There is a self-hatred in the West that can be considered only as something pathological. The West attempts in a praiseworthy manner to open itself completely to the comprehension of external values, but it no longer loves itself; it now only sees what is despicable and destructive in its own history, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure there. — Pope Benedict XVIImportant reading...M-Day: The Invasion of the West.
Then, there's this, ongoing in institutions of "education" throughout the West: Shakespeare is evil because was white and Eurocentric.
Is the waning of the West inevitable — and deserved? The West does seem to be filled with self-loathing.
Beyond death....nothing is inevitable.....neither the supremacy nor the waning of the west. The balance is tilted with the struggle [or the lack of] to maintain freedom. We've been losing this battle for years.
ReplyDeletePaging Oswald Spengler, Mr. Spengler, please pick up any courtesy phone.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why you would deem Spengler any less valid than Howard Zinn.
DeleteLook at the picture of this ghoulish collection of odd-balls, delusional fools, self-important grandees and insane asylum escapees.
ReplyDeleteFrance is still burying its dead from the most recent terrorist attacks, and "world leaders" gather in Paris to declare war on... the earth's climate...
Western Civilization reached the apex of culture and reason, and now we're sliding down the other side...
Creative destruction is a key element in capitalism. The West, unlike many "other" cultures, seeks to "surpass" itself.
ReplyDeleteAnd as Oswald Spengler has stated, "The West has a Faustian instinct."
I only made it through the first 5 minutes, or so, of the video. Does she think that we would be better off if we became more like Africa? I don't! Perhaps she needs to relocate to Africa.
ReplyDeleteIsn't self-loathing a core component of Christianity? We're all sinners unworthy of heaven nothing we can do can save ourselves blah blah....
ReplyDeleteMy, my, Beamish of all people hits one on the screws.
DeleteThe Walrus and the Carpenter come to mind.
DeleteAny oysters left?
DeleteIn my view, self-hatred is contrary to the teachings of Jesus Christ, Who said: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
DeleteIMO, this presupposes that one has regard for oneself. Loving oneself doesn't presuppose selfishness, but does presuppose understanding that all of us are flawed.
Societal Oedipus Complex: The desire to kill the masculine brutishness, cold logic, and harsh illumination of human nature that brought our society to its pinnacle; coupled with a concomitant desire to fall into the soft, feminine embrace of heart and soul, goodness, arts, nurturing, ambiguity.
ReplyDeleteBut alas, you cannot have one without the other, and like Yin and Yang, masculine and feminine each contains qualities of the other, and anyone who believe women to be the weaker sex is a fool. You cannot escape judgment, men cry, and the feminine can calculate just as coldly as the masculine.
Off my philosophical flight of fancy...
ReplyDeleteHere is the crux: Vapid statement like the teacher's are easy to make and they cost the author nothing.
No, I think that's she's "racializing" culture. Europeans are exogamous. Most other races are endogamous. We look "outward" where they look "inward" to reproduce, perpetuate and extend their "races".
Delete"Helen of Troy" (The Iliad) is the model... to capture a bride from "outside" the tribe.
We see it as an advantage to appropriate the customs of other tribes. They see it as a betrayal to their own.
The didn't call the continent Europa for nothing. ;)
DeleteMulticulturalism suspends the reality of the jouissance in the Other, and replaces this kernel with an ascepticized folklorist entity. In this particular teacher's eyes though, she associates her own racial-cultural jouissance with something that need to be eliminated instead of folkloricized. And so she "castrates" Western culture by eliminating the white males.
Delete...Much as Kronos castrated Ouranos, and Zeus castrated Kronos (in Robert Grave's account).
DeleteThe "fear" of the "Other's" jouissance is inherent to all races and cultures. In the teacher's case, she fear's her own culture's jouissance (to "master" and "enslave" all 'others') more than any subsequent mythologized "union" of cultures.
DeleteYou want to win, you APPRORIATE. Just ask Ward Baker, head of the NSRC.
DeleteIt's all about covering the Trump bet, now...
DeleteFJ,
DeleteYep!
I'm actually enjoying the way that this race for the White House has shaken things up.
I'd be more concerned about the teacher's admission that she gets bored by Shakespeare's language. I assume she can teach the "African oral tradition" translated to modern English.
ReplyDeleteWhy that would be more relevant than say A Bend in the River or Things Fall Apart I don't know but I wouldn't expect her to handle works on colonialism with much insight either.
Seems a tempest in a tea pot.
She should teach The Autobiography of Malcolm X and really force the issue.
But the Autobiography of Malcolm X doesn't follow the multiculturalist agenda. He call's himself 'X" not to glorify his "African roots", but to boldly state he's "something new". That alone would disqualify him from all multiculturalist mythologies.
DeleteDuck,
DeleteFYI...I have read Things Fall Apart. A good read with simplistic language on a topic worth pondering.