Race versus culture

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Seleucus
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Seleucus »

GreatandWiseTrixie wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 6:56 pm
Seleucus wrote: Sat Nov 18, 2017 9:57 am
GreatandWiseTrixie wrote: Fri Nov 17, 2017 4:39 pm
I'm still trying to figure out if Subsaharans invented the wheel. I really don't think they did, or else liberals would have made the information easier to find.
They did not. It might not be that surprising as many things, like writing, were also only invented once or twice in all of history. So far as it's actually meaningful to say such a thing, the pre-cultural IQ of the human race is essentially zero, about the same as a cat or a pony, who also have never invented the wheel.
I mean, lets say some subsaharans eventually traded with Northern Africans and got wheels. My question is, did subsaharans ever invent a wheel before it was handed-down to them by Northern Africans?
I don't believe so no.
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Seleucus
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Re: Race versus culture

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Arising_uk wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 2:41 am
Seleucus wrote:And just like I said last time, Chinese are still Chinese just like they have been for three-thousand years, ...
But they aren't are they and they pretty much weren't all 'Chinese' back then either, or do they all just look the same to you?
As we have discussed, yes, the Chinese phenotype is an essential element of Chinese identity, specifically I mean flat faces, short legs, stumpy feet, stubby noses, straight black hair and slanty eyes.

I expect there are a number of ways we can demonstrate the continuity of identity of ethnicities. One way would be to show that Chinese continue to use the same character since the second millennium BC (Western Zhou period) to identify their nation: 中.

This can probably be said of spoken word too, our word "man" for instance goes back to at least Proto-Indo-European.

We could also notice the continued relevance of works across ages for instance Dream of the red chamber, or the Quran or Plato.

We could also look at the opinion of cultural authorities who insist that ethnic identity is incredible stable, which we have done, Kuran whom discusess how cultures are multiply reinforced and Barth who proves culture change happens only at the individual level and is all or nothing . Or we could look at something like Geert Hofstede's work or the World Values Survey that show long-term stable psychologies of peoples.

If we accept with Sperber and Hirschfeld (2006) in their Culture and modularity that some significant amount of culture is genetically encoded, and we know that we are genetically identical to our neolithic ancestors, this adds support again for longitudinal stability. They further argue that modular neural organization also contributes to cultural stability. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf

Another angle might be to point out how very rare innovation has been historically, the wheel invented only once in all of history, writing only twice and so on which helps us better understand again why cultures don't change. Stone axe forms persisted for literally hundreds of thousands of years.
and Islam or no Islam, Semitic culture is still Semitic culture just like it was in the time of Canaanites or of Carthage...
Except it really isn't as the Diaspora changed it a lot.
What diaspora? Anthropology tells us that the Semites are still pretty much where they have been for the past 20,000+ years. As Barth says, the cultural watershed lines are the most stable of all, laying unchanged even when genetic migrations, and changes in language and material culture occur. Are you thinking of the Jews? No, the Jews' core cultural identity also changed little despite their 2000 year sojourn through Europe.
The more I think about Spengler's conception of culture the more right I think is was. That is, a culture exists once, it is essentially impenetrable and unchangeable, it eventually declines, and finally vanishes never to be repeated.
But he does agree with me that a race is not about ethnicity but idea and such a culture can still arise I think, hence Nietzsche.
Can you unpack a little more clearly what you're meaning to say here? Maybe some cites or quotes?
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GreatandWiseTrixie
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Re: Race versus culture

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Arising_uk wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 4:34 am
GreatandWiseTrixie wrote:Race is about idea...right. ...
Bring it up with Spengler.
So if a black guy embraces White culture, he is actually a white race, right?...And I'm the fruitcake.
Your problem is that you are a half-white Yank and can only think within your racialist box.
What does that have to do with anything I just said? :shock:
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Belinda »

Image

By Michael Leunig
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Seleucus
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Seleucus »

Belinda wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:24 pm Image

By Michael Leunig
Jesus was a Caucasian. Fact.

He was also, as Renan tells us in Life of Jesus, an individual who was able to change his identity and spirituality type from rule-centric Semitic to Buddhistic-like Aryan: http://feelinghappyimages.com/wp-conten ... -jesus.jpg
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Dubious »

Seleucus wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:02 am
Jesus was a Caucasian. Fact.

He was also, as Renan tells us in Life of Jesus, an individual who was able to change his identity and spirituality type from rule-centric Semitic to Buddhistic-like Aryan: http://feelinghappyimages.com/wp-conten ... -jesus.jpg
What people will believe contrary to historical fact is in itself unbelievable. There is something really weird about the human psyche when myth combined with wishful thinking takes priority and attempts to assassinate reality.
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Seleucus
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Seleucus »

Dubious wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 7:48 am
Seleucus wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:02 am Jesus was a Caucasian. Fact.

He was also, as Renan tells us in Life of Jesus, an individual who was able to change his identity and spirituality type from rule-centric Semitic to Buddhistic-like Aryan: http://feelinghappyimages.com/wp-conten ... -jesus.jpg
What people will believe contrary to historical fact is in itself unbelievable. There is something really weird about the human psyche when myth combined with wishful thinking takes priority and attempts to assassinate reality.
No. Truth doesn't matter in the realm of myths. It's meaning that counts. Jesus is in the mythosphere. Jesus was a Teutonic Aryan. Or if you prefer, Black.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Londoner »

Seleucus wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:45 am I expect there are a number of ways we can demonstrate the continuity of identity of ethnicities. One way would be to show that Chinese continue to use the same character since the second millennium BC (Western Zhou period) to identify their nation: 中.

This can probably be said of spoken word too, our word "man" for instance goes back to at least Proto-Indo-European.

We could also notice the continued relevance of works across ages for instance Dream of the red chamber, or the Quran or Plato.
Or we could instead decide to notice all the discontinuities, all the ways that the Chinese have changed, all the new words that have come into languages. We could note that some varieties within Chinese are enough to make them mutually unintelligible.

We could notice all the works that are no longer relevant to the way people live now and have been forgotten.

Or we could pick out the fact that we have certain things in common to assert a completely different range of 'ethnicities', declaring that while the Chinese are not an ethnicity because their language is too different, Malays are the same ethnicity as Berbers because both are Muslim.
We could also look at the opinion of cultural authorities who insist that ethnic identity is incredible stable, which we have done, Kuran whom discusess how cultures are multiply reinforced and Barth who proves culture change happens only at the individual level and is all or nothing .
No they don't. You are bluffing as usual.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Dubious »

Seleucus wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 8:44 am
Dubious wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 7:48 am
Seleucus wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 5:02 am Jesus was a Caucasian. Fact.

He was also, as Renan tells us in Life of Jesus, an individual who was able to change his identity and spirituality type from rule-centric Semitic to Buddhistic-like Aryan: http://feelinghappyimages.com/wp-conten ... -jesus.jpg
What people will believe contrary to historical fact is in itself unbelievable. There is something really weird about the human psyche when myth combined with wishful thinking takes priority and attempts to assassinate reality.
No. Truth doesn't matter in the realm of myths. It's meaning that counts. Jesus is in the mythosphere. Jesus was a Teutonic Aryan. Or if you prefer, Black.
Myth has meaning, deep profound levels of meaning but Jesus historically was a Jew and not some variable whose race and identity can be initialized however one likes which has nothing to do with meaning! Even if he were a "Teutonic Aryan", it wouldn't change by one iota what he said or did as related in the gospels though even that is unlikely to be the truth. He was a Jew whose only concern was for his own people. It was Paul who decided to make him Catholic. That much we know.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Belinda »

Seleucus wrote:
No. Truth doesn't matter in the realm of myths. It's meaning that counts. Jesus is in the mythosphere. Jesus was a Teutonic Aryan. Or if you prefer, Black.
I endorse Dubious:
Myth has meaning, deep profound levels of meaning but Jesus historically was a Jew and not some variable whose race and identity can be initialized however one likes which has nothing to do with meaning! Even if he were a "Teutonic Aryan", it wouldn't change by one iota what he said or did as related in the gospels though even that is unlikely to be the truth. He was a Jew whose only concern was for his own people. It was Paul who decided to make him Catholic. That much we know.
It's Christ who is a very important myth. Jesus is the same as Christ only for people who believe that Jesus and Christ are the same person, and these people should refer to 'Jesus Christ'. Jesus was part of man's historical past: Christ is part of man's mythical present because the myth is still extant for many people.

Leunig's cartoon refers to the historical Jesus by the caption's reference to his ME appearance. And refers to the mythical Christ by the pictured angel and shepherds.

Seleucus, I seem to remember that I have previously tried to explain to you that symbol is different from sign. The historical Jesus who was a sign of the times in that long ago Palestine, became symbolic as Christ for many people and remains a potent symbol today.

You might note that Muslims accept the historical interpretation that Jesus was a major prophet, while they deny that Jesus was supernatural Christ. This is more consistent with historical scholarship and may help to clear up confusion of Jesus and Christ.
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Seleucus
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Seleucus »

Londoner wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 9:54 am
Seleucus wrote: Sun Nov 19, 2017 5:45 am I expect there are a number of ways we can demonstrate the continuity of identity of ethnicities. One way would be to show that Chinese continue to use the same character since the second millennium BC (Western Zhou period) to identify their nation: 中.

This can probably be said of spoken word too, our word "man" for instance goes back to at least Proto-Indo-European.

We could also notice the continued relevance of works across ages for instance Dream of the red chamber, or the Quran or Plato.
Or we could instead decide to notice all the discontinuities, all the ways that the Chinese have changed, all the new words that have come into languages. We could note that some varieties within Chinese are enough to make them mutually unintelligible.

We could notice all the works that are no longer relevant to the way people live now and have been forgotten.

Or we could pick out the fact that we have certain things in common to assert a completely different range of 'ethnicities', declaring that while the Chinese are not an ethnicity because their language is too different, Malays are the same ethnicity as Berbers because both are Muslim.
Maybe you could argue those things in theory, but without any supporting examples it is mere speculation.
We could also look at the opinion of cultural authorities who insist that ethnic identity is incredible stable, which we have done, Kuran whom discusess how cultures are multiply reinforced and Barth who proves culture change happens only at the individual level and is all or nothing .
No they don't. You are bluffing as usual.
They certainly do say those things as I've read their articles carefully and the page numbers are in the discussion above to verify.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Seleucus »

Dubious wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 10:44 am
Seleucus wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 8:44 am
Dubious wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 7:48 am What people will believe contrary to historical fact is in itself unbelievable. There is something really weird about the human psyche when myth combined with wishful thinking takes priority and attempts to assassinate reality.
No. Truth doesn't matter in the realm of myths. It's meaning that counts. Jesus is in the mythosphere. Jesus was a Teutonic Aryan. Or if you prefer, Black.
Myth has meaning, deep profound levels of meaning but Jesus historically was a Jew and not some variable whose race and identity can be initialized however one likes which has nothing to do with meaning! Even if he were a "Teutonic Aryan", it wouldn't change by one iota what he said or did as related in the gospels though even that is unlikely to be the truth. He was a Jew whose only concern was for his own people. It was Paul who decided to make him Catholic. That much we know.
No. Paul, among others, sold Indo-European paganism back to the European pagans in the language of the Jesus story. The trinity, a child born of God and the mortal Mary, and a son of God, these are all completely pagan ideas right out of the Mount Olympus, or Hindu or Odin series, which is why Semitic Christians totally rejected European Christianity, i.e. the Monophysite schism, and the ultimate conversion of the Semites to pure monotheistic Islam. Cultures can only very slowly and painfully change, hence the Indo-Europeans are maintain their core identity and the Semites theirs across even tens of thousands of years. This is why when we find perennialist ideas in Judaism, as in Kabalism, it is sometimes suggested there must have been an Aryan or Vedic influence, as for example overviewed by Blavatsky (1877) who suggests the tradition entered via Sumer: link.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Seleucus »

Belinda wrote: Mon Nov 20, 2017 11:10 amIt's Christ who is a very important myth. Jesus is the same as Christ only for people who believe that Jesus and Christ are the same person, and these people should refer to 'Jesus Christ'. Jesus was part of man's historical past: Christ is part of man's mythical present because the myth is still extant for many people.

Leunig's cartoon refers to the historical Jesus by the caption's reference to his ME appearance. And refers to the mythical Christ by the pictured angel and shepherds.
Jesus was definitely Caucasian. Christ is predicted to by White at Psalm 45:2-3 and Lamentations 4:7. At Revelations 1:13-16 Jesus is described as being blond. Even the Islamic tradition has Jesus, like Muhammad, as being a redhead: link, something which is common enough in the Levant and Egypt, (Ramses II was also redheaded). This idea of a wooly-haired swarthy Jesus is revisionist politically correct bunk.
Seleucus, I seem to remember that I have previously tried to explain to you that symbol is different from sign. The historical Jesus who was a sign of the times in that long ago Palestine, became symbolic as Christ for many people and remains a potent symbol today.
Yes, in Raymond Firth, but in fact you were confused, Firth used Pierce's categories: sign, icon and index... What are you wanting to claim?
You might note that Muslims accept the historical interpretation that Jesus was a major prophet, while they deny that Jesus was supernatural Christ. This is more consistent with historical scholarship and may help to clear up confusion of Jesus and Christ.
Yes and no. The Quran clearly says Jesus is the Christ at 4:157 but then later Islamic scholars reinterpreted the verse to imply a bizarre scenario where Simon the Cyrenican swaps out with Jesus.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Belinda »

Seleucus wrote:

Yes, in Raymond Firth, but in fact you were confused, Firth used Pierce's categories: sign, icon and index... What are you wanting to claim?
Maybe but I don't feel confused. With regard to JC I who am not a believer in any creed claim that Jesus whatever he looked like was, if he existed at all, a real historical man who ate, shat, peed, breathed the air, slept, felt emotions, believed stuff, and created some excellent parables and the Sermon on the Mount.

I also claim that Christ of the Christians is a myth which informs and influences many people to this present day. I also claim that many Christians would improve upon Christianity if they were able to differentiate between Jesus, and Christ.
(Belinda wrote:)You might note that Muslims accept the historical interpretation that Jesus was a major prophet, while they deny that Jesus was supernatural Christ. This is more consistent with historical scholarship and may help to clear up confusion of Jesus and Christ.
(Seleucus)Yes and no. The Quran clearly says Jesus is the Christ at 4:157 but then later Islamic scholars reinterpreted the verse to imply a bizarre scenario where Simon the Cyrenican swaps out with Jesus.

I don't claim to know a lot about Islam but it seems reasonable to assume that Muslims do not accept that 'christ' implies a supernatural being. No Muslim is a Trinitarian; Allah is absolutely the only object of religious worship.

Therefore 'Christ' for a Muslim can refer only to the fact that a messiah (or a christ ) is an anointed leader .Trinitarians believe that Christ is God. Christ as God is a different idea from Christ as anointed leader. The former is a supernatural myth or anyway, symbolic: the latter is natural and historic.
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Re: Race versus culture

Post by Arising_uk »

Seleucus wrote:As we have discussed, yes, the Chinese phenotype is an essential element of Chinese identity, specifically I mean flat faces, short legs, stumpy feet, stubby noses, straight black hair and slanty eyes. ...
And yet the Chinese have at least five distinct ethnic groups?
I expect there are a number of ways we can demonstrate the continuity of identity of ethnicities. One way would be to show that Chinese continue to use the same character since the second millennium BC (Western Zhou period) to identify their nation: 中. ...
So culture not race.
This can probably be said of spoken word too, our word "man" for instance goes back to at least Proto-Indo-European.

We could also notice the continued relevance of works across ages for instance Dream of the red chamber, or the Quran or Plato.
But language has no links to genetics or biology? If it did then babies would not be able to learn a language like a native if adopted by a different 'race'.
We could also look at the opinion of cultural authorities who insist that ethnic identity is incredible stable, which we have done, Kuran whom discusess how cultures are multiply reinforced and Barth who proves culture change happens only at the individual level and is all or nothing . Or we could look at something like Geert Hofstede's work or the World Values Survey that show long-term stable psychologies of peoples. ...
What's a 'cultural authority' when it's at home?

And what has this to do with your view of race?
If we accept with Sperber and Hirschfeld (2006) in their Culture and modularity that some significant amount of culture is genetically encoded, ...
They say nothing of the sort other than a vague hand-wave towards epigentics with zero evidence to support such an assertion.
and we know that we are genetically identical to our neolithic ancestors, this adds support again for longitudinal stability. They further argue that modular neural organization also contributes to cultural stability. ...
Except that everyone's 'modular neural organization' is pretty much the same across the 'races'.
Another angle might be to point out how very rare innovation has been historically, the wheel invented only once in all of history, writing only twice and so on which helps us better understand again why cultures don't change. Stone axe forms persisted for literally hundreds of thousands of years. ...
All of which tends to point to the idea that technology occurs were the circumstances are suitable.
What diaspora? Anthropology tells us that the Semites are still pretty much where they have been for the past 20,000+ years. As Barth says, the cultural watershed lines are the most stable of all, laying unchanged even when genetic migrations, and changes in language and material culture occur. Are you thinking of the Jews? ...
Are they not Semites?
No, the Jews' core cultural identity also changed little despite their 2000 year sojourn through Europe. ...
Oh! It's 'core cultural identity' know is it.
Can you unpack a little more clearly what you're meaning to say here? Maybe some cites or quotes?
Sure,

"Race purity is a grotesque world in view of the fact that for centuries all stocks and species have been mixed, and that warlike—that is, healthy—generations with a future before them have from time immemorial always welcomed a stranger into the family if he had “race,” to whatever race it was he belonged. Those who talk too much about race no longer have it in them. What is needed is not a pure race, but a strong one, which has a nation within it. This manifests itself above all in self-evident elemental fecundity, in an abundance of children, which historical life can consume without ever exhausting the supply."

"It would be founded on a grand culture-creating, race-shaping myth, propagated through art and religion, that enthralls and mobilizes a whole people. It would be less concerned about the race we were or the race we are than about the race we can become."

"Comradeship breeds races ...".
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