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Originally posted by denim
You want a definitive answer to that?? I could answer this in several ways, but you and other will be able to pick them apart, no problem. It can easily turn into another semantic exercise.
Honor is what you know about yourself. Reputation is what others know about you. Lois Bujold, Memory
That's as good a place to start as any. Arab culture confuses the two concepts of "honor" and "reputation", among other things. It's been a while since I read The Closed Circle, and I've not finished it yet.
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Well my response to this would be to say that if this is true, then Arabs would simply reply that Lois Bujold makes a distinction where there is none. Their concept of 'honour' is different from Lois's. Yes, that's right I turned it into a semantics thing kind of. Nevertheless, my point is, honour is entirely subjective. What one person calls honour, another would call stupidity. Which is basically what you kind of did before, though to a lesser degree.
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Whoa, you're assuming too much. I speak of memes as concepts. You'll note that my comment to what you labeled as "evolutionary theory" of history was just to agree that Moslems didn't seem to have kept up. That is, they hadn't maintained their advantage. They were advanced in medicine, sanitation (IIRC), navigation, and other issues, but they lost the advantage this gave them when they were overrun by the (Christian) barbarians.
Exactly why the "Christians" did this is unclear to me, but I suspect it is related to the thesis I wanted to use as an example. [/B]
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You misunderstand me, I wasn't labelling what you were saying as 'evolutionary history'. It's just that the concept of memes is one which is central to the evolutionary theory of history. My objection is against the use of words like 'backward', 'advanced' and phrases like 'keeping up' etc. These refer firstly to some kind of teleological history, and secondly apply value terms to historical developments where there ought not be any. This is not to say we shouldn't make value judgements about history, but they need to be within the context of non-teleological historical theory, moreover, I am not saying that judgements can't be made which make comparitive reference to our own time, only that these are not accurate for assessing the historical reality.