by Mr Hooper » January 9th, 2010, 1:15 am
I have also met and worked with Indians, people from various Muslim countries, Albanians, South Americans etc. Most have been friendly to me personally, but frequently hostile to Western culture. They are often fiercely nationalistic and protective of their own culture, which they do indeed see as superior in many cases (one could argue that they need to be, in the face of western dominance). In the UK, one can perhaps put the reluctance to champion western culture down to post-colonial guilt, at least in part. Not sure about where it stems from in the US mindset.
I currently live in Greece, but here also, in the supposed cradle of Western civilisation, there is an enormous amount of hostility, this time towards American and British culture especially, and more generally towards the sort of modern western culture that they deem to have departed from the Greek ideal. What becomes clear is that people define themselves, on a national level, by pointing out what is lacking in other cultures, by making negative comparisons. It's mostly about pride, or seems to be: pride on the national level feeds pride in one's self for belonging to that group, to that country, to the elect. In other words, it's ego-driven, and it all flows back to oneself. It is also frequently hypocritical, as people who often assert their culture's superiority are frequent consumers of foreign culture and goods (they watch, for example, versions of American shows, wear American fashions etc.)
I don't really understand what is going on countries like the UK though. There might seem, on the surface, to be less pride, but I don't think there is real humility either. Modern cultural theorists seem to be eager to wash their hands of their ancestors, but they appear to be ego-driven in other ways, perhaps as belonging to some sort of enlightened global community that is post just about everything (colonial, modern etc.) I don't really understand it very well and I'm sure someone here will be able to articulate it better than I. The only thing I can say with surety, from experience as I have indicated, is that other nations are proud of their culture and are only too happy to put western culture down. To them, all cultures most certainly are not equal.