post #31
05 April 2009, 19:03 UTC#31
QUOTE(Ray @ Apr 5 2009, 07:37 PM) [snapback]543245[/snapback]
First, I didn't realize that there was a such thing as EU citizenship. I learned something new today! That sort of troubles me. It seems like that would really contribute to a rising sense of Euro-centrism. The more titles people use to define themselves, the more they separate themselves from "everyone else." A lot of people don't see the dangers in titling themselves as "white," "Catholic," "Irish," "Protestant," "Christian," "Muslim," "black," "American," etc. The more things you use to qualify who you are, the more you separate yourself from the rest of the world, and the narrower you make your outlook and expectations of others.
The EU is just a way of ensuring that the continent as a whole works together maintains peace and generally the countries don't do their own thing and fuck shit up like they did around 1930-40. It's not some sort of supremest movement separating us from them sort of thing thats a bit extreme.
QUOTE(Ray @ Apr 5 2009, 07:37 PM) [snapback]543245[/snapback]
Anyway, to get back to Somalia, the reason I called to question the word "civilized," is that it's difficult to judge what is civilized and what isn't fairly. What is civilized? By what standard are we measuring civilization? Is civilization defined based on American middle class standards? By Finnish social expectations? Sure, warring tribal nations (again, qualifying yourself or defining yourself as a member of a tribe is dangerous like any other title) may seem uncivilized, but that's mostly because we don't have a good basis of perspective on what their reasons for battling with each other are. It's easy to look at a struggling African or middle eastern country and call them uncivilized based on the ideals of our predominantly Christian middle class values we have of our own society.
The thing is though if you take this point of view and universalize it then anyone would be able to justify anything they did because they could claim the way that we or you interpret morality isn't in the same scope as they do and therefore you just have to accept it or at least the action can continue unpunished or prevented. There isn't a place in the world to look at things in this light because if you did there would just be chaos.
