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C00002 00002	%wester.2[w88,jmc]	Western Technology and Western Culture
C00012 00003	\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ \number\year\ by John McCarthy}
C00013 00004	include quote from Susan Sontag
C00014 00005	\section{Western Culture and Civilization as Required Courses}
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%wester.2[w88,jmc]	Western Technology and Western Culture
\input memo.tex[let,jmc]
\title{WESTERN TECHNOLOGY --- WORLD TECHNOLOOGY, WESTERN CIVILIZATION --- WORLD CIVILIZATION}

	It's a commonplace that today we have a world technology
that is a descendant of Western technology.  Before 1500
non-Western countries contributed a lot to the technological base
of Western technology, and today many non-Western countries are
very good at world technology.  However, for about 500 years,
between 1450 and 1950, almost all significant technological
advances were made in the West.  Also it isn't very controversial
that the reason Western technology won out is because it was
better.  The ships carried more goods faster and more safely, the
guns worked better, fewer babies died, literacy became universal.
It is also non-controversial that today this technology is no
longer the property of Western countries.

	I will argue that the same is substantially true of
culture and the institutions of civilization though not to the
same extent as in the case of technology.  There is a world culture
today that is mostly a descendant of Western culture.  Moreover,
the superiority of Western culture and civilization contributed
to Western political pre-eminence almost as much as did the
superiority of Western technology.  The use of the word
``superiority'' rather than something softer is intentional.

	Today the inheritance of Western culture and civilization
is not the property of Western countries.  In many of its aspects
it is the basis of a world culture, and this needs to be
evaluated in each area separately.  Thus the Western music
presently dominates the world, while Western cooking traditions
don't.  Chinese cooking has penetrated the West to a greater
extent than any Western cuisine has penetrated China.  Indian
cooking penetrated Britain more than British cooking penetrated
India, although probably the British tradition of food service
won out.  The purpose of these examples is advance the idea
that Western culture is winning where it is better and not
winning where it isn't.

	Most important is the fact political electoral democracy
has turned out to just as much of a necessity for a decent life
in China, the Soviet Union and Burma as it is in the West.

	An early example of a cultural superiority contributing
to political domination is the conquest of Mexico by Cortez with
500 men.  The decisive battles were fought when the
Conquistadores were out of ammunition for their firearms and
using Aztec cotton armor that had proved superior to their metal
armor.  Sixteenth century Spanish Catholicism had many faults,
and has long been intellectually and morally obsolete.  It was
intolerant as shown by the Inquisition, and moreover, its
adherents often violated its moral precepts.

	Nevertheless, the Spanish victory was substantially a
consequence of Spanish Catholicism's intellectual and moral
superiority to Aztec religion and ideology.  In the first place,
it proclaimed universal religious and moral principles.  These
principles were asserted to be applicable to Mexican Indians just
as well as to whites.  In particular, it proclaimed that human
sacrifice was universally wrong, not merely that it wasn't the
Spanish custom.  These principles and the religious organizations
that promulgated them enabled the Spanish to gain
allies and to gain converts.  (I don't suppose that I would avoid
charges of being pro-imperialist even without saying anything
about the results of the Spanish conquest, one way or the other).
Actually, I think that both the establishment of the Spanish
empire and its overthrow after 300 years were advances for the
Latin American peoples.

	The superiority of Western civilization over Asian
civilizations seems to be real though not so overwhelming.  The
idea of democracy is Western, but its application to non-Western
countries only began in the late nineteenth century, so that
can't account for the earlier Western cultural superiority.  One
paradigmatic example might be the British suppression of {\it
sati} in 1829.  This is the Hindu custom of a widow throwing
herself on her husband's funeral pyre.  Its suppression was
triggered by Indian widows fleeing to the British to avoid the
enforced suicide.  This illustrates that the British already had
a reputation in India as people to whom one could flee to avoid
some kinds of injustice.  Before suppressing {\it sati} the
British argued about whether the evil of the custom justified
interfering with Indian religion.

	Here are some of the items which the West has contributed
to world culture and civilization.

	1. In politics.  The idea of democracy and many ideas
about human rights.  The idea of national rights and of
international law.  The idea of political struggle for goals
rather than just ideas of how rulers can be virtuous.

	The idea that slavery was immoral was followed by
the suppression of the slave trade and then of slavery itself.
This required a civil war in the United States.  Perhaps the
American Civil War was the first war that was even partially
about the rights of third parties, i.e. the northern whites
fought the southern whites at least partially about the rights of
southern blacks.

	The idea of a written constitution is American in origin
but owes much to the British tradition that began with the
Magna Carta in 1215.

	2. Harmony and counterpoint in music.  This has
penetrated all countries, and Seiji Ozawa is just as much an heir
of Beethoven as any Austrian.  Whether the Western musical
advances have any necessary relation to other cultural advances,
I have no idea.

	3. The novel as a form of literature.

	4. Analytic philosophy.  All other important philosophies
reached dead ends in which they are still stuck.

	5. The business corporation.

	6. The idea of progress in science, technology and
human affairs.
\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ \number\year\ by John McCarthy}
\smallskip\noindent{This draft of WESTER.2[W88,JMC]\ TEXed
on \jmcdate\ at \theTime}
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include quote from Susan Sontag

I realize these remarks are controversial, and I suppose that some
participants in the Western Culture would agree with the following
expletive (overheated effusion) from Susan Sontag.

The white race is the cancer of history.  It is the white
race and it alone --- its ideologies and inventions ---
which eradicates autonomous civilizations whereever it
spreads, which has upset the ecological balance of the
planet, which now threatens the very existence of life
itself.  - Susan Sontag

Include a reference to a Spencerean tragedy.
affirmative action?
all cultures are equivalent?
\section{Western Culture and Civilization as Required Courses}

	As you see, the author finds great virtues in Western
culture and and civilization.  However, it doesn't follow that
requiring the study of these subjects will instill corresponding
virtues in college students.  Maybe it doesn't even instill them
in the people who teach the courses.