Well, this is, first of all, racist. He doesn't want to use the Spanish term because he thinks it's "really not fair to saddle Spanish culture with the term." But it IS apparently fair to saddle Arabic culture with the term. Considering that Arabia was the birthplace of Algebra and underwent a renaissance that in large part made the European Renaissance possible, no, I don't think that's very fair at all.
But even if I let this racist term go through, what is Thar, exactly? A good deal of time is spent talking about how it isn't various things-- honor, bushido-- but it isn't ever defined. Instead I get this list of things that are associated with the "mentality," a list that, among other things, describes Tokugawa Japan perfectly. As a side note, anyone who thinks Japan's is a culture of Bushido does not know Japanese history. The Bushido code was written by a samurai who never saw combat, whose father never saw combat, and whose grandfather, in likelihood, never saw combat. The Bushido myth is a propaganda piece for convincing daimyos to keep their samurai on the payroll.
So we have a clearly racist document using a nonsense term to describe nothing. What, exactly, is this?
It is a commentary on a way of life usually practiced by Arabs, but also commonly found in other places in the world. It is not a blanket statement about any race, therefore your charges of racism are total BS. You can be a member of a race and participate or not in a particular culture. Race is not culture. It's not a one-to-one relationship. To say that it is, ironically enough, racist. People are free agents and can choose to be anything they want. Cultures are fair game for all sorts of criticism -- we are really good at criticizing our own culture. Thank goodness we live in a world where criticism of culture is encouraged.
I don't like how the original author failed to distinguish between Arabian culture and Muslim religion. Though they are intertwined, there are non-Arabian Muslim cultures as well. To add to DanielBMarkham's comment, though, Arabic culture centers around the language, not the ethnicity. Some of the original author's arguments are evidence of Muslim rather than Arabian origin. Lastly, just to throw more confusion into the issue, some of the Sufi sages were tortured to death by their Muslim bretherens as heretics, and they died with the same kind of aplomb the way the Buddhist monks were tortured to death. (Not all Arabs sacrifice themselves in hopes of attaining 72 virgins).
The telling point would be to find a non-Arabian culture that encourages 'thar'. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of an example off the top of my head involving an non-Arabian culture.
The original author also vaguely discusses the rise of 'thar' culture sprouting on the internet without giving any specifics. I've been to forums where where people flame each other for sport. I remember the occasional tiffs here, and people trashing Reddit. I know Digg and YouTube comments are full of inanities. Not to mention the flames on blog posts and regular news articles when someone gets upset but clearly did not thoroughly read the article in question. It often seem to closely track the maturity level of the people involved: immature human beings don't know how to set good personal boundaries, whatever culture that might be.
"The telling point would be to find a non-Arabian culture that encourages 'thar'. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of an example off the top of my head involving an non-Arabian culture."
I don't have first-hand experience, so obviously I could be wrong, and if I've mischaracterized the culture, correct me. But here're a few points I've noticed:
1.) The obsession with "bling" and personal status through high-priced consumer goods. I've read that it's poor urban kids buying those $200 Nikes, and then marketers hope that their tastes will filter down into middle-class American kids. The street kids on the subway often have more stylish clothes and accessories than rich white kids. Remember Ludacris's song "Glamorous"?
2.) Anti-intellectualism. I have a couple friends who teach in inner-city school system. When black kids do well in school, they're taunted and teased by their classmates for "acting white". There's a strong cultural pressure not to stick out or excel.
3.) Gang warfare and revenge killings. There was a shooting a block away from my workplace a couple of years ago. A few gang members had apparently been slighted, so they got in a car, hunted down the rival gang member responsible, and shot him in a drive-by.
I think there's a bit of bias as an outsider looking in, so here are my comments, having been a bit closer involved in "black culture," as it were.
1) Obsession with personal status isn't one of the points of Thar, at least not as expressed by the collecting of property. And black kids aren't alone in buying clothes that outwardly indicate their high price, although they might be alone in buying rainbow colored AF1's.
2) Anti-intellectualism is an interesting point which I'll grant does show itself in middle and high school aged kids. I think if you ask those kids (or their parents) if education is important, however, I think they'll all say yes. I haven't actually tried it, but I've never met a high school dropout (of any race) who didn't regret it. Inner city schools are filled with kids who, by high school, have often given up on themselves, and the "acting white" expressions are sort of a outward expression of that frustration. Rather than muddle this too much with socioeconomic rhetoric, I'll just say that one look at MySpace and another at Facebook demonstrates there are plenty of kids steeped deep in hiphop culture who are getting their four year degrees.
3) Gang warfare among blacks is probably comparable in degree to that seen with the Mafia and various Hispanic gangs. I don't think your standard Italians, Hispanics, or black people are gang banging, no matter how hiphop or "urban" they are.
>The telling point would be to find a non-Arabian culture that encourages 'thar'. Unfortunately, I have not yet thought of an example off the top of my head involving an non-Arabian culture.
As you point out, the term Arabian is more about language than ethnicity. I'm probably wrong, but don't tribal, violence-based political-religious movements possess these same cultural traits wherever they are found, such as Polynesian countries? One could argue that in the case of extreme Islamism this is Arabic culture seeping into other areas, but Polynesians are certainly not Arabic -- or any ethnicity that could be considered Arabic. So race or geography has little to do with it.
But I agree -- the article meandered a bit and one could draw various conclusions. I couldn't see anything racist, though. Seems like any more, people stick the racism label onto anything that might be critical of any sort of generic category of people. I guess if we say fat people are happy we would be accused of racism. It's just a poor choice of words, that's all my comment meant to point out.
Hmm, "tribal, violence-based political-religious movements." Going that way though, we could start pulling in examples from the Crusades, witchhunts ... I don't remember if they matched all of the factors:
- Restrictions on the free flow of information.
- The subjugation of women.
- Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
- The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
- Domination by a restrictive religion.
- A low valuation of education.
- Low prestige assigned to work.
Given that, Dark-Ages European cultures matches most if not all of those traits.
As a tangential note, Malcolm Gladwell, author of Tipping Point and Blink wrote about these guys who were able to figure things out from people because they have studied the way people make faces. They categorized facial expressions. They were able to distinguish between two South American tribe based photographs of the individuals within each of the tribes. One tribe is very friendly. The other is not -- includes a lot of the attributes listed in 'Spotting the Losers'.
The caveat is that face reading like this is a specialty that requires a lot of training. Would be interesting to write software that can suggest cultural influences though, then run it through say, all the American news footage and see what kind of subcultures we have here.
I'm not about to defend the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition! However there are certain differences between say, Europe in the year 1200 and any random warrior nomadic tribe of the same time. I keep getting back to private property rights, which I believe is the foundation of all western civilization. Also the religious insistence on personal responsibility (as opposed to blind submission) was nascent even at that point. And the Magna Carta showed that the idea of governance being a two way street. These themes bloomed into the Reformation, which kicked off the 100 years war, which got us modern secularism, which enhanced the renaissance and set the stage for all those miracles that happened in the last 400 years or so. I would tell you to wait for the movie, but it would be something like a 200-hour serial or something just for the highlights.
You hit on an interesting startup topic, though. Is it possible to algorithmically determine cultures and sub-cultures by biometrics, writing analysis, web sites visited, or some other factor? Aside from the big brother implications, there's actually a real market need -- people who belong to the same "clans" usually like spending time together on the web. Any way to make that easier should have value. In the information age, it's very possible that people belong to some sub-culture that they are not even aware of.
Maybe I'm a complete idiot, but you are not making any sense to me at all.
Nazi Germany was a culture, a society. It was a brutal, horrible thing that should be despised for the many faults it had. Mongol society was a barbaric, violent, awful society and culture that should be shunned. Paleolithic tribal societies were also brutish, superstitious, harsh, and murderous towards themselves and outsiders. Many were also cannibals.
How is this in any way disparaging Germans, Mongolians, or people who may have come from a tribal background?
E-gad, man. We have to be able to make comparisons of how various things work. Some cultures work better than others. Sure, stupid people will extrapolate that to say that the _people_ in those cultures are good or bad. But stupid people do stupid things. That's no reason at all to give up on our duty as sentient beings to make comparisons and judgments. We don't give up living in houses simply because some stupid people burn them down. Why would we give up the Enlightenment because some cultures never grasped it?
I can't comment at all on the Nazis, as there is too much negative connotation to argue that effectively.
However:
>Mongol society was a barbaric, violent, awful society and culture that should be shunned.
Bullshit. Mongol society was different than western society. They had a tremendously effective military, but they were also known for tremendous religious tolerance, placing an importance on education and arts (teachers, lawyers and artists paid no taxes). It had basically no crime within the empire.
They built the largest empire the world has ever seen. If you honestly think they did that by walking around like jackbooted thugs, you sir are a fool.
Of course, they weren't perfect, but neither are we. To say something like the Mogols were "a barbaric, violent, awful society and culture that should be shunned" while blissfully ignoring the faults of our own culture is woefully ignorant and arrogant at the same time.
>Why would we give up the Enlightenment because some cultures never grasped it?
I'm not asking you to. I suggesting that the Enlightenment is but one path to the destination.
The Mongols were not barbaric in the sense of being disorganized. They were barbaric in their cruelty. So whether they were jackbooted thugs depends on your definition of jackbooted thugs. Which is a pretty silly position to be in.
I would argue that this discussion has now reached such a point of vagueness that for all you know you could be saying the same things, and that since any actual disagreement between you is smaller than the (enormous) imprecision of each of your statements, all that's left driving this is your animosity to one another.
Sure, if we take the accounts of medieval writers faced with looking at the tip of their spears. My point is that the same point of view would hold true for a Gaul facing the cruelty of the Roman legions. Neither representation is entirely accurate.
Being that the advancement of both commerce, trade and wealth under Rome and Khan are very similar, and collectively in fact point to the successes of warrior societies, the post author's point is rather shaky. To suggest that empires that lasted longer than any modern democracy has are backward and unstable is simply wrong.
The main issue I have is that we seem to forget that we're still dominated by a society (the US) that is very much a product of the warrior ethos. To say that we are somehow superior to an Arab world that still practices an outward version of "Thar" while completely disregarding that we ourselves have done the same - nay, actually denying it - is so shortsighted that it can only be described as racist.
I'm saying that having tens of thousands of people show up on horseback ready to invade Vienna isn't exactly a calling card for Mongol politeness. Sure the Mongols did good things! Tell you what? Let's take apart the good and bad things and compare and contrast them with other cultures, shall we? And maybe, after doing that for a while, we can come up with a list of attributes that make cultures better or worse. Which is exactly we started this conversation. LOL
"Of course they weren't perfect, but neither are we." Okey dokey. Do you understand that such statements completely alleviate the speaker of any obligation to continue analysis? Ted Bundy had a lot of faults, but who among us is perfect? Jack The Ripper may have done some bad things, but aren't we all flawed in some way? Cannibals ate your parents, but hey, don't we all get a little hungry now and then? I could go on, but I honestly don't mean to have fun at your expense.
Yes, there are good and bad things anywhere. Our duty as intelligent people is to take apart what works and what doesn't and keep building on what works. Not to just cast an unfocused eye on the world and say something like "looks all about the same to me. We all are in our journeys on our own paths." -- these sentiments, while sounding great, are not helpful to either us or other people.
I'm not talking about enlightenment, I'm talking about The Enlightenment -- the awakening in the west that things like freedom, rights, rationalism, and an open society were prerequisites to change and growth, and that societies that changed and grew were happier places to be. The world keeps changing -- it is not something that is up for debate. Societies/Cultures that embrace certain values are able to change along with it. Those that do not are not. It's been that way since recorded history.
>the awakening in the west that things like freedom, rights, rationalism, and an open society were prerequisites to change and growth, and that societies that changed and grew were happier places to be.
Is that what you tell the people of Iraq? How about Iran? How about Nicaragua? Vietnam?
You're comparing living inside an empire to being conquered by one and have the gall to suggest that you are morally superior?
Instead of making my day, you've got me crying. For someone who speaks highly of the Enlightenment, you sure have a long way to go in understanding the principles.
I'm still not following you. Aside from the fact that you have no idea where I live, What do you mean that I'm comparing living inside an empire? So when America was formed, and the country basically consisted of a bunch of farmers, what was your excuse then? They were the same ideas then. Or how about ancient Greece? Never was the huge world empire that, say Britain was in the 1800s.
And I never said I was morally superior to anybody. Come now, think about this. I said that certain attributes work better than certain other ones. Cultures who have more or less of these attributes or more or less effective at very important things. It has nothing to do with me or any country or culture that I am a part of. In fact, that's the whole point! That those attributes exist outside of the cultures themselves. Isn't it great that we can analyze, compare, contrast, and discuss those attributes and what they do to help or hinder the happiness of the people who are in those cultures? Don't we have a duty to honestly and politely engage in conversations with people of other cultures so that they can help us as much as we help them? Moral superiority has nothing to do with it. A culture full of bad attributes is not such a hot place to live. There are, I'm sure, many more attributes that the ones we have today, and as long as we keep our heads on our shoulders we can continue to find them. In fact, it doesn't take much imagination to see that western culture is probably just as barbaric and brutish to some alien civilization as some cultures are to us. And that's exactly why we can't get lost in some kind of moral relativism: we've got a lot more work to do.
Prediction: a Bayesian filter trained to detect uninsightful comments would be discovered to have given a surprisingly high rating to the token "racist".
The word is meaningful, or at least once was. But as with the names of fashion brands, it's a bad sign if it occurs a lot in your conversation.
Clearly you did not understand what you where reading but felt the need to attack it anyway. Anyway, Thar is a word in common usage in a different language. He attempts to translate it at "blood vengeance" but it is already a world which you could look up if you felt like it. He then uses the term "thar mentality" to talk about the systems where "blood vengeance" are part of their system.
"The thar mentality can be said to include these features. They vary in degree from person to person and place to place but if we find all or most of them in a society we can justly apply the label thar.
Extreme importance of personal status and sensitivity to insult
Acceptance of personal revenge including retaliatory killing
Obsessive male dominance
Paranoia over female sexual infidelity
Primacy of family rights over individual rights"
2nd:
"While we can find this attitude in Spanish cultures, it's much more virulent, destructive and unmoderated by humor and common sense in other parts of the world."
AKA Spanish cultures do a weak version of X but if you want a real example look at Y and Z cultures.
But even if I let this racist term go through, what is Thar, exactly? A good deal of time is spent talking about how it isn't various things-- honor, bushido-- but it isn't ever defined. Instead I get this list of things that are associated with the "mentality," a list that, among other things, describes Tokugawa Japan perfectly. As a side note, anyone who thinks Japan's is a culture of Bushido does not know Japanese history. The Bushido code was written by a samurai who never saw combat, whose father never saw combat, and whose grandfather, in likelihood, never saw combat. The Bushido myth is a propaganda piece for convincing daimyos to keep their samurai on the payroll.
So we have a clearly racist document using a nonsense term to describe nothing. What, exactly, is this?