New editorial - Western Civ & Spartans

[Shane Smith]

As I wrote, historical role-play reenactment efforts quite often result in creating a certain bubble that encircles and strives to isolate a period or era out of the lager story of Western civilization as if to imagine it somehow existed complete on its own, rather than aspects of it having been absorbed, surpassed, or extinguished over generations. The arguable lack of emphasis on the Western Humanities within higher education nowadays only aggravates this. There is the need then to draw, as it were, a “larger circle” around things by making some generalizations about just what elements define the civilization of the “West.”

The issue being missed here is that martial arts were never practice in a cultural or moral vacuum. We cannot ignore this fact. Asian martial arts typically don't and I expect no less for ours.

If my editorial commemorating the 300 Spartans and linking their actions to a larger tradition to consider in perspective, then all the better.

JC

While I agree in an ideal world we would be able to fully take into account the cultural background of the material we study, we can't. We aren't them, our bodies are different & they are as alien to a guy from London or Miami as someone from Beijing, Mumbai or the Gaza strip. Further in fact as we can't get on a plane & visit them. Trying to understand their culture from records is about as effective as reading a tourist guide to France but not actually going there.

To put forth the premise that we can never hope to understand somewhat of the culture of our ancestors from the writings and societal constructs left by them would be a bit of a over-generalization I think. Certainly we can never hope to learn it all from a book , and even when we examine closely the other evidence such as period art, prevailing philosophies and societal structure of a given period, from and along with historical accounts -first hand and otherwise- we will fall in to some error.

We as thinking men realize the inherent limitations we face in our efforts to understand the past but to insist we can not learn about men who have gone before from the writings of their own hands is not reasonable in the absolute sense. Human bodies still have two hands, two arms, two legs and one brain and the fact that these arts we hope to recreate are only a few hundred to a thousand years old or so tells me that we aren't that different as physical organisms at our core. In the pursuit of our subject matter ,RMA, we must never give in by default to the concept that we can't come to know our ancestors or hope to step into their shoes in a contemplative and figurative sense as we work to re-construct what once was for the sake of that which now is.

We must work to push back the boundaries of our own ignorance and broaden and add depth to our understanding of the cultural and societal context of the RMA as a rule. Yet we must never allow the perfect to become the enemy of the possible. To imply that we cannot begin to understand the subject matter until we have first fully understood is not a tenable position.

This post is not in direct response to you Nigel, you just got me to thinking along these lines.

[Martin_Wilkinson]

What Nigel is saying (at least as i interpret it) is that we can never fully understand past cultures, because we cannot go there, we cannot get into their mindset, it's vastly different.

To people during the 17th C Religion was pretty much the most important thing to them. How many people studying the 17th C and trying to recreate it can say that?

It's all well and good being proud of your culture, and i think everyone is, but the problem is that the way John looked at it in his article was flawed, he chose to say that medieval culture had 2 influences, neither of them contempary. Which is not true.

I would also like to add (this is just me thinking out loud, not an attack on the article or anything like that) that given our understanding of Rome and Ancient Greece is still evolving surely medieval peoples was as well. My understanding is that Rome was thought of as the pinacle of mans creation (as a culture and place), this is neither right nor wrong, it was a belief, they were trying to build a new rome, did they know what Rome was really like? No, and neither do we, just as we don't know what medieval europe was truly like, we have a pretty good idea due to the surviving manuscripts and records from the period, but we cannot know what it was truly like, unless we have a time machine (which as far as i know we don't).

[TimSheetz]

Hi all,

I had to comment on this part, even if the individual is no longer part the discussion...

It was written:
"As to the West being the only group to leave Mysticism behind - what about Japan? What about China which is officially an atheist country? They seem to have left mysticism and religion behind to me. "

Uh, well what is a pronounced edict from the official line may mean that folks are atheists because the government says so, but there is enough anscestor "worship" to fit the bill for 'mysticism' to me. Granted, I have never lived in Japan or China, but I have lived nearby in Asia for three years. About every martial art instructor I ever met there seemed pretty darn mystical to me. I actually participated in a ceremony to bless the opening of a government office where there was a table full of food and a big cooked whole pig (with head still on it), incense burning, money stuck into its mouth, and gifts of food - real rice cakes - to bring good luck. So that falls into the category of mystical to me.

It was written:
"What about Turkey? I don't see the Turks engaging in suicide bombings or running a theocratic government."

OK, I have been to Turkey about 5 or 6 times. I have had Turks working for me, I have worked with them, and I work with some as peers. With the folks that I have had a working relationship with it was great and very wonderful experience for me. BUT the number of bombings in Turkey number in the TEENS EVERY MONTH. That's right, monthly. Do you hear it on the news? nah, you have to see the law enforcement reports that most folks don't see.

Just because Ottaturk, the highly respected leader, changed their destiny by recognizing that progress was linked to the WEST and EUROPE, not the other way, doesn't mean that they are NOT mystical. In fact, the government has to fight tooth and nail to keep the crazies at bay. Why, the last time I visited there, the English Translation of the City paper covered the story of the guy who killed his daughter cause she was raped! Honor killings happen frequently enough to be considered standard by me, and they happen in many parts of Turkey - maybe not condoned by the government, but they happen fairly often. And this case was in the WESTERN part of the country closer to the Agean... the part I like best cause it is the least... [well, I'll say it in a positive way instead] ... I like the western part because it is more European. Not mystical? How about the holiday where everyone of a certain religion there buys a live goat and all on the same day the head of the house take it out front or onto the balcony if they live in an apartment and slits its throat and hangs it up. the streets get covered with blood during this "holdiay". Sorry, I think live animal sacrifice falls into the "mystical" category to me.
If the military government didn't hold on, Turkey would turn theocratic rather quickly. Don't even get me started talking about why there hardly seem to be any Armenians there any more.

I had to add my two cents. I would rather stay in the proper time frames for this forum but I had to address something that I felt was very wrong.

Peace,

Tim

[david welch]

LOL!

I can go to an Eastern board and post about how the Orientals were and are the highest for of civilization even know on the planet, and all the Easterners and westerners there will grovel and talk about how true that is.

I can go to an Middle Eastern board and post about how the Muslims were and are the highest for of civilization even know on the planet, and all the Muslims and Westerners there will grovel and talk about how true that is.

I can go to a South American or African board and post about how they were and are the highest for of civilization even know on the planet, and all the westerners and South Americans or African there will grovel and talk about how true that is.

John can post here about how Western Civilization has good point worth defending and honoring and the whole world, including a large part of the Westerners, will come here and rail that we are not groveling at the feet of the rest of the world.

Of course, if we were to post that the Spanish conquered South America because they were a more advanced culture, half of them would be here tomorrow, and half of the West would be here defending them.

I am appalled at those who's first instinct is to reply with examples of how this is wrong, and that the West really sucks.

I notice that those examples are readily forthcoming. Why don't you have any of why the West is special? Never mind... I have a pretty good idea...

Western civilization didn't have to come up with any of the things we are, except our filters of right and wrong, good and evil. All we had to do was look at other cultures and find the good in them and adopt it.

And whether you like it or not, we get our beliefs from Socrates and Plato, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius and Judeo-Christian values.

They say civilizations are never murdered, they commit suicide. And once we are no longer able to say this is good and this is bad about a culture, we will not be able to adopt the good and exclude the bad from other cultures... we will accept the bad as well. And this is what is happening as the multiculturalists hiding in the safety of advanced western civilization disgustingly tell us all cultures are equal. Just as sickening is the number of Westerners that are the only ones that believe it.

[Martin_Wilkinson]

I am appalled at those who's first instinct is to reply with examples of how this is wrong, and that the West really sucks.

No one has said that the "west" sucks. If they have i haven't seen it.

[david welch]

That is very true. You can't find the quote "the west sucks" anywhere else in this post except for what I wrote.

Really, the closest you can come is to some vague observations that it doesn't really, in fact, even exist.

[Martin_Wilkinson]

That is very true. You can't find the quote "the west sucks" anywhere else in this post except for what I wrote.

Really, the closest you can come is to some vague observations that it doesn't really, in fact, even exist.

What is the West, i think the fact that it's a vague description doesn't help matters, because from where i'm sitting, and presumably where most of us are, Rome is to the East, but it's apparently the source of "Western" culture.

If someone can clearly define what the west is, it would be a great help.

Christiandome? Europe? The British Empire? etc.

[J Marwood]

Mr Welch - I'm really, really confused as to why you think we are denigrating 'western culture'? I don't see anyone doing that.

From my imperfect view this side of a keyboard you, and some others, seem to be conflating the legitimate academic criticisms of Mr Clements' article and expressions of regret that he has yet to respond in depth to those criticisms with a spurious feeling that we are attacking western culture, refusing to see it's good points.

For what it's worth I suspect you and I may well be more in agreement than you think, especially in considering traditional representative liberal* democracy superior to other forms of government, and the culture which has developed in Northern Europe and parts of the British Empire to be superior to what I see of much of the rest of the world. I can admire some of the frankly amazing advances of medieval Islamic and Chinese culture, whilst still feeling Northern European and American society has advanced far beyond them.

However, to get back to the point, the issue, as confused as it is with emotional asides, is really about Mr Clements' article and the claims it makes in relation to European culture and how it relates to our own martial heritage. There have been challenges to the article's veracity and calls for him to respond in a reasoned academic manner.

To see anything else is, I feel, to allow ones perceptions to be overridden by ones prejudices.



* I use this advisedly, knowing it has a different meaning in the US to Europe (another of those pesky cultural differences). I am using it to refer to the notion that individual liberty is the primary political value, and that a pure democracy must be tempered by respect for that individual.

[david welch]

From my imperfect view this side of a keyboard you, and some others, seem to be conflating the legitimate academic criticisms of Mr Clements' article and expressions of regret that he has yet to respond in depth to those criticisms with a spurious feeling that we are attacking western culture, refusing to see it's good points.
...

However, to get back to the point, the issue, as confused as it is with emotional asides, is really about Mr Clements' article and the claims it makes in relation to European culture and how it relates to our own martial heritage. There have been challenges to the article's veracity and calls for him to respond in a reasoned academic manner.

Really?

JC starts his editorial by saying:

There is the need then to draw, as it were, a “larger circle” around things by making some generalizations about just what elements define the civilization of the “West.”

Seems to me he admits that he is going to be making some generalizations in an attempt to define western civ.

This was answered with Ad hominem attacks, sock puppetry, and an attempt to give the middle east credit for all the developments that came from the cultures they destroyed, when they didn't try to take credit by down right theft (such as taking claim to the invention of zero).

All I saw was an attempt to use Thermopylae to highlight the widest gap between western culture and the rest of the world:

On one side were free men, citizens of a state, committed to a harsh discipline as specialists who would volunteer to fight and likely die for the safety of their greater community. On the other side, the conscript slave soldiers and zealots of an autocratic despot demi-god ruling a tribal empire.

as far as "legitimate academic criticisms of Mr Clements' editorial", I have yet to see many.

[Randall Pleasant]

What Nigel is saying (at least as i interpret it) is that we can never fully understand past cultures, because we cannot go there, we cannot get into their mindset, it's vastly different.

As an ex-archaeologist I must strongly disagree with you. In our efforts to find out everything about a past culture we often don't event have written records, only the trash left in the dirt.

[John_Clements]

LOL!

John can post here about how Western Civilization has good point worth defending and honoring and the whole world, including a large part of the Westerners, will come here and rail that we are not groveling at the feet of the rest of the world.

Sigh, Yeah.
As historian Thomas Sowell wrote, “we do not live in the past, but the past in us.”

So, out of curiosity, have any of you Euro folk ever noticed how when an Asian martial arts practitioner does the same for the culture from whence his art developed as I have in my editorial he gets applauded and commended, rather than vigorously challenged over it? Well, I’ll expect no less for mine then. But apparently when a “white guy” dares writing in general about his heritage and culture he is typically accused of ethnocentrism, xenophobia, political in-correctness and even racism (…all of which btw, are again modern Western notions, we can point out).

To me, the absurd irony here is that, as I wrote in my editorial--that's editorial not article--a salient feature of Western civilization has always been its capacity when necessary to adapt, to borrow and absorb and use ideas from outside itself so as to change for the better. So, I fully reject demands to address rambling politically correct complaints of conceit or false attributing of achievements.

It was in the 15th and 16th century Renaissance, the very time at which Europe, as diverse an amalgam as it was, came to its own self-identity (as "Western Civilization") and first called itself a “European civilization” (one made up of Latin Christendom, which they specifically did not consider as including the Turks of the former Byzantium). -- This is a very thesis of much of the late great Renaissance scholar John Hale's highly acclaimed works, to which I subscribe as well. -- We see Humanist thinkers in Italy expressing for the first in history the very ideal that respect for other cultures and valuing other civilizations was a laudable and enlightened thing for society---and they held this view toward the very authoritarian cultures who at the time were themselves condescendingly telling the West that we were backward, inferior, corrupt, degenerate, or should pay them homage. Funny that.

In his 1545, On Concord throughout the World, Guillaume Postel, the esteemed French man of letters and science writing against divisiveness, argued: “it is impossible, because of the diversity of custom, languages, opinions and religions, that men should unite in one community until they first come to know each other: certainly the finest, most useful, and most necessary work in this world of accomplishing perfect human reconciliation, can only be to give men such knowledge of one another that by means of it recognizing the vice and virtue in persons or peoples previously unknown, and enduring the vice of another while approving the virtue, the world may come to a general accord.” This sentiment is arguably an entirely Western view of multicultural relations. I would challenge anyone to offer up a similar statement of liberal-minded endorsement of diversity from another such contemporary thinker outside of Europe.

JC

[Mike Sega]

After reading the three days worth of posts, I am struck by the critics by historians, or historians in training, who point out that various areas of John's article are historically inacurate. Ms. Boyden's piece in particular, goes on in depth. The problem, is that she often takes her discussion out of context and ignores certain caveats mentioned in the article. She points out many "firsts" that the west did not have, but as I read the article, such mention was not made, but that the whole combination of these ideas of freedom, emancipation and what have you were applied as one whole which has developed into what we have today. Yes, laws existed that predate the west, but where are those societies that started those laws? Without detracting from another society, what is wrong with exposing the merits of our western society? Which culture is it that has created such institutions as Doctors without borders, or Amnesty international? Would such be tolerated in others?

But the point of the article is to also see the ideas that led the Spartans, with all of their flaws, to willingly throw themselves at impossible odds. We can see this in many people using many thought processes in justifying it. Here, we can see the noble ideas that connect to our own values in our Western Civilization. Does this mean that the same values are not held by say individuals in China now? No. it just means that we can see a continuum, and that the good in the 300 sacrificing themselves for the better of their society is good. Western Civilization has put together alot that is honorable, and being the work of humans, alot that isn't. But we strive that the sum tally is on the plus side. That is the bar we should strive for. And no, the Spartan society was not ideal. Slavery is an abomination.

You know, Great Great Great .....Grandpa did many things I do not agree with. Many things he didn't know about. But he did do some things very well that I can admire him for.

[John_Clements]

/quote]

While I agree in an ideal world we would be able to fully take into account the cultural background of the material we study, we can't. We aren't them, our bodies are different & they are as alien to a guy from London or Miami as someone from Beijing, Mumbai or the Gaza strip. Further in fact as we can't get on a plane & visit them. Trying to understand their culture from records is about as effective as reading a tourist guide to France but not actually going there.

To put forth the premise that we can never hope to understand somewhat of the culture of our ancestors from the writings and societal constructs left by them would be a bit of a over-generalization I think.

That we can't understand the past with total accuracy or completely confidence is obvious to any historian. But if such appeal to ignorance is being used here to suggests that we cannot fathom the ethical or moral or emotional mindset of Renaissance forebears, it would come as a shock to the Renaissance scholars I spend much of my time interacting. This very goal is a large part of their life work by exploring the voluminous records, chronicles, diaries, memoirs, accounts and other literature that comprise much of their work. LOL.

I'll also look forward to the surprise reactions when the ARMA hosts some major forthcoming research papers on this very ethical & spiritual component of Renaissance martial arts as well as the emotion mindset of fighting men.

JC

[david welch]

To me, the absurd irony here is that, as I wrote in the editorial, a salient feature of Western civilization has always been its capacity when necessary to adapt, to borrow and absorb and use ideas from outside itself so as to change for the better. So I fully reject politically correct complaints of conceit or falsely attributing achievements.

This is what we see. But I am afraid that for a large part of the world, this is a double edged sword.

In a lot of the world, Western civ in general and America in specific, and we are especially hated because we were founded as a new country on the idea, not only is seen as taking what is good about their coulture, but as leaving what we believe is bad about their culture.

Because when we say "this is good so we will adopt it", we are also saying "this is deficiant and we reject it". The differences between us and other cultures stand as a monument to them of what we have judged, and found lacking. Some will, and do, hate us for it.

[Shane Smith]

* I use this advisedly, knowing it has a different meaning in the US to Europe (another of those pesky cultural differences). I am using it to refer to the notion that individual liberty is the primary political value, and that a pure democracy must be tempered by respect for that individual.

Pure democracy is an abomination amounting to little more than mob rule indeed. Democracy constrained by the rule of law on the other hand, is a wonderful, and very Western thing in my opinion and experience.