CUTURES AND CIVILIZATIONS

 For a culture or a civilization to survive and flourish, one thing that seems quite indispensable to me is for that culture or civilization to have fairly lively ways of criticizing itself. Let's be honest here: human beings do not have it in themselves to perfect either one. That can only be done by working under divine direction which can, at least to some extent, be discerned by how any society treats those on its bottom and on its periphery. That's how this writer perceives God working. He starts at the bottom and the outer edges and works upward and inward. And God knows the quality of the human material with which He works, better than we ourselves know.
But to the point. As we look across the globe at cultures and civilizations, what do we see? Not sure about primitive, pre-civilizational cultures. On the one hand, when civilization touches them that very often breaks the 'tribe'. But, if the tribe knows and can stay close to its life-sources, it can often adapt and reconstitute itself quickly. Being small and close to the ground has its uses. Maybe that's why the ancient Israelites were, and the state of Israel and Am Yisrael worldwide today are, 'the smallest of nations' or at least among them. Collapsed civilizations, being larger and more artificial, tend to stay collapsed for longer.
What sort of self-critical mechanisms did Japan have before the West introduced first newspapers and then electronic media to them? Indeed, what did any Far Eastern culture have in that respect, including that civilizational Ancient Of Days, China? Ricardo, I may be asking you further about this. Tibet?
What about the ancient cultures of India? As Islam is still--again, on the edges and maybe on the bottom--feebly trying to recover from its intellectual suicide committed eight centuries ago, it tends to stifle self-critical mechanisms and as long as that continues, the Arab/Muslim world will stay at or near the bottom of healthy and prosperous societies, it's hardly worth mentioning here. Islamism will keep these societies at or near the bottom as it is extremely hostile to any kind of questioning. And that high hostility is something Red and Green have in common. All foolosophies which have an 'elect' or 'historical vanguard' or 'superior race' are hostile to questions and criticism.
Sub-Saharan Africa? Ubuntu is probably great at cultivating fellow-feeling and related connections, but, again, where are the self-critical traditions and mechanisms? And the native cultures and civilizations of the Western Hemisphere and Oceania? What do they have in that respect?
I look forward to what I hope and believe will be some intense and varied reactions to what I now write: the one civilization with the most vigorous self-critical mechanisms, stemming from two societies with lively self-critical traditions along with the creative tension between the two in which Western civilization was gestated and born, is indeed the remarkably adaptable conglomerate of cultures we know as Western civilization.
The two cultures I mean above are that of ancient Greece (Athens) and ancient Israel (Jerusalem). Both were fed by Egypt and Mesopotamia but they were differently shaped. Athens put a premium on accurate empirical observation; Jerusalem emphasized fidelity to divine revelation. In a way, Jerusalem had a bit more with which to work in the also-creative tension between the letter of the Law and the Spirit of that Law proclaimed by the Prophets. And both had highly vital self-critical traditions. Both of which were absorbed by the nations of Christendom. Here, too, becoming an arm of state power generally stifles the heart of both religion and science. But the state mandating items science tells us are necessary for the health (including the ecological health) of that society is quite opposite from the state trying to use science and/or religion for its own ends.
No, Western civilization wasn't born knowing it all in terms of human liberty. No culture or civilization is. Finding out more and changing society with the new knowledge is what progress is all about, right?
Yes, we also made mistakes inasmuch as we could have learned more from the cultures we conquered. And had we done so, we would've been REALLY different from all the other civilizations on the globe!
But look around the globe: is any civilization, has any civilization been, as self-critical as are the cultures of the West? And does any cultural conglomeration have the same capacity for expansion and bringing in new cultures with minimal damage to those cultures, at least initially? Think about that.
So, sons and daughters of the West of every skin color, know you are heirs to something truly uniquely beneficial--and be proud of it! It was only three centuries before enough Christian consciences caught up with human greed! Islam seems to have no such mechanism; the fourteen-centuries-old trans-Sahara slave trade continues even now under the law's radar! Would India or China have a like understanding of human dignity that could also end the slave trade and chattel slavery? If anyone knows, please let us know!
And in upholding our self-critical traditions, let your criticisms be truthfully informed! Watch out for those who have few or no facts backing up their attempts to tug your heart-strings!
As long as we remain a vigorously self-critical civilization we will be a growing and vital group of cultures. Never forget that!