Virgo wrote:kirtu wrote:Sönam wrote:
That is Rinpoche's karma, he is born Tibetan ... he certainly should do that. Same as our culture is important for us, we must save our culture.
Aside from science and mathematics, what elements of western culture are important to the human race: hypocrisy, perfected industrial genocide, rapacious capitalism, environmental and natural resource rape, child abuse? What noble attributes of western culture exist?
Kirt
As far as hypocrisy goes, that is just how humans have been;
Good point!
The East had done this as well to some degree, and is no stranger from genocides and genocidal attempts, nor crusades.
The East didn't create death factories but I doubt that matters much in light of the killing fields.
Rapacious capatalism not the best yeah but out of it gave the drive and ingenuity that created the lightbulb,
I guess I'll accept this because this does seem to be the historical context.
the computer you are working on,
No the computer did not come from rapacious capitalism. The computer is inevitable from Hilbert's question on decidability. Even without the question the computer was inevitable as it appears that Babbage's Difference and Analytic Engines could actually have been build with mid-1800's technology. Bush and others created programmable mechanical calculator's in the 20's and electronic analog computers have been around since 1912. In fact analog computers in various forms have been around for almost 2000 years. But most telling, Konrad Zuse appears to have created the first stored program electronic computer around 1942 in Berlin, most definitely *NOT* under a capitalist system. If you don't accept that then the first electronic stored program computer is the Whirlwind or the Eniac from von Neuman's group 44-45 (and that history goes back to U. Penn, 36).
Computers were inevitable from human computing activity no matter what the economic system. However in our world it took WW II and the Cold War to begin the current stage of computer development.
your automobile,
Automobiles were created under several different societies in the late 1880's. They too were inevitable.
In short we can say the reason you are able to get into any Dharma teachings in your area is due to Western advances.
No this isn't true. I know lots of people who grew up in the US with Dharma teaching. You forget or don't know that Dharma teaching has been in the US for 150 years.
Also the reason there is no State religion that you must practice by law is due to western philosophical systems that influenced our governments, not just because a King is being nice.
I'm not sure I buy this. The west had forms of this (it still arguably does in Germany and Austria where Catholics and Protestants used to until very recently pay a tax to the respective church) until the 1800's or later.
Western medicine is great too.
It is. As long as you can afford access to it. I no longer can and as a result have no access to health care.
Some of our family values are great,
That's a tough sell for me. It seems to me that children have few protections.
democracy is great,
Sure where it exists, but I was born a US citizen and therefore don't live in a democracy, even though I was born in one (although I would have been born in one of the worst tyrannies in history just a few years before).
The West has produced great things, and there have been many great people in our societies throughout history.
The primary impulse of the west is to control other people and restrict their creativity through serfdom. Marx was essentially correct on this point.
Kirt