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| Should the principle of universality apply in foreign affairs? |
| Yes. |
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66% |
[ 6 ] |
| No. |
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33% |
[ 3 ] |
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| Total Votes : 9 |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:26 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| So you say... |
That is right, Gang ah jee, so I say. I would not trust you to summarize views and findings in cultural anthopology, ethnohistory, and history given your open disdain for them and the other humanities as fundmentally inferior to applied linguistics and Chomsky...
Start, for one, with Australian ethnohistorian Inga Clendinnen. She studies traumatic historical events (e.g., Diego de Landa's torturing his Maya charges on the Yucatan; the Aztecs' ritual sacrifice, flaying of their victims, wearing their skins, eating them, etc., on the eve of the Conquest; and the Holocaust).
She asks what these things meant to those who carried them out. She assumes they did not look at these things as we, today, would and do. And like many who have benefitted from the postcolonial critique, she questions whether we ever can grasp these Others and the meaning they assigned to these events and activities.
Also check out Clifford Geertz's "thick description." According to Geertz cultural anthropology can and should aim to bridge various culturally-constructed meanings on some of the very things you claim in your above list are all figured out and agreed upon by everyone.
I fully expect you to come back and arrogantly slam all that I have said, so I do not see myself responding to this thread again. I understand Chomsky does take a different line on these issues. I merely offer some of the other things other disciplines see and offer. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:37 pm Post subject: |
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| gang ah jee wrote: |
| ...you were saying that Chomsky had defended Japanese imperialism. |
I no longer have this cite, it originally came up in casual conversation with a group of East-Asianist historians at a conference where we were discussing a short collection of Chomsky-excerpts, and, in any case, no matter what I cited, I believe as a Chomsky disciple, you would pounce on it and defend him to the death. So what is the point, Gang ah jee?
But yes, several of us saw Chomsky's narrative as it was in this publication as apologizing for Japanese imperialism. "They just aimed to liberate East Asia of white imperialism," or something very much like that.
That he has since disavowed that and clarified that that was not what he meant, fine. But he did indeed write what I said. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 7:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| So you say... |
That is right, Gang ah jee, so I say. I would not trust you to summarize views and findings in cultural anthopology, ethnohistory, and history given your open disdain for them and the other humanities as fundmentally inferior to applied linguistics and Chomsky... |
Actually, Brown's work is a summary of cultural anthropological research. If you're interested in this topic enough to weigh in on it as you have, then I suggest that you read it, rather than just speculating about what others say. But yes, you are correct that not everyone agrees that human universals exist. Fascinating. Thank you for your insightful contribution. Do you have any idea which way the universalist/relativist pendulum is swinging at the moment though, Gopher? Hmm?
| Gopher wrote: |
I no longer have this cite, it originally came up in casual conversation with a group of East-Asianist historians at a conference where we were discussing a short collection of Chomsky-excerpts, and, in any case, no matter what I cited, I believe as a Chomsky disciple, you would pounce on it and defend him to the death. So what is the point, Gang ah jee?
But yes, several of us saw Chomsky's narrative as it was in this publication as apologizing for Japanese imperialism. "They just aimed to liberate East Asia of white imperialism," or something very much like that.
That he has since disavowed that and clarified that that was not what he meant, fine. But he did indeed write what I said. |
What's the point? You made a claim that sounds spurious, and I was asking if you could back it up. Apparently the best you have is an anecdote where you talked about it. If you find the cite let me know, otherwise your options are to withdraw the claim, or to slink off without further comment. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 10:01 pm Post subject: |
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Well, it those are my only two alternatives, Gang ah jee...
Here is an excerpt from an article I simply Googled. You could easily have done the same. "Chomsky" "Japan" "Imperialism"
It is a theme he has touched on more than once, and it differs each time he touches on it, I recall. This is, unfortunately, not the cite I have in mind.
Suffice it to say, East Asianists take exception to at least some of his assertions, as do other area specialists as well. One obvious problem with applied linguists, if you are indeed representative of them, is this tendency to arrogantly even self-righteously dismiss other disciplinary perspectives as inferior and not worthy of engagement -- because we who study ground conditions, foreign-language sources, etc., know differently than you who study whatever it is that you study in applied linguistics that makes you believe your voice is the final word in world politics and international affairs -- not to mention paleontology, evolutionary theory, and global warming.
As far as Chomsky goes, he seems to be preaching an objective truth on American foreign relations without realizing that he aligned himself, intentionally or not, with the so-called "New Left." He attacked Immerman's book, for example, citing their standard objections -- which, unsurprisingly, all derive from a Marxist-Leninist materialist-reductionist worldview. But you do not need me to cite Hugo Chavez's holding Chomsky's book when he attacked American foreign policy as if the United States were Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom before the UN last year...
| Noam Chomsky wrote: |
| [Here he is ensuring that no one might claim that anything in any way good can ever have come from American foreign policy]...great powers pursue their own interests, sometimes incidentally helping others. Japanese fascism, for example, was brutal and murderous, but Japanese aggression did lead to driving the white invaders out of Asia, opening the way to independence, saving tens of millions of lives in India alone, many more elsewhere. We do not ask how to "explain" this favorable consequence of fascist aggression as if it somehow is inconsistent with the vicious crimes of Japanese imperialism. Japanese propaganda of course claims that liberation of Asia from European imperialism was Japan's goal, which is not entirely false, but we know better than to be deluded by these protestations of good intent. |
Full Context Here
Not everyone is so falling-off-the-face-of-the-Earth enamored of Noam Chomsky that they fail to recognize his flirtations with apologia for any number of regimes, Gang ah jee...
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ariellowen
Joined: 19 Apr 2006
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 2:00 am Post subject: |
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Come on, this is exactly the sort of "reading into" I was talking about.
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"Do not do unto others what angers you if done to you by others."
Socrates 436-338 BCE |
Where did Plato write this? the Fourteenth Letter? And these are the dates for Isocrates, not Socrates, who died in 399!
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"We should behave toward friends as we would wish friends to behave toward us."
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) |
The key word here is "friends," Aristotle did not endorse fairness in dealings with non-Greeks, women, and slaves.
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Sikhism
"As thou deemest thyself, so deem others." |
Source?
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"What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellowman. This is the entire Law; all the rest is commentary."
Talmud, Shabbat 3id |
--straight from that important chapter dealing with "stoves, hearths, and ovens!"
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Hinduism
"This is the sum of duty; do naught onto others what you would not have them do unto you."
Mahabharata 5,1517
"One should not behave towards others in a way which is disagreeable to oneself. This is the essence of morality. All other activities are due to selfish desire."
Mahabharata, Anusasana Parva 113.8 |
Two lines in a poem of nearly seventy-five-thousand verses? --even today not extended to the Dalit.
--from the 'religion' second only to Hinduism interms of internal social inequality.
--from the religion most intolerant and persecutory of non-believers of any religion.
This web-page was thrown together by New-Age mystics. In no case whatever did they consider the context of the semi-accurate quotes, it is certainly not "reliable." |
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tomato
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: I get so little foreign language experience, I must be in Koreatown, Los Angeles.
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| Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2007 4:34 am Post subject: |
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ariellowen, I am asking out of genuine curiosity:
What do you have to say for Christianity? |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 3:33 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Well, it those are my only two alternatives, Gang ah jee... |
Actually, there were three alternatives, Gopher. I see, however, that you've taken an unexpected fourth way: presenting a misreading as evidence of your position. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here that this was accidental and not deliberate. I'm sure you have much too much intellectual integrity to even consider doing that.
So let's take a look:
| Gopher wrote: |
| Noam Chomsky wrote: |
| [Here he is ensuring that no one might claim that anything in any way good can ever have come from American foreign policy]...great powers pursue their own interests, sometimes incidentally helping others. Japanese fascism, for example, was brutal and murderous, but Japanese aggression did lead to driving the white invaders out of Asia, opening the way to independence, saving tens of millions of lives in India alone, many more elsewhere. We do not ask how to "explain" this favorable consequence of fascist aggression as if it somehow is inconsistent with the vicious crimes of Japanese imperialism. Japanese propaganda of course claims that liberation of Asia from European imperialism was Japan's goal, which is not entirely false, but we know better than to be deluded by these protestations of good intent. |
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Compare with what I had already posted (and read italics for extra irony!).
| gang ah jee wrote: |
| Noam Chomsky wrote: |
Chomsky: You could argue, and I think it's probably true, that the conquest of Baghdad was such a shock in the Arab world - I mean this is like the mongol invasion from their point of view - it was such a shock in the Arab world that it set off shockwaves that are doing all sorts of things, and, you know, among them may be pressing for democracy.
But anybody who thinks you ought to praise that ought to be out on the streets next December 7th cheering the Japanese for bombing Pearl Harbour, because the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour, you know, capture of Singapore and so on, set off huge currents in all of Asia which led to throwing out the Western imperialists. I mean, that saved millions of lives in India alone, let alone who knows how many more elsewhere. Do we praise the Japanese for their democratizing efforts? Yeah, if you hit some system with a sledgehammer all kind of things are going to happen, and some of them may turn out to be beneficial, like the Japanese invasion, the bombing of Pearl Harbour.
So, you know, yes, the capture of Baghdad was a tremendous shock in the Arab world. That's the center of Arab culture and history and so on, conquered by the mongols again. Of course it's going to set off an effect.
Host: I somehow envision that soundbite being taken out and used in other ways ... but we're all witnesses to the context.
Chomsky: [laughing] Yes. |
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See any similarities? So, your options remain. Front up, back down, or slink away. No more red herrings, please.
Oh, and since your knowledge of Chomsky seems to come from David Horowitz and cute cartoons (lol), I suggest you do some further reading, rather than simply repeating the standard right-wing canards. You might find this helps to clear up some misconceptions you may have that stem from knowing Chomsky only by reputation.
Mark Laffey. 2003. Discerning the patterns of world order: Noam Chomsky and international theory after the Cold War. Review of International Studies 29: 587-604
Of course, you'll probably never forgive Chomsky for pointing out that there's nothing in your field that can't be understood by a bright 15-year old.
| Gopher wrote: |
| One obvious problem with applied linguists, if you are indeed representative of them, is this tendency to arrogantly even self-righteously dismiss other disciplinary perspectives as inferior and not worthy of engagement -- because we who study ground conditions, foreign-language sources, etc., know differently than you who study whatever it is that you study in applied linguistics that makes you believe your voice is the final word in world politics and international affairs -- not to mention paleontology, evolutionary theory, and global warming. |
I knew I shouldn't have told you what I study - you appear to have become fixated with it.
Really though, the issue is not what I study, but rather with your reliance on postmodernist critiques of the current state of human knowledge without actual experience of that knowledge directly. Thus, we have you making ridiculous claims like 'no-one says evolution is fact' or 'there is no consensus on global warming' or 'most anthropologists reject human universals', when it's clear that you don't actually know what you're talking about. Funny! |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 4:04 pm Post subject: |
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Funny indeed.
I do not expect an amicable exchange of views with someone who has slaved himself to Chomsky's worldview as you have, Gang ah jee.
He aligned himself with America's so-called New Left in the Vietnam Era. Do note this movement's ill-tempered, hostile, and antiEstablishmentarian nature, Gang ah jee.
Most of them grew up and thus the movement disappeared by the early 1980s. Some of them, unfortunately, remain with us -- Chomsky being the top dog among them. Others include Buzzanco and Cumings. Cumings is the one who wrote North Korea's apologia and squarely blamed the United States for causing the Korean War. See his The Origins of the Korean War.
In any case, if you think I am the only one who objects to their drifting in and out of outright apologia for the worst kinds of regimes this world has ever seen in their quest to discredit America and indeed provoke the Revolution, or that these regimes themselves are not conscious of this and indeed do not return their embrace, then you have deluded yourself my friend.
Same goes for your arrogant pretentions to speak for objective reality and ignore the overwhelming preponderance of cultural anthropologists at least in the American academy who do not accept your brash claims to universal truth. Have every single thing figured out, do you...? Then run along, go tell everyone so that peace and understanding might break out... 
Now I fully understand why we in the social sciences and humanities rarely if ever interact with applied linguistics. Or should I say, why they rarely if ever deign to interact with us...  |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 4:57 pm Post subject: |
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Thanks for that steady stream of ad hominems, Gopher! I was impressed that you managed to reiterate your argumentum ad Chavezum as well. Good job, champ.
So here's an observation. Whenever you are asked to provide evidence for your position, or unable to provide a coherent argument, you resort to cheap logical fallacies. Obviously, I'm not the only one to have noticed this.
For example, in this thread you have been unable to support your position that regarding the principle of universality's application to international relations through argument - only through special pleading: "practicalities and complexities". Right. You used an ad populum and appeal to authority to yourself regarding the position of anthropologists on human universals (you cited Geertz?! What year do you think it is?), when the fact of the matter is that you just don't know what most of them think about the issue, and you're clearly oblivious to the dismantling of the Standard Social Sciences Model.
And now you've been asked to provide evidence of your claim that Chomsky has played apologist for Japanese imperialism. Instead you've presented the likely source of the misquotation, but are unable to actually back up your initial claim. Rather than showing the integrity to withdraw from your position, you're instead attacking Chomsky (and note, not his arguments or evidence - that's not where your skills lie, is it?) on a purely ad hominem basis. You've even stuck an argumentum ad Chavezum in there. The joke of course is that you consider anyone who argues that the US might not always be a force for sweetness and light in the world is an apologist for 'the other side'. You're addicted to those sweet, sweet false dichotomies, aren't you Gopher.
| Gopher wrote: |
| Now I fully understand why we in the social sciences and humanities rarely if ever interact with applied linguistics. Or should I say, why they rarely if ever deign to interact with us... |
You understand little, my furry little friend. First, fix your obsession with my field of study - it's making you look foolish. Second, try, for once, to engage the issues through logic, evidence and argumentation rather than through logical fallacy. Start from your next post.
You're a smart man, Gopher - most of us think you're able to do it! |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
| Also check out Clifford Geertz's "thick description." According to Geertz cultural anthropology can and should aim to bridge various culturally-constructed meanings on some of the very things you claim in your above list are all figured out and agreed upon by everyone. |
I'm going to read the thread later but just happened on this quote above...... seems you are still going through some reading list and each new one is like manna from heaven, until the next. Glad you have enthusiasm Gopher but to quote Geertz in this capacity is inane. I can't even begin to figure out that paragraph......cross cultural surveys such as Browns are a big part of anthropology and an accepted part. Your criticisms not withstanding. Check out the many usergroups full of great cross cultural surveys that have been ongoing for decades....
DD |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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Not going to argue with you overly-zealous idealistic morons on this isssue anymore. You claim that universality is all figured out and done. Gang ah jee makes the most arrogant statements about everything sitting from his perch in applied linguistics. The ever-so-pretentious and perpetually-lecturing Ddeubel pipes in and claims I am reciting a list I have just discovered.
Fine. Enact and enforce it, then. Show me this worldwide consensus on these universal concepts in personal behavior and international relations.
You have two options: enact it and show me; or float, do not slither, away...as your feet are way too far above ground for that... |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| Show me this worldwide consensus on these universal concepts in personal behavior and international relations. |
A strawman! What a surprise! Plus, the obligitory ad hominems, and now 'morons'. You're all class, Gopher. |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:23 pm Post subject: |
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You have got nothing here, Gang ah jee. A thread where you idealistically and very naively claim that something that has never worked and never will work should work merely because you declare it morally correct. You are going to eliminate "hypocrisy" while at the same time recolonizing the entire world with your own standards and then effecting a supranational judicial/enforcement body to move against wrongdoers!
Gang ah jee...who do you think you are?
Let me help bring you back to planet Earth, Gang ah jee: you may work your entire life on this issue. Construct the best argument that you can. Scorn and ridicule anyone who objects.
But this poll here, where five or six (or whatever it is) voted in favor of your childish proposal against the one who voted against it...? This is your high-water mark, Gang ah jee; this is your zenith on this issue.
So enjoy it while it lasts. |
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gang ah jee
Joined: 14 Jan 2003
Location: city of paper
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| Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2007 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
You have got nothing here, Gang ah jee. A thread where you idealistically and very naively claim that something that has never worked and never will work should work merely because you declare it morally correct. You are going to eliminate "hypocrisy" while at the same time recolonizing the entire world with your own standards and then effecting a supranational judicial/enforcement body to move against wrongdoers!
Gang ah jee...who do you think you are? |
Who indeed? All I'm suggesting is that we should hold ourselves to the same standards as we hold other countries and that we should work on developing and increasing the efficacy of IGOs like the United Nations. Shocking, I know. Who am I to suggest that international relations might not be a zero-sum game?
| Gopher wrote: |
| Let me help bring you back to planet Earth |
I never thought I'd hear this from such a committed cultural, cognitive and moral relativist! I am actually genuinely laughing out loud here. Gopher, don't you believe that planet Earth is a discursive construct? As you said, "No facts, just perception"? Not a big fan of coherency, are you.
| Gopher wrote: |
| But this poll here, where five or six (or whatever it is) voted in favor of your childish proposal against the one who voted against it...? This is your high-water mark, Gang ah jee; this is your zenith on this issue. |
You know Gopher, for someone who takes 'anti-Americanism' and the implication of moral turpitude in policy as seriously as you do, you may want to examine the possible reasons why people may not agree with you about your own perceptions of your country. Obviously you're content to emit a whining dirge at the suggestion that policies aggressively pursuing American economic and military hegemony may not be in the benefit of most people in the world - including Americans - but when the best arguments you can come up with in response is "practicalities and complexities" or "it's not okay, it is what it is" or streams of invective and ad hominems, that's a sign that you might need to develop some more sophisticated apologetics techniques.
| Gopher wrote: |
| Enjoy it while it lasts. |
Thanks! I will! |
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ddeubel
Joined: 20 Jul 2005
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| Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2007 3:45 am Post subject: |
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| Quote: |
Not going to argue with you overly-zealous idealistic morons on this isssue anymore. You claim that universality is all figured out and done. Gang ah jee makes the most arrogant statements about everything sitting from his perch in applied linguistics. The ever-so-pretentious and perpetually-lecturing Ddeubel pipes in and claims I am reciting a list I have just discovered.
Fine. Enact and enforce it, then. Show me this worldwide consensus on these universal concepts in personal behavior and international relations.
You have two options: enact it and show me; or float, do not slither, away...as your feet are way too far above ground for that... |
Gopher, You were not arguing but rather revealing how little you know about such a topic as cross cultural analysis. More revealing is how you ad hocly quoted/clipped Geertz into your arguement when there is no fit whatsoever.
Cross cultural analysis is a well researched, proven and time tested area of anthropological study. Few , very few doubt its validity -- only its applicability in some areas. The HRAF, the main data base for comparative anthropologists (I graduated with a degree in anthropology and my thesis was a comparative analysis of shamanic practices in the S.Pacific with modern medical practices. Specifically looking at the nature of "healing". .....), this database is time tested and has rigorous principles and standards before anything is accepted as "valid". Get informed.
I'd recommend Murdock's work on the universals of kinship, as a primer for how meticulous the research is. It is statistical and not just the normal sociological, mumbo jumbo pontification, you are used to. His ethnographic atlas is first rate also. I really like the wisdom of Alfred Kroeber, in his insistence that there are commonalities which culture masks and that the science of man has much possibility of shining a bright path into the seeming darkness and morass of human difference and breast beating....
Take a look at some Spss database and the plethora of hard statistics indicating human universals. Even go look up the HRAF which are exhausting. I don't have the time to hold your hand like your professors are doing. Then, take a deep breath and stop throwing distane on a list which is particularly valid .......
DD |
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