Your Email:

Subject:

Message:
Entry: Declining "The West" Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/declining_the_west#24697 Post contents: James Pinkerton's attempted neologism is both under and over-determined. Christianity cannot be a sufficient condition for the West since, as Richard states, there are clearly non-Western Christians, nor can it be a necessary condition, since the West obviously existed prior to Christianity. As mistaken as this route too is to think of the West in terms of "culture," 'culture' largely being a creation of the 19th century, and an empty notion. (Why do deracinated societies cling to a notion of 'culture'?) And before asking what the West is, we should ask who are Westerners? Westerners are Europeans and the descendants of Europeans (including the UK and continent). This traditional definition, relying upon the ancient notion of the ancestral, is straightforward, and doesn't suffer the ambiguity of modernist attempts. I agree with Richard (Scott Richert, et al.) that a defense of the local is more desirable, but this doesn't mean that we cannot speak meaningfully about the West. Sent at: 2008 10 12