The West (395- ) means Western civilization. The Oxford dictionary, National Geographic and Samuel Huntington see it as western Europe and North America. I see it as the civilization that grew out of the western Roman Empire. Any country where the main religion is Catholic or Protestant Christianity I would regard as Western. That would take in Latin America and much of Africa and the Pacific. This post assumes my definition.
Some countries are partly Western, having taken on some Western ways, such as Japan, Turkey, Indonesia and Russia.
Current features:
- writing: Latin letters
- numbers: Arabic numbers
- religion: Protestant or Roman Catholic
- calendar: Gregorian calendar
- epoch: years are counted from the birth of Christ
- measurement: metric or English
- philosophy: based on Plato and Aristotle
- universal states: Roman Empire
- cities: Rome, Florence, Venice, Paris, Berlin, London, New York, Los Angeles, Rio
A quick way to tell if a country is Western, or at least part Western, is to look at the writing.
The West compared to other parts of the world is violent and warlike. That is because it is divided into so many countries. It lacks a true empire that would keep it at peace. It is not for want of trying: Charlemagne, Napoleon and Hitler have tried.
Its longest period of peace was at the height of the British Empire. The current American Empire has kept the West at peace for most of the past 60 years. When it weakens, the West will again find itself at war.
Two things make the West different than the rest of the world:
- The truth as something that can be known and written down. It gets this from Greek philosophy. You see it from the Nicene Creed to Einstein. God, physical laws, all of it can be known and written down and reasoned about. It is not a mystery, it is not beyond man’s understanding, it is not beyond word or number. It is black and white. Not only that, the truth matters. The truth is what will save mankind. So it is not just knowable, it is sought after. It is one of the highest callings of life, to seek the truth.
- The West as universal. The West does not see itself as belonging to just one people or age, but as something for all mankind, as the purpose and end of history itself. Everything has been building up to this moment when the West burst upon the scene with all the answers (be it Christian or Communist or whatever).One other part of the world sees itself this way: the Muslim world: Islam is the faith for all mankind.
Many in the West will smile at this now. That is a sign that it is changing.
The West has been moving away from both of these positions over the past forty years. The truth is not knowable and not all that important. The West is not for everyone and certainly not what history has been working towards. It is just another part of the world, and maybe not even the best part.
The self-confidence that the West once had is giving way to self-doubt and despair. This is especially true in Europe, less so in America.
See also:
Abagond 
“The West is made up of the countries of Western Europe, North and South America, Oceania, South Africa and most of the cities of black Africa.”
Uh? “Most of the cities of black Africa“??
Yes, latin letters, protestant and catholic religions, gregorian calendar can be found in some parts of Africa. That does not make us part of the West. It’s just the aftermath of colonialism.
Africa has its own paradigm(s) and its interests are distinct from the ones of the West.
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Actually, the West includes North America and central-Western Europe and that’s pretty much it.
Loosely speaking, Latin America can be considered part of the West, but the ‘West’ is usually used to categorized DEVELOPED countries.
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Oh, I forgot Australia, too.
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And, of course, Brazil – with the sixth largest economy in the world – isn’t at all “developed”. Neither are Chile, Mexico, or Argentina, for that matter.
What you mean to say is “rich”, Mel. Most of Latin Americ has been “developed” for 50 years now.
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Some countries are partly Western, having taken on some Western ways, such as Japan, Turkey, Indonesia and Russia.
Turkey and Russia – no doubt. Japan – I guess I can see that.
But how does Indonesia classify as partly Western? I guess it depends on your definitions, but I don’t think it’s any more Western than say, Thailand or Tunisia for example.
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Interesting that you say ‘the truth is not knowable and not all that important’.
Why?
Surely seeking the truth is about trust, justice and advancement. Not advancement for the sake of advancement, though certainly that is the result sometimes. Advancement which leads to a better understanding of matters of nature, science and self, and a higher quality of life that everyone aspires to even if they believe that they don’t.
So maybe I have the wrong idea – why do you think the truth is unknowable and not all that important?
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You’re right that most Europeans of a middle class/intellectual bent have accepted postmodernism and cultural and moral relativism [I know they are not the same which is why I have not conflated them into one term as right-wingers seem to in their rhetoric against “multiculturalism”] in the past 40 years in a way Americans are loath to do- hence the US distrust of a “liberal elite” which is the sort of language only the far right use in public over here. Certainly whiteness has a lot to do with the concept of Western supremacy and I won’t defend that for one minute, but as a Christian I’m also against postmodern ideas and the denial of truth. Jesus is universal, and died for the sins of all men- including racism and the colonialism, war and other violent oppression claimed to be in His name by whiteness in history. I also affirm that sexual morality is universally ordained by God as “one man, one woman within marriage” -just the biblical doctrine, not the whiteness or the misogyny which led Christian men to justify concubinage, marriage of immature girls to grown men, raping slaves or other evils.
I accept that other terms such as “modesty” are by necessity dependent on cultural factors and few believers of today outside the fundamentalist movement (who preach a standard for women not far from the Islamic fundamentalist model) would say otherwise. It is possible to uphold the marriage-based standard without any racist Euro/Anglo-centric ideas from the past such as topless women in African societies where the breasts have never been sexualised being “immodest”. The concept of marriage of man and woman as the ideal context for sex has been a part of many pre-Western cultures after development from primitive hunter gatherer phase to agriculture in a way which I think it a legitimate human universal. Those in academia who have tried to promote “free love” have always came from bad faith -the early 20th century first wave of Mead, Dewey, Ellis and Sanger who were openly racist while exoticising the sexual openness of far-off civilisations, lying, plagiarising and trying to convince Western elites to adopt such an attitude as would later be called “sex-positivity”, and the mid-century second wave who were much more successful with both elites and the general public in pushing sexual revolution but favouring a large state and government control in nearly all other aspects of life at the same time they were ordering it to “get out their bedroom and their uterus”- see 2012 Democratic campaign… The much earlier examples such as Casanova and the Marquis de Sade of attempts to change sexual morality away from marriage-based standards were not done by blameless men seeking the advancement of all, either.
Jeremiah Wright and MLK are closer to Christ’s prophetic model than “status quo” preserving white racists who use cultural tropes loosely associated with Christianity, required by no scripture, to justify their superiority and entitlement.
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Those words like the “West, Europe, and even White” are just meaningless. Before the “West” there was Christendom, Catholic for the most part and being spread by the Spanish and the Portuguese. Even then this thing called Christendom wasn’t at all united either politically, although many did owe allegiance to the Pope, or doctrinally, southeastern and eastern Europe are Orthodox christian. After the Protestant Revolution, yes it was a Revolution, “western christians” have been trying to find a new set of values and ideology, now that Nicene Christianity is on it way out if not already out. But before Christendom(s) there was the Roman Empire and it’s Mediterranean, Greco Roman culture, but if we go back into the Roman empire most people probably wouldn’t identify as European since the word Europa was a geographic term, white perhaps in reference to skin color but not as something political, Civis Romanus is how most would identify in the Roman Empire. Any way the point I am trying to make is that Western Civilization is not some law of nature or something pertaining to a race but just society, which was constructed on certain ideals, Western civilization can be considered northwestern Europe, north america, australia etc. But these northwestern europeans or Anglos are just kidding themselves if they think their civilization goes back all the way to Hellas, the farthest would perhaps be the Carolingian Empire and even then only for northwestern europe excluding Anglo saxonry.
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Kiwi said:
I also suspect that the increasingly nonwhite population in North America and Western Europe is what causes many people to think that the West is declining.
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2014/10/30/mock-spanish/#comment-262128
Sorry for stalking you Kiwi. 🙂
I might respond to what you said there and I just wanted to move the topic you raised to this thread.
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More notes on civilizational change/civilizational decline
Abagond said:
https://abagond.wordpress.com/2006/06/24/rhetoric/#comments
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Legion, I left you a comment on the “Comment Policy” thread
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^ I saw it Linda, I got back to you.
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Latin America and Black Africa are not parts of the west
White and Colored South African communities are
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@ Bobby M
You are right. The Oxford dictionary, which records the common use of the word in English, says that the West is made up of western Europe and North America. I should stick to that. Using words with private meanings only leads to confusion. In any case, I added a warning in the first paragraph. Thank you.
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@abagond
Doe countries like Spain and Italy count as Western European? If so, would their diasporas in places like Argentina and Uruguay, where they are the majority of the population, count as Western? Despite the Western world having its roots in Southern Europe, I’ve noticed that many (not saying you) seem to see the West more as NORTHwestern Europe and its respective diaspora.
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@ Benjamin
The meaning of “the West” is heavily racialized. I see it as meaning roughly the same thing as Western Christendom, but for the Oxford dictionary, National Geographic, Samuel Huntington, Bobby M, Pat Buchanan and so on, it means something very close to what Hitler meant by Aryan. Since they do not want to use the word Aryan or White, because that would sound racist, their definitions become awkward and inconsistent.
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@ Lord of Mirkwood
What did my disappearing comment say? Which one is it?
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@ Abagond
With people like Huntington one gets the strong sense that he had the “where white people rule”-definition in his mind and than worked around that to not admit that. Especially his reason not to include Latin America in the definition feels like a stretch.
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@ Kartoffel
Exactly.
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