Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Leyana]

"Sometimes I turn on my TV to the satellite stations to channel surf and I invariably come across things that force me to realize why so many traditional cultures regard contemporary Western cultures with such disdain."
-- 1.) Calling a culture "traditional" is retarded. All cultures change and progress over time. Your assumption that "Western culture" is more "contemporary" just shows your biases.
--2.) Judging a culture based upon what shows up on television is always going to give a skewed viewpoint. Case in point: the millions of westerners that assume Asian cultures are all these super-traditional havens of tranquility and peace that practice daily meditation, calligraphy, and martial arts (sure, some people do, but lots of people dont.)


"First off, a CNN International segment about a brother-sister's legal fight in Leipzing, Germany to legalize incestuous relationships in the Bundestag. Their lawyer and support group contend that they are causing no harm to society by getting married and having children. Never mind that half their children are mentally impaired in some way, or that doctors have long since known this. That the German Supreme Court will even hear arguments for this sick moral transgression is sufficient indication of the degree of social depravity in the West."
-- 3.) incest an ALMOST universal taboo, yet the definition of "incest" varies greatly from society to society. Lots of your "traditional" cultures support some form of incest (ie marriages between cousins) and many cultures define kinship and family structures differently (for example, some cultures are completely patrilineal and dont consider your mother's family to be related to you at all, so it would be very easy to marry half siblings, etc.)
-- 4.) There are far more NON-western than "Western" cultures that allow incestuous marriages in their "moral" structure.
-- 5.) Brother - sister marriages are common in royal families to create "pure" bloodlines throughout a variety of societies in history (see incan empire).
-- 6.) Studies have shown that marriages between siblings, first cousins, etc, don't actually lead to huge amounts of deformities, etc. Biological anthropologists suggest that marriage between siblings is taboo because of greater needs for genetic diversity which leads to greater success off offspring. This doesn't mean that less diverse children are deformed; this means that if you have four kids, each with different mixtures of genes from two individuals (random assortment, separate inheritance blah blah), they will each be different from each other and therefore some will have adaptations that allow survival.

"Then you've got the ACLU in the U.S., which has provided free legal assistance to admitted pedophiles fighting for the legalization of sexual relationships with minors."
-- haven't studied this or heard about this, so won't say much, accept that I would like you to define "minor" - once again, the age of "adulthood" varies from culture to culture; "modern" "western" societies have one of the oldest definitions of this threshold from a historical viewpoint.

"Sex in the City airs as reruns in the West and in East Asia with the sluttish quartet chronicling their most recent sexual exploits masked as feminist independence. The veneer of legitimacy from the clever dialogue, chic clothes and restaurants, and fancy boutiques is stil unable to conceal what is glorified raunch and sexual obsession. And any critics are immediately accused of being prudish or puritanical or, worse yet, chauvanistic."
-- what is wrong with being a woman and liking to have sex? If the show was about men, nobody would even care. Is james bond an assault on our "moral integrity?"

"In another venue, I turn to WWF and listen to inane insults, comic-book like action figure men taunting each other like schoolyard bullies, and tens of thousands of screaming fans egging them on, many if not most actually believing that the matches they're watching are real and not staged. I imagine millions of more viewers at home--whole families--tuned in to this media-hyped pseudo-sport comparing the relative strengths of these dimwit titans. Then I shudder to think how many of them are voters and hope most don't bother to go to the polls."
--yes, because the vast majority of "westerners" are WWF watchers (previously you mentioned germans; I'm sure germans are just in LOVE with american wrestling.)
-- I haven't seen any studies about how WWF watchers are more likely to vote than the general population. I hadn't realized that they were so passionate about politics. Please provide a link about such.

"Finally, as if I needed more proof, I turn to a Reality TV program copied after The Bachelor, except without even so much as a feeble attempt at decency and decorum. Yes, it's Flavor Flav and his self-serving show Flavor of Love where foul-mouthed street sluts and aspiring bimbos compete to have dates with this raunchy, sexist, proudly ignorant pimp daddy who looks like Mugabe's younger brother and talks like Mike Tyson. VH-1 comes up with a reality TV idea with a black protagonist and selects the degenerate, ex-gangsta rap "star" of Public Enemy to be its host. Yes, let's reinforce those ghetto glorifying images for impressionable young black youth as if they don't get bombarded enough with this swill."
-- Asians like ghetto culture too; I happen to love asian rappers.
-- Yes, because once again, we all aspire to be like flava flav. I mean, that show isn't supposed to be a joke or anything, right?

Fast forward to Cairo or Riyadh or Islamabad or New Delhi or Beijing or Jakarta or San Salvador or Havana or Ankara or Nairobi and is it any wonder why it's so easy for people viewing or reading about these stories at the very least look askance at what Western pop culture dignifies these days?
-- Wow... nice lumping together of a huge amount of diverse cultures and assuming they're all morally superior to the US. I'm sure you've gone ahead and traveled to each of these cultures, and none of them, of course, experience the same things. Having personally lived for large stretches amounts of time throughout south america and central america, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they like their sensationalist programming just as much as the next guy (see novelas and reality t.v.) Asian reality TV isn't crazy at all, right?

I can turn off my TV set but that won't make the growing problem go away.
-- Not going to bother. Really.

And all the good things in traditional Western culture: aesthetic objects, music, art, literature, legal codes and the like that constitute an admirable civic culture get shunned to the shadows in the glow of so much bling and appeal to the lowest common denominator from Hollywood and New York and London and Paris and Berlin and Amsterdam.
-- And japanese values aren't overshadowed in the US by Anime; Korean culture by K-Pop and dramas, etc. etc. etc. Lets face it, popular culture is popular culture because it is easily packaged and marketable.

Seriously; this whole "which culture is morally superior" game is a load of crap. Anyone that would judge an entire culture by mass media alone should probably be shot.

[venus]

Cr@p. Cr@p, Cr@p.

TV shows are no more a display of 'social decline' if there even is such a thing (it would infer some 'golden age' where human society was on the whole an uncorrpupt and equal place - never has been. Yes read that again - NEVER.) than the gladiators of Rome or public stonings in the middle east, public executions in China and oh, you get the point, I just can't be bothered to go on trying to justify western culture to all those that have lived in the envious shadow of it for so long (understandably so) and thus want to throw stones at it in anger when there is no society on earth right now - and the history books will show you that there never has been - that is utopian. USSR, CHINA, AFRICA, ah can't be bothered to list em, because basically the point is that there has allways been scummy behaviour in every society there ever has been and there always will be, so get your heads out of your butts and get on with your lives instead of complaining about what is on tv!!!!


Get over it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!