----- Original Message -----
From: "Anders Sandberg" <asa@nada.kth.se>
> Isn't that taking the analogy too far, and missing out what the real
> point is? The goal is a new enlightenment (and not just in islamic
> nations, preferably also here in the west!), we have to select ways
> towards this goal that fit with reality. Unless the US invades
> Afghanistan or something similar, dictatorships are obviously out of
> question. But what about pressuring for democracy? What about giving
> support to the free press and pro-democratic groups across the middle
> east? What about opening a dialogue with islamic scholars (whose views
> often have far greater impact on culture and policy in their countries
> than our scholars could ever hope to achieve)? What about removing trade
> tariffs against such nations? There are a lot of different options here.
>
I am not questioning the goal. I am questioning--or at least drawing out an
implication of--Charlie's analogy. Using Japan as an anaology was supposed
to give us some reason for hoping that we can institute this goal. I am
merely pointing out that in the case of Japan a military dictatorship was
necessary. I don't disagree that this is the only means to achieve this
goal, I do wonder how effective in the short term (say <20 years) more beign
measures might be. The sorts of measures you described have been
attempted--with varying degrees of enthusias--with China, inter alia. I
think there is some room for optimism that such means might eventually be
effective, but these are long-term projects. Having said this, however, I
should say that I am not totally against the idea of invading countries for
precisely this purpose.
> > In effect, I think you are saying that we know best what is best
> > for them. (If not this only exacerbates the problem). You might even be
> > right about this, but still there is the problem of instituting what we
> > think is best for them. After all, saying that they are ignorant in this
> > respect is part of what they do not like about the west in the first
place.
> > Any thoughts and getting from here to there?
>
> Charlie's article was unashamedly universalistic: it claimed it is good
> to live in a free, open society where human rights are respected. This
> is an opinion that is seldom heard today, but I think it should be
> supported. Empirical evidence show that open societies work, become
> prosperous, free and fairly safe, and beside this they have a solid
> philosophical foundation that doesn't necessarily have to contradict any
> religion (as well as they are compatible, no, nearly indispensable for
> transhumansm).
>
> In our postmodern culture such universalism is viewed with scepticism:
> who am I to declare what is good for others? The realisation that other
> cultures may have valid points is often extrapolated to the incorrect
> idea that all expressions of all cultures are equally valid. Even if
> this ridiculous extreme is not accepted, many think that it is wrong to
> not just impose ones own values onto another culture by force, but also
> that it is wrong to impose it - even without deliberation - by exposure
> or non-coercive means such as trade. This is the foundation for much of
> the resistance in Europe agains "American cultural imperialism" -
> Starbucks and Euro-Disney are seen by some intellectuals as an act of
> cultural "war" (my quotation marks, not theirs).
I of course agree. Sometimes the mistake is made that since we believe that
the individual ought to have the right to live according to his or her
conception of human flourishing that it follows that at the state level we
should allow other countries to follow their conception of what human
flourishing consists in. Clearly the latter does not follow from the former.
>
> But cultures have always interacted. Ideas spread, customs mix and
> structures are challenged. We should be happy about the creolization
> that have brought forth greek philosophy, hellenism, indian art, the
> netherlands, the US and rock music. Trying to keep a culture static and
> untainted by outside influences is equivalent to killing it by freezing.
> We should not try to impose our values with force on other cultures -
> that never works - but we should show them the best
> ideas/things/institutions we have achived, why they work, how they work
> and invite them to do better. The Japanese understood this long before
> WW II - it might have taken them a gunboat to start the process simply
> by showing them what they had missed, but soon it had its own momentum
> when they realized that they could learn and make something good out of
> what they learned.
>
The Japanese certainly knew about western industry well before WW II,
indeed, this was apparent to the world after 1904. It sounds like a
revisionist history to say that the had adopted much of the political/moral
values of the Enlightenment before the end of WW II. Thus, I think that the
Japanese are an excellent model of how imposing our values with force can be
done successfully. After all, the Japanese were not trusted with any
military force to speak of for a generation, this task being left to the
U.S. The lesson we should draw from Japan's case is that we need to deal a
crushing military blow to a country and then dominate them military for a
generation while the Enlightenment values have a chance to take root. As
brutal as this sounds, I must say I am not sure that Afghanistan would not
be better off in both the long and short term if this model was implimented
there. Mark
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:46 MDT