, of the sheer wealth and opulence surrounding them. The journal brings to fore a king who toys with the Portuguese. When asked to speak, da Gama introduces himself as an ambassador of Portugal and seeks a private audience with the Zamorin, who ignores him till sunset, when he calls da Gama into an inner chamber.

Vasco da Gama suffers the indignity of having his presents for the king laughed at. The dozen coats, six hats, a bale of sugar, two barrels of butter and one of honey draw a sharp rebuff that even the “poorest pilgrim from Mecca has more to offer.” This incident leaves Gama in a fit, used as he is to the chiefs along the African coast who receive with glee his trinkets of “small bells and red caps.”


In the coming days, the relationship between the two steadily soured. Matters reach a head when hostages are taken on either side. The Portuguese finally retreat to their ships, piling blame on the native Moplahs for poisoning the mind of a good “Christian king.”

But a letter from the Zamorin reveals that the king was simply not impressed with the Portuguese. “Vasco da Gama, fidalgo (son) of your household, came to my land, and I rejoiced at that. In my land, there is much cinnamon, and much cloves and ginger and pepper and many precious stones. And what I want from your land is gold and silver and coral and scarlet,” the manuscript records of the Zamorin’s candid missive to King Dom Manuel.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Lilo »

^^:rotfl:

Given the above real account from the logbook, depictions of the event in circulation look quite funny.

Image

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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Walter Laquer the eminent historian puts things in prespective:

Walter Laquer on Decline of Europe

The two world wars and the Cold War has undone Europe. No place can withstand nearly a century of war with mass casualties in people and ideas.
'An Anxious Continent'
Walter Laqueur on Europe's Decline
British-American historian Walter Laqueur experienced the demise of the old Europe and the rise of the new. In a SPIEGEL interview, he shares his gloomy forecast for a European Union gripped by debt crisis.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Laqueur, you experienced Europe and the Europeans in the best and the worst of times. Historical hot spots and the stations of your personal biography were closely and sometimes dramatically intertwined. Which conclusions have you reached today, at the advanced age of 92?

Laqueur: I became a historian of the postwar era in Europe, but the Europe I knew no longer exists. My book "Out of the Ruins of Europe," published in 1970, ended with an optimistic assessment of the future. Later, in 2008, "The Last Days of Europe: Epitaph for an Old Continent" was published. I returned to the subject in my latest book, "After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent." The sequence of titles probably says it all.

SPIEGEL: The last two, at any rate, sound as if the demise of the Western world were imminent.

Laqueur: Europe will not be buried by ashes, like Pompeii or Herculaneum, but Europe is in decline. It's certainly horrifying to consider its helplessness in the face of the approaching storms. After being the center of world politics for so long, the old continent now runs the risk of becoming a pawn.

SPIEGEL: Fortunately, the European Union refrained from pursuing any imperial ambitions. Nevertheless, it remains an impressive entity, both politically and economically, despite the financial and debt crisis.

Laqueur: Europe will likely remain influential in the future as an economic power and trading partner. But the continent still isn't standing on its own feet politically and militarily today. This wouldn't be that important if power politics didn't play a role and conflicts were resolved peacefully by the United Nations or the International Court of Justice. But the conflicts have not decreased. Their inherent fanaticism and passions continue to burn, as we can now see, once again, in Syria and in Egypt. Under these circumstances, is it realistic to call for European independence in global politics?

SPIEGEL: Why shouldn't the EU be able to be a champion of soft power?

Laqueur: Freedom, human rights, social justice are all wonderful, and I don't want to minimize the achievements of European societies. But a role model? Europe is much too weak to play a civilizing or moral role in world politics. Nice speeches and well-intentioned admonitions carry little weight when made from a position of weakness. In fact, all they do is aggravate China and Russia. Such reproofs are presumptuous, insincere and, unfortunately, often ridiculous. Under the current circumstances, Europe would be well advised to keep a lower profile.

SPIEGEL: That's the kind of advice that another eminence grise (former German Chancellor) Helmut Schmidt, likes to dispense.

Laqueur: I'm afraid that Europe has largely squandered its moral credit. It shies away from imposing sanctions; it has a very hard time intervening in crises outside Europe; and it has even demonstrated its general impotence in wars in its own backyard. Most European governments, not least the German government, don't even have the guts to admit that they are playing a double game.

SPIEGEL: After two world wars, it goes without saying that Europe is in a post-heroic state.


Laqueur: Yes, but how will the postmodern age survive in a world in which, all too often, chaos prevails, rather than international law? The champions of postmodernism will have to act in accordance with two different methods: first, using those that regulate our treatment of one another, and second, using methods to deal with the bullies and thugs who have yet to achieve the enlightened condition of the postmodern age.

SPIEGEL: You seem to advocate a sort of liberal imperialism, which seems self-contradictory. No one believes the United States when it takes that approach, either.

Laqueur: That is, in fact, an unnecessarily provocative concept, which doesn't embody a realistic policy, either. An approach to international politics that involves two different codes of rules, values and standards doesn't just constitute discrimination, but also requires a cold-blooded decisiveness that Europe lacks. Europe is often motivated by fear, which both the bullies and those who need help recognize.

SPIEGEL: Nevertheless, the EU would be extremely welcome as a player in the global game in many parts of the world.

Laqueur: Certainly, but the European crisis is not primarily just a debt crisis. The real question is: Does Europe, in its apathy, even want to play a role in global politics? Arthur Schopenhauer, the great philosopher of pessimism, said that it's easy to want, but that "wanting to want" is virtually impossible. No matter how often European values are invoked and praised, a weak will, inertia, fatigue, self-doubt and lack of self-confidence all amount to the psychological diagnosis of a weak ego.

SPIEGEL: After the horrors of the 20th century and Germany's two attempts to secure global power, both of which failed miserably, is depression a part of the European state of mind?

Laqueur: Pharmacologists have yet to develop a drug to treat the collective depression of entire nations and generations. Keeping a low profile is easier for most Europeans than coming up with the political will to become a major political power once again.

SPIEGEL: It's also not as risky.

Laqueur: I'm not so sure about that. Only time will tell. The Europeans haven't quite understood that trying to stay out of the fray offers no protection against the consequences of global policy. Retreat offers no security against the consequences. Perhaps exaggerated caution is sometimes appropriate, but inaction can also prove to be disastrous. During his recent visit to Berlin, President Barack Obama said that remembering history should not lead to our withdrawing from history. I don't think that the economic, political and military problems Europe faces are insurmountable by any means. Nevertheless, a strange "abulia" has taken hold. French psychologists coined the term in the late 19th century to describe an inexplicable lack of will, which some now interpret as a symptom of aging in prosperity.

SPIEGEL: Isn't it a little facile to accuse Europe of decadence? Europe has always moved forward from one crisis to the next.

Laqueur: A 19th century cynic once said that a crisis is the period between two other crises. Historians are probably conservative by nature, and they tend to be skeptical. (Former German Chancellor) Konrad Adenauer once said something to the effect that there are countless ways to do something wrong, but only one way to do it right. I'm sticking to my diagnosis that Europe is in decline, especially when measured against the expectations that arose after the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Iron Curtain.

SPIEGEL: At the time, optimism surrounding the euro went so far that even in the United States, predictions were made, in books, lectures and essays, that the 21st century would be the European century.

Laqueur: Around the turn of the millennium, European leaders seemed convinced, at their summit meetings, that Europe was in the process of becoming a shining example, a role model for other nations, with its international virtues, its shared values, its model of the social welfare state and its system of intergovernmental relations. Anyone who questioned that was not only branded as a pessimist, but also as a reactionary. This euphoria probably has more to with a disappointment over America, especially the America of (former US President) George W. Bush, than with actual circumstances in Europe. Thanks to the short-sighted, arrogant and aggressive US foreign policy of those years, a European anti-Americanism flared up, which has remained latent on both the left and the right, and it distorted Europeans' views of their own weaknesses.

SPIEGEL: Is Europe experiencing a moment of truth in the current crisis?

Laqueur: I'd have to answer that question with another question. What are the prospects for a reversal of the process? The decline is relative, and it's taking place gradually. The situation is bad, even very bad in Greece, Spain and Portugal, but it isn't devastating. Europeans are making every effort to prevent a crash and achieve a soft landing. The collapse of the monetary union is not unavoidable. In fact, if one considers the consequential costs, I think it's somewhat unlikely in the foreseeable future. Perhaps a rapid decline would be even better, because it would raise awareness of the need for a general overhaul of the European structure. Crises bring about solidarity, as Jean Monnet, one of Europe's founding fathers, knew all too well.

SPIEGEL: People now recognize that the EU is both a community of solidarity and a community of fate. This is symbolized by the creation of a bailout and stability mechanism.

Laqueur: But, as a result, Europeans have lost the sense of clear and present danger. Once again, European leaders believe that they are out of the woods. Well, miracles happen. But it's my impression that the formula is being applied that promises the least amount of success in the longer term and is the least painful -- a little reform here, a little tinkering there, and a dose of business as usual.

SPIEGEL: One could also say, less caustically, that this is simply pragmatic crisis management, as practiced by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Laqueur: It's a policy based on persistence. It appears that there is a hidden law in history, where institutions, once they are established, become self-propelling and continue to exist, contrary to all expectations or fears, or at least much longer than expected. There is always a retarding, persevering moment before the collapse arrives.

SPIEGEL: So we end up with a rude awakening, after all?

Laqueur: The rise and fall of empires are constants in history. Historians have been searching for explanations since antiquity. Is it, as Oswald Spengler said after World War I, an unavoidable consequence of the aging process, an older person's desire for a quiet and undisturbed life? Has material prosperity created a timid society, one that avoids all conflicts and tries to ignore all warning signs that it sees as detrimental to its hedonism?

SPIEGEL: Spengler's theory explained nothing. It was merely an expression of a mood in 1918. And doesn't a saturated society have its advantages, too, such as a reduced propensity to violence?

Laqueur: Of course, life doesn't just take place at the top. Being eliminated from the Champions League isn't the end. But then it might be advisable to somewhat limit the generous distribution of good advice to other countries and not to invoke one's own achievements as enthusiastically. Constant self-praise could easily become counterproductive, because one's achievements should never be taken for granted. The EU may survive the current crisis, but what about the next one and the one after that? It is no longer a given that the majority of Europeans want to continue to the end of the path to a political union. The first stabs at moving away from that concept are unmistakable. Nothing is without an alternative in history and politics.

SPIEGEL: In that case, would what remained of Europe consist of more than a geographical concept and a cultural memory?

Laqueur: What will Europe turn out to be? Europe needs the world, and the world needs Europe. These are august words that people like to hear, and to some extent they are also true. Who couldn't agree with that? But does the world feel the same way? The possibility that Europe will become a museum or a cultural amusement park for the nouveau riche of globalization is not completely out of the question. Ten years ago, 900,000 Chinese came to Western Europe as tourists. Now it's several million.

SPIEGEL: Does that bother you, as an old European?

Laqueur: I think I've traveled to every European country, except Norway and Albania. My father never made it to France or Great Britain, and my mother never left her native country. My first station in Europe, after returning from Israel in the early 1950s, was Paris, the second one was Berlin, and the third was London, where I was director of the Wiener Library for 30 years. I can almost see the grave of Karl Marx from my apartment in London. London has become less interesting than it used to be, and yet I'm not deeply sentimental. Yes, I feel a certain regret that Europe hasn't come as far as one could have hoped. But I haven't lost any sleep over it, either.

SPIEGEL: You once wrote that you would have preferred to live at the end of the 19th century instead of in the horrible 20th century. That was the old Europe to a T.

Laqueur: (laughing) Especially in Paris! The fin de siècle, with its Belle Époque, was an incredibly optimistic time. Even the socialists felt that things were improving and that they would soon come to power, for the good of mankind. This brings us to an interesting insight: The years after the French defeat of 1870 and 1871 were years of depression, when Paul Verlaine wrote in a poem: "I am the Empire at the end of decadent days." Thirty years later, Paris was a city filled with energy and joie de vivre, with theaters, dance halls, cabaret, the Impressionists' salon, the 1889 World's Fair, the construction of the Eiffel Tower and Louis Blériot's flight across the English Channel. The French had rediscovered their optimism, and no one knows exactly why.

SPIEGEL: But that spells hope for Europe.

Laqueur: (laughing) Hope springs eternal. It's one of the most frequently quoted verses of English poetry. The poet was Alexander Pope, a decidedly cautious man. He had many enemies, and we know from his sister that he never went out into the street without his large, aggressive dog, and always with two loaded pistols in his bag.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Laqueur, we thank you for this interview.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

URL:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/eur ... 12837.html
The interviewer is also a learned person and asks good and informed questions to draw out the scholar's views. Unlike breaking news DDM in India.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by member_19686 »

Image

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Source: Chinese religion through Hindu eyes: a study in the tendencies of Asiatic mentality by Benoy Kumar Sarkar (1916)

http://archive.org/details/cu31924023204021
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Brihaspati, How much is Victorian prudery a relic of the Old Testament in the Bible?

I see strands in the American South & South West also.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RoyG »



Church attendance and family being decimated in America and the rise of Hispanics is going to severely dent the idea of what it means to be a westerner. This will definitely have a bearing on foreign policy.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Abhaey »

The Greatest Cover-Up in History ? How Imperial Britain's Racist India, Africa & China Narrative ‎Still Persists
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/abhaey- ... 21099.html
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Great job Abhaey. More power to you!!!
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Abhaey »

Thank you, Ramana! It's my duty to get this out there, and a mission to make as many people as possible understand these simple truths. The history is bad enough - the cover up is an enduring insult. Please spread the word as far as you can.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by svinayak »

Abhaey wrote:Thank you, Ramana! It's my duty to get this out there, and a mission to make as many people as possible understand these simple truths. The history is bad enough - the cover up is an enduring insult. Please spread the word as far as you can.
Great work.
Control of the colonial world and poor countries is from narratives. Control of the media and images of the various races, countries and narratives is the ultimate control over people and nations.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Abhaey »

Thank you, Acharya, and I fully agree!
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by RoyG »

220 indian languages have gone extinct in the past 50 years.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... 720601.cms
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by devesh »

^^^
it must be the oppressive work of Sanskrit.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by brihaspati »

ramana wrote:Brihaspati, How much is Victorian prudery a relic of the Old Testament in the Bible?

I see strands in the American South & South West also.
Actually, the Victorian prudery is probably a misnomer. There was a reaction against the regency style so-called debauchery and degeneracy, from a small minority of puritans - and this grew into a social resistance from the upcoming small entrepreneur small-capitalist segments [Puritan connection to early capitalist accumulation is not entirely without basis].

Victoria herself was quite avid and open about her sexuality and love for ahem ahem. In fact her widow-stage is peppered with a series of possible liaisons where certain types of men were constructed as "hosts" for Albert's "spirit" and hence ....

But Victorian society learned to compromise in between the neo-capitalist reaction and the old "degenerate" ways by an elaborate self-deception about morals etc. Also there was felt the need to have a tighter grip on society because it was being bombarded with whiffs from older, richer, and more intense societies now colonized under the imperial project. Some of the greatest perversions and depravity were practised under Victorian regimes but glossed over.

The prudery is probably a conscious tool of the state to protect the base of British social identity and power - more like a "harem". Hence it would be strongest in exactly those regions where the Brits were faced with strong and vibrant others with a richer understanding of sexuality, and ethics.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by brihaspati »

The Old Testament - from the Judaic side, is quite frank about the evolution of Judaic "prudery" over time. In many instance the original Hebrew versions I studied did not show much prudery either. The patriarchs were lusty fellows. Incest, extra-marital stuff, all are openly acknowledged. Passed off later as on special demand and instruction by the supra-human authority himself.

The early church was in need of the womens' support - and hence probably a strong component of monogamy was built in. It was also a means of controlling the dynasties - hence the church took a keen interest in fixing or breaking marriages of aristos. Apart from this, the only other moral obsessions seem to be "heresy". Both are about power over the elite.

Then when the power was consolidated after Christianity cleverly constituted itself into a European identity in counterposition to the "Islamic" then threatening - in the vacuum left by the collapse of the Roman empire militarily - and was successful in the reconquista and defence of Vienna : this control over elite took on the dimension of protecting also the interests and power basis of the elite.

Hence started the shenanigans about adultery on women's part, etc. Elite men - both inside and outside teh church however shared their women and passed them around : it was just more about chattelizing the women than about morals. Imposing greater moral hazards on the women made them more vulnerable and therefore more manipulable for collective elite sexual gratifications. Sade for example is vilified, but he was onlee paraphrasing the stuff that went on among then French elite.

In that sense the prudery was more a European innovation than directly traceable to Judaic. There is some evidence of an Islamic influence - but this is also a late one.
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Wah! We are truly blessed to tap your mind to answer our doubts. one can get a minimum four-five Phds in social sciences by documenting the above two posts.

Please do blog the above for further disemination.

Meanwhile
Atri wrote:
habal wrote:The ability of US to use and abuse Sunni muslims as their personal wardogs, at behest of the Saudis, is the most remarkable feat of the 20th & 21st century. On one hand the US has committed the worst human rights violations against this group, killed their leaders like Saddam & Gaddafi and continues with drone attacks against populations of Afghanistan & Pakistan and yet like attack dogs & cockerels these only turn against each other. It is the ultimate and most successful dumbing down of any human group in history, on the biggest scale.
very succinctly put. It is English parampara which US inherited after Atlantic charter...
ramana
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

Since Europe and the West explicitly claim to be Christian:
sanjaykumar wrote:White Christians have made the entire world feel ashamed of their personal identities including skin color, culture, and religion. He prays to a white jesus, adopts a western name, and denigrates his own people.


The Christian is innocent of the equitable principle in ethics-destruction of others' houses of worship has been a requirement of fulfilling one's Christian duty. However as mores change and a veneer of gentility is currently in polite fashion, genocide and abuses of humanity are to be subtly foisted onto the victims. Thus victims practice cults, Christians worship the Lord. And the Lord is jealous and vengeful. The Holocaust is not a generic term. It is a proper noun expropriated by Christians to describe the unfortunate troubles visited upon the other Judeo-Christian people.

Who wrought the visitation is never made explicit, the historical antecedents and inevitability are never made less nebulous. The Catholic Church's pathological hatred and the Protestants' psychotic paranoia, as in Martin Luther's On The Jews and their Lies are never acknowledged as emblematic of the love found in Christianity.

Thus Christians can never acknowledge that they in fact have been the perpetrators of terror and mayhem, of injustice and corruption. Because it is fundamentally not immoral to inflict terror on non- Christians. This concept becomes much more understandable and in fact may elicit some measure of sympathy when the history of internecine Christian bloodshed is examined. That is, what can one expect: This is how they treat each other.

I have scanned the popular and the somewhat more critical press in the Christian lands for some decades now; I have never spontaneously chanced upon the word requerimiento, let alone a discussion of the same. This is a legalistic term coined by the Church and is the essence of Christianity distilled.


Projection is a primitive form of paranoia. Projection also reduces anxiety by allowing the expression of the undesirable impulses or desires without becoming consciously aware of them; attributing one's own unacknowledged unacceptable/unwanted thoughts and emotions to another; includes severe prejudice, severe jealousy, hypervigilance to external danger, and "injustice collecting". It is shifting one's unacceptable thoughts, feelings and impulses within oneself onto someone else, such that those same thoughts, feelings, beliefs and motivations are perceived as being possessed by the other.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Agnimitra »

^^ Abhaey ji, are you the author? It is wonderful work, I hope the author keeps writing. I commend HuffPost for publishing these facts to educate their readers.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by Abhaey »

Yes Agnimitra Ji, I am. Thank you for the gracious words. Please share this with those who may also find it interesting - this is our (not just India's, but the world's) history - and we need to know about it.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by johneeG »

Abhaey wrote:Yes Agnimitra Ji, I am. Thank you for the gracious words. Please share this with those who may also find it interesting - this is our (not just India's, but the world's) history - and we need to know about it.
Just started reading it saar. You are correct saar, this is world history and needs to be told and retold. Congratulations for taking it up. And all the best for the future works. :)
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by ramana »

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/indi ... ?prtpage=1
'Earliest European migrants were in the lower echelons of society in India'
The writer has posted comments on this article

AMARDEEP BANERJEE

AMARDEEP BANERJEE, TNN | Sep 14, 2013, 07.51 PM IST

'Earliest European migrants were in the lower echelons of society in India'
Professor Harris recently spoke at Delhi's Indian Habitat Centre on the subject.
Professor Jonathan Gil Harris's latest project promises to break certain stereotypes. His forthcoming book, The First Firangis, is the story of early European migrants in India, many of whom arrived in the country after fleeing their native lands, where they were poor and persecuted. To be published next year, the book describes how many of them 'became Indian', adopting local customs and traditions. It also talks about how these migrants occupied low positions in the Indian society and served under Indian masters, challenging the dominant colonial-imperial narrative of the relationship between Indians and Europeans. He recently spoke at Delhi's Indian Habitat Centre on the subject. Amardeep Banerjee caught up with him for a conversation. Below are excerpts from the interview:

You say many of the earliest Europeans came to India after fleeing their home countries.

Many of them who came in the 16th and 17th centuries were lone wolves and not a part of organizations like the British East India Company or the Portguese Estado da India. They came here because they were escaping bad situations at home. Some of them were religious dissidents: this period was a time of massive religious upheaval in Europe. And it wasn't a deliberate decision to come to India. They were often completely at the mercy of whatever accidents might have blown them here. Some of them ended up here because there were merchant ships headed this way that they were able to hitch a ride on. Others were trying to escape economic hardship.

What was the relationship between Indians and Europeans at the time?

You find extremes of response to these firangis. On the one hand, they were regarded as absolutely beyond the pale by caste Hinduism. In Muslim communities, they stood a better chance, in particular if they converted into Islam. But there were all sorts of local trans-cultural communities that they could be integrated into like the Firangian troops in the Deccan Sultanate. There were also communities of travelling physicians which were very multicultural, with not only Europeans but Arabs, Turks, Muslim hakims and Hindu Siddhavaidyas. There were Europeans in the harems as well. Some fakirs outside the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti in Ajmer were foreigners. 8)

Were there many such European migrants?

There were lots of them. There number was enormous in the Mughal army. Akbar had made this a policy, and it was a shrewd one, because the Europeans knew something about how to handle artillery. Also in the Deccan sultanates, there were entire divisions called the Firangian, comprising European and in some places African, Georgian and Armenian soldiers. They were reputed to be particularly good soldiers, but they also got into trouble a lot -- you'll find reports of how these firangis misbehaved and din't take orders and were drunk the first thing in the morning. Many of them found employment as physicians. And even at more humble levels, you find firangis finding service with Indian masters. Which completely turns everything on its head - you think traditionally of firangis like in Dalrymple's White Mughals being lords expecting to be served by Indians. It was the other way around often in this period.

How exactly are the Europeans you describe different from Dalrymple's White Mughals?

The power dynamic is different. I loved Dalrymple's book -- the tales of these British men who came to India and fell in love with India and Indian women, and to a certain extent became Indians. But their positions of power were never compromised. These people who went native nonetheless retained high offices in the machinery of the British colonialism. But that's not the tale of the firangis I describe, who came very poor. Whose experience was in some ways not unlike the experience of Bangladeshi refugees to India now looking to escape poverty and persecution. Most of these firangis were very much in the lower echelons of society here. They probably did better than they would have done in Europe, but they were struggling all the time.

How did you come across these stories?

One has to read the archives somewhat obliquely. Because the stories of these foreigners weren't written in traditional form - they didn't write diaries or have biographers. Often they are just traces, ripples, in other narratives. So you've got to read these other narratives in the hope that you might find a sort of disturbance, the vapour trail of the story of one of these people. One such vapour trail, for example, exists in the history of the Mughals written by Niccolo Manucci. As a teenager, he was accosted by two bandits on the road to Delhi dressed in Indian clothes who said they were in Shah Jahan's army. And it turned out that they were in fact a pair of Englishmen named Thomas Roch and Raben Simitt, or probably Reuben Smith.

Your idea differs from what people generally think of the relationship between Indians and Europeans, which was one of colonial masters and their subjects.

I've encountered a bit of resistance from some people who find it very hard to give up the notion that any European who was in India was basically laying the foundations for the empire. And while we can't deny the history of colonialism and need to be critical of it, to read history proleptically and to assume what happens in 1500 is necessarily laying the foundations for what happens in 1750 and 1857 I think is a mistake. There are certain things that happen in 1500 that might contribute to what will happen in the future, but not everything does. To a certain extent, I see what I am doing as a kind of subaltern history of the firangi. There's been this great movement here in India called subaltern studies. But I think there's also this subaltern history we can have not just of Europe but also European-Indian contact, that doesn't quite align with the dominant colonial-imperial trajectories.
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Re: Non-Western Worldview

Post by SwamyG »

Fvking Awesome video. Gurumurthy lays it out targets the Indian Constitution, the makers of it, the European State - its history, Individualism, Modernism, family, society, philosophy, legal anthropology, law ...ityadi.

MUST WATCH. MUST WATCH. MUST WATCH.



And he paints the exact picture that I had created sometime ago and linked in BRF. I have to pat myself on the back :rotfl:, for drawing the below picture some time back. My observations seems to align with the thoughts of intellectuals like S.Gurumurthy. The thick lines indicate stronger relations, and the thin lines indicate weakening relations.

Image
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