Is Western culture "superior" to Arabic cultures?

I got myself into a little bit of a quandry here:

If one supports gay rights, sexual equality, freedom of religion and expression, then one must consider the Western culture as superior to Arabic cultures, as these are protected in the former and often rejected in the latter ("freedom of religion" in Arabic cultures is often quite OK, but for the ability of Muslim people to convert to other religions).

But a key element of Western culture is NOT considering one culture as "superior" to another culture, and being inclusive and accepting of different cultures and individual beliefs.

So there is a clear conflict here. How should we deal with it?

 

Arabic culture is still living in the 15th century. Western civilization is superior in every possible way.

 

Perhaps, but that would include our toleration of other cultural norms, so we must tolerate Arabic cultures in parallel to our own, with al their illiberal beliefs

 

Is Boston better than Beirut?

Is Tennessee better than Tehran?

Is San Diego better than Saudi Arabia?

Yes, I'd say the West is better than the Middle East.

 

Consider that no one from one of the Arab countries has ever been awarded a Nobel Prize (aside from the highly politicized Peace Prize) and compare that to western nations.

Kind of says it all.

 

If one likes music, Western culture is superior to Arabic culture.

If one likes the fine arts, Western culture is so much superior to Arabic culture, due in large part to Muslim iconoclasm.

The cultural relativism you claim is a "key element of Western culture" is no such thing. It was invented by Franz Boas in the early 20th C. The idea of being "inclusive" and accepting of other cultures is even more recent. These are symptomatic of the Decline of the West, not of its strength.

But the clincher of Western superiority is the observation that people from Muslim cultures want to move to the West and not the other way around.

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Why do we have to do that?

 

western culture is superior to arabic culture in terms of money spent on guns and bombs. in fact its superior to every culture combined.

 

Toleration of reform Islam is no problem. The problem is tolerance of authentic Islam like many Islamic countries practice and the extreme end of authentic Islam, ISIS. One does not need to commit cultural and physical suicide to be 'inclusive'.

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Toleration of reform Islam is no problem. The problem is tolerance of authentic Islam like many Islamic countries practice and the extreme end of authentic Islam, ISIS. One does not need to commit cultural and physical suicide to be 'inclusive'.

 

A country who believes in not being superior is a failure of evolution and will die with time.

 

Should we also be tolerant of gangs and cartels?

Your premise is extremely flawed.

 

You deal with it by admitting the obvious fact. Some cultures are just superior to others. Islamic, middle eastern culture is an anachronism, as the world moved on to more enlightened beliefs and behavior.

Of course muslims have the right to live in an anachronism, but we need to be very careful on allowing in too many into western culture, for the nature of islam is non assimilation, and wanting to change another culture into their own. This has to be admitted as well, which people seem to want to believe differently. This is not saying SOME middle eastern muslims cannot assimilate, but it is the exception rather than the rule. It is the nature of islam itself, which demands one lives by the words of its founder. Christianity did not live by the words of its founder, and was very much like islam, conversion by the sword. And it took a couple thousand years to reform not living by the words of its founder. But islam has always lived by the words of its founder, and they are not even close to reformation. But this religion has created an anachronism, and a very much inferior culture. As long as it is limited to the muslim nations, it is no problem. But once it moves outside, then the problems begin. We can see that today. If I want to see Islamic middle eastern culture, I would go there to see it. I do not want to see it in the West. For it is inferior. And will only bring us down, for we will not bring them up. Too much resistance built into islam for that to happen.

 

The problem is your question is very broad.

For instance, another poster mentions music. But music is a matter of taste, not objective quality. So saying that Western music is "superior" to Arab music, or vice versa, is meaningless.

Discarding such ephemera, we're left with more objective things like -- as the OP mentions -- gay rights, freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The problem there is, how do you determine what is due to "the culture" and what is due to other things? And what "culture" are you talking about? Is it Western/Arab? Or liberal/conservative?

Let's take gay rights, for example. Western "culture" is all over the map on it. Plenty of Western conservatives oppose gay rights -- indeed, many of them have the same view of gay rights as conservative Arabs. So the divider appears to be liberal/conservative, not Western/Arab.

Or freedom of religion. Countries tend to have freedom of religion when the state is not intertwined with religion. They tend to suppress freedom of religion when there is a state religion that is part of the state's basis of power. This went on in the West for thousands of years, so claiming "Western culture" is inherently in favor of freedom of religion can't be true. The divide has nothing to do with the particular religion/culture, and everything to do with power politics.

Or how about women's rights? At least in the West we are horrified by clitoral cutting and the like, right? True, and good. But it's not like the West doesn't have a long history of doing barbaric things to women in order to control their sexuality or reproductive rights. Hell, we still have people who argue that wives have a duty to have sex with their husbands (so marital rape is impossible), that domestic abuse is a private matter, that abortions should be outlawed even if that means women die, that access to birth control and family-planning resources should be banned or heavily restricted. So this seems like a difference of degree or tactics.

And let's not get started about educating women, or letting them vote. Both are fairly recent developments in the West. And they exist in more liberal Arab countries as well. The divide again seems to be cultural conservativism, not Western/Arab.

In the end, what you CAN say is this, with the important caveats emphasized:

In *secular* Western *democracies* *today*, there is generally more support for individual freedom than in many Arab countries, which are generally more conservative and less democratic, and where religion is often intertwined with government. Which means I would far rather live in a secular Western democracy than in a conservative Arab country. But then, I would far rather live in a liberal U.S. state than a conservative one, for the same -- if less drastic -- reasons.

 

Boston is better than anywhere

 

I'm a far leftist socialist, but not an American *******, more like RUSSIA 1919... you know, storm the Kremlin, slit the Czar's throat, kill his family and take his stuff. So way before Trump, I've always been ...

AMERICA FIRST!

 

Everyone knows western culture is superior.

 

The thread title question is - "Is Western culture "superior" to Arabic cultures?"

Answer: my answer is no, not necessarily. The White House answer - a resounding yes, considering the white nationalists in the administration.

 

Boston would be fantastic without the people there. What a bunch of (*)(*)(*)(*)ing (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s

 

I recommend if people want to learn the actual reasons other than to try to make themselves morally superior, read Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. Explains why western and asian cultures were move culturally advanced, it all has to do with the amount of domesticatable crops and plants available in their region, and surplus food allows more time to specialize in other areas which lead to improved technology, specialization in jobs.

Africa, for example, had very few domesticatable crops and animals, while Europe and Asia had a lot

 

"
Let's take gay rights, for example. Western "culture" is all over the map on it. Plenty of Western conservatives oppose gay rights -- indeed, many of them have the same view of gay rights as conservative Arabs. So the divider appears to be liberal/conservative, not Western/Arab."

You use the words "plenty" and "many" implying a significant number. That simply isn't the case. Almost everyone, from the far left to the far right recognizes the rights of gays to exist, the most fundamental right there is. That is *NOT* the case in the Arabic culture, especially cultures based on Islam.

Many in Western cultures do not recognize the right of gays to participate in the entitlement of civil marriage. For civil marriage is not a "right", it is an entitlement provided by government for legitimate reasons. It is an entitlement just like welfare, which is distributed by government on a restricted basis. It is an entitlement just like Social Security. If entitlements were "rights" then everyone would get Social Security payments from conception.

"Both are fairly recent developments in the West. "

The Western culture progresses. You can't condemn the present Western Culture based on the past. In the far past all humans lived by the Law of the Jungle. Should we condemn present Western culture because of that?

 

But agriculture began in the Middle East and the inferiority of Islamic culture can hardly be blamed on environmental difficulties. Indeed, the Middle East had a very high culture before Mo and his tribe of thieves and slavers overran the area.

If a motorcycle gang came in and took over your nice suburban town you wouldn't think that you can't compare their culture with your culture. Would you?

 

Human beauty is also a matter of taste and therefore not "objective quality", however it doesn't stop us from having beauty pageants.

 

You've never been to Beirut, have you?

http://www.beirutnightlife.com/nightlife/happening-night-pier-7/
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=b...KHeMNAHIQ_AUICCgD#tbm=isch&q=beirut+tourism&*
So, yes, I'll take Beirut over Boston any day of the week.

 

That makes sense. If one were to form the opinion that their own culture were inferior, then they would logically want to change their own behaviour and that would, eventually, change the culture.

I think the advantage of Western culture is that it can do that, quickly. We have become very adept at adopting whatever seems to work best.

Built into that, though, is that Western culture prefers to let sub-cultures run freely, assuming that what works is adopted and what doesn't work is discarded.

 

Not at all. Western music is objectively superior to all other cultural music. The West discovered "well tempered" scales. Before that all music had to be in one key. With well tempering, it was possible to modulate the key used for the music allowing a much more expressive music. That is why classical pieces are so long compared to folk songs or pop songs. The musical idea of a folk song can only be sustained for a few minutes.

Western music has a larger "vocabulary" than any non-Western music.

China is producing some of the finest musicians in the world, and they play Western music, not Chinese music.

But for someone who discards music, art, etc. as "ephemera," none of this matters. I do feel a bit sorry for you, though, as I do anyone who is so shallow.

 

Since Western culture is so fluid, an invention of the early 20th century or even the late 20th century can remain a central theme of the current culture.
I disagree that inclusivity is symptomatic of a decline. It would seem our culture has made its greatest advances coincident to its integration with other cultures, firstly with Middle Eastern scholars in the Renaissance, then the Far East and Indian sub Continent. I think what is in decline, perhaps, is the availability of new cultures with whom to integrate.

We are fundamentally a capitalist society. Capitalism need competition to motivate innovation and choose the best path. We need sub-cultures to be tolerated in order to expose weaknesses in the main culture and things we can adopt.