Many see it fit to blame every instance of brutality and savagery by "the west" on everyone, anyone and everything associated with "the west". The west itself is just a loose criteria coverring 100s of criteria and cultures from different times, places and the billions of people through history associated with it so the stupidity of tarring the entire west with the same brush does not need explanation, yet the same people who tar the west often claim to be opposing racism, imperialism, oppression and genocide all of which require collectivism.
I believe it depends on what people learn from history, a person can either emotionally fixate on a few events in the past or they can state "humans are untrustworthy, precautions and safeguards must be put in place to prevent atrocities from occurring again in the future" in a calm objective logical manner.
[Rant] It goes further than the extremists, there is an obsession with seperating "the west" from everything else, philosophy is organised by continents and "the west", if someone uses a lot of western technology they are westernised, there is western medicine and traditional medicine even though doctors and patients only care what it does. There are people who try to be as non-western as possible so they can think to themselves "yeah, im sticking it to da man!" and others who try to be as western as possible so they can say "im preserving my culture which is under attack by political correctness!". People are polarised between those who are multidiversitolerant enough to celebrate the embracement of cultureligiouspiritualities that artificicapitamaterialist "westerners" are too square to understand and those who have good western values like repressed homosexuality surfacing the form of severe neuroses and believe deviation from the norm is fine as long as it is one of the socially acceptable forms of "deviation from the norm" that you see on TV. [/Rant]
I suppose it cuts straight to the heart of what we most want not to see and admit about modern technologically advanced life.
That many feel more alienated and less "happy" than less materially based periods in our history.
They hold up a mirror to us in which we see our obese, drug fuelled drink fuelled debt fuelled vapid lifestyles and we don’t like to see what they show us.
They talk about the immorality and lack of emotional depth and we know they are right.
They preach about our lack of respect for ourselves and the planet we live on and we know they are right.
Maybe we are attacking them for daring to say the things we dare not, say or feel.
Originally posted by Rowan22: I suppose it cuts straight to the heart of what we most want not to see and admit about modern technologically advanced life.
Originally posted by Rowan22: I suppose it cuts straight to the heart of what we most want not to see and admit about modern technologically advanced life.
That it's built on blood, you mean.
As if the rest of the world isn't
-------------------- If you feel like you're always in the dark - switch the lights on!
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill
It's pretty obvious there's something wrong with you and that you have a pathology of some sort when your argument has been reduced to something as arbitrary as "technology is built on blood".
Hate is often the result of insecurity, when you perceive something threatens what you deem important you grow to hate it. What insecurity do groups that hate the west have in common?
Originally posted by zwaraaaa: What insecurity do groups that hate the west have in common?
An inability to accept that, just maybe, they are responsible for many of their own woes. Always better to blame and vilify outsiders than face the bitter truth of the reality.
Then why are people so quick to blame the west? It seems a bit arbitrary. I don't understand the psychology behind that at all. Is there are more formal study of this kind of behaviour?
Posted by zwaraaaa. Then why are people so quick to blame the west? It seems a bit arbitrary. I don't understand the psychology behind that at all. Is there are more formal study of this kind of behaviour?
The extract below is not essentially a study by a psychologist as such. It is an extract from Paul Levy – The Madness of George Bush” which answers your questions quite well IMO. Paul Levy is massively influenced by the work of the brilliant psychologist Carl G Jung.
It is not that the threat of terrorism is unreal, but that Bush's policies in dealing with terrorism are actually fueling the fire. The way Bush is fighting terrorism is in actuality the very act invoking and creating more of it in the first place. Bush is so dissociated from the darkness within himself that he splits off from it, projects it outside of himself, and then tries to destroy it. [U]He is fighting against his own shadow, a battle that can never be won[/U]. Bush’s inner process, because of the position of power he finds himself in, is being dreamed up and played out on the world stage.
The sooner we are prepared to look within ourselves and acknowledge the “dark” side of our own psyche the sooner we will be able to better deal with these elements in the collective psyche which we call "society" in a more tempered and revolutionary manner.
The west points their finger east and the East points their finger West…the psychosis is exactly the same…projection…based in an unwillingness to accept within themselves the reality that darkness is a part of every human psyche. It’s not about avoidance…like the ludicrous story of the Catholic church wanting to ban Harry Potter…it’s about self acceptance because if one believes in the “oneness” of being we simply have to accept the devil and God are two faces of the same coin…
Furry muff…I accept how the media would have only but loved to distort this interview and I duly retract my comments about “the catholic Church” made above.
This does however provide evidence that the then Cardinal Ratzinger and present Pontiff of the Catholic church is indeed unwilling to accept area’s of his own psyche akin to Bush and Binladen etc…
I do not think that Ratzinger fights his own dark side nearly as much as the Bush and BinLaden types in the world, probably only as much as the average person like you and I however…he is a man of much power within the world like Bush and Bin Laden and individuals like these have such a massive responsibility to the collective human conscience.
IMO these individuals live their lives on a certain path defined by their individual choices just like everyone else however, it is a path that no mere mortal could in truth ever properly weigh up to…it’s kinda like the bigger you are the harder you fall type of archetype I’m getting at here…and we ALL fall at some stage.
