Do you feel that people are more or less the same all over the world?

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by Seattle, Dec 17, 2016.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The pads in football are for hitting with - delivering a blow, not receiving one. Like a boxing glove. And the tactics are the most complex in sports (hence the huddle). Meanwhile the baseball players manage to confront hardball pitches thrown from full windups without wrapping themselves in mattresses, hit them squarely without needing a ruddy canoe paddle, and navigate a rule book as thick as a phone directory in split second decisions at full speed. It takes thousands of innings and good coaching to make an average professional baseball player - chess, indeed - plenty of time to think, for sure. Plus surfing and beach volleyball and lacrosse and the Alaskan Olympics https://www.google.com/imgres?imgur...QMwhEKBgwGA&iact=mrc&uact=8#h=825&vet=1&w=550

    And we don't - yet - play soccer, the goofiest and least interesting sport in the world.

    So we get points there - a little cushion to keep our rating up while we figure out how many square feet there are in an acre, buy two complete sets of wrenches and drills for every toolbox, and pretend we always wanted to auger in with our Mars rover under 137 ft/lbs of thrust. Seismic studies.
     
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  3. Confused2 Registered Senior Member

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    Last edited: Jan 14, 2017
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  5. Confused2 Registered Senior Member

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    Waiting for the Africans, Asians and Bolivians to stand up and be counted.
     
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  7. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

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    You have my agreement on that score alone.

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    I actually believe most Soccer players would do better in Hollywood/Bollywood judging on the number of times they feign injury etc from the most gentle of knocks.

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  8. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    We have one Asian fellow who logs in regularly. I haven't encountered any members from Africa or Latin America.
     
  9. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I don't think that people from those three countries are tremendously different from Americans like myself. People from continental Europe seem more different. Those from non-Western countries are even more alien.

    I think that all human beings are pretty much alike (but perhaps not 100%) in their basic social instincts. But inherited cultures can lead to those social instincts being expressed in dramatically different ways. The Islamic world is an illustration of that.

    Being able to speak the same language is obviously important. So is coming from a similar historical background and sharing many of the same ways of conceiving of things.

    Why? I think that's an expression of a contemporary post-nationalist faith that's being promoted in all of our media and schools these days. Everybody is just the same. I'm not convinced that I believe it or that I should believe it.

    The problem is that it kind of presupposes a single normative global culture, which always seems to be some leftish version of contemporary post-World War II Western culture, often its European or American variants. Other cultures, such as Islam and its God-revealed Law, are expected to conform to Western presuppositions. But many Muslims have no interest in doing that, hence the kind of problems that we see around us today. China is another culture whose communist-party rulers don't show much intention of conforming to Western ideals of liberty and democracy.

    There's still something faintly imperialistic about the global liberalism that's supposed to be normative everywhere. Foreigners are always supposed to emulate us, there's no expectation that we abandon our supposedly more modern and enlightened values and copy them. Perhaps we need to be more cognizant of the world's cultural diversity.
     
    Last edited: Feb 4, 2017
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    That's on Tuesdays and Thursdays, in the conservative mind. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the problem is that the "liberals" are too ready to abandon the virtues of the Western Enlightenment and allow the backwards and benighted barbarisms of medieval Asian and pre-civilization African to corrupt the wonderful civilization they have inherited from the lovers of freedom.

    I'm not saying there is no truth to any of that - just that its use as a political convenience and power point obviates the value of the insight.
     

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