Zompist Bboard Again

xxx wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 4:54 am globalization is westernization...
virtually the whole world is in the west...
in french, "être à l'ouest" (to be in the West) is to be disoriented (dis-oriented, logical)...
globalization is in fact a great disorientation...

You can't derive deeper truths about life in general by playing word games that only work in one language. Someone more talented at conlanging than me could probably come up with a conlang from whose features one could derive a claim that xxx is inherently wrong about everything, but that wouldn't "prove" anything, either.

do you really think these are only puns...
and that the race to the westernization isn't a dis-orientization...
the words clearly indicate, even in English, the former tropism to East,
and that tensions between East and West are not unrelated to this...

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 11:07 am Someone more talented at conlanging than me could probably come up with a conlang from whose features one could derive a claim that xxx is inherently wrong about everything,

somebody did do that. their online name is LSD.

xxx wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 12:43 pm do you really think these are only puns...

of course not - puns are funny.

and that the race to the westernization isn't a dis-orientization...

well, at least you're honest about what city you live in.

the words clearly indicate, even in English, the former tropism to East,

and you have no idea why we have so many words for the direction where the sun comes up.

and that tensions between East and West are not unrelated to this...

*gasp* you mean...holy cripes, the French Papacy vs the Italian Papacy vs the Constantine Orthodox only existed because each was further to the east than the others! Athens only fought against Persia because they didn't like the sun coming up across the Strait! America only fought the Cold War because the USSR wasn't in the west like them!

or, in short, which tensions?

Raphael wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 11:07 am

xxx wrote: ↑Tue Aug 20, 2024 4:54 am globalization is westernization...
virtually the whole world is in the west...
in french, "être à l'ouest" (to be in the West) is to be disoriented (dis-oriented, logical)...
globalization is in fact a great disorientation...

You can't derive deeper truths about life in general by playing word games that only work in one language. Someone more talented at conlanging than me could probably come up with a conlang from whose features one could derive a claim that xxx is inherently wrong about everything, but that wouldn't "prove" anything, either.

fair enough, but globalization still is westernization in a very meaningful sense. [we're all living in america cocacola wonderbra and so on and so on]. and like, yeah, french puns are whatever, sure, but in this case I think it's hard for first worlder ethnic europeans -weird term, but you know what i mean: brits, germans, french, americans, etcetera- to fathom exactly how weird that is if you're not an ethnic european. imagine it by shuffling it around: the entire world, let us imagine, is persian: everything on the internet is written in persian, the world currency is the tuman minted in tehran, the expectation in every interaction you have online is that you're shia muslim, you grow up knowing more about the minutiae of iranian geography while at the same time not knowing much about your own country's provinces and cities, all of the movies are set in tehran, isfahan or tabriz, and you and everyone else in the world know exactly what the differences in vibe are between those three cities. btw all of the videgames are in farsi, maybe you get a bad dub here and there, programming languages don't go "print variable", they go "متغیر چاپ" or whatever, you know 500 iranian companies but like 3 from your own country, everyone in the world is always discussing who the next ayatolah will be or whatever... I don't know if disorienting is the word for it but, you know, it's a thing.

well, China will be thrilled to hear that - what with their increasing influence and work projects in Central Asia and in Africa; soon, China will be Western by virtue of being global, rather than depending on other definitions.

heh... yeah, well, call me when a quarter of the world knows mandarin by sheer force of passive exposure and programming languages go 打印变量 instead of print variable. more seriously, it is possible that china's ascension will change the euro-american character of globalization in the future, but we're sooooo far away from that scenario -though we certainly were further from it in 1971 or sth. It's not chinese military bases that can be found in almost every country in the world, after all, and the renminbi, while *some* people use it, is tiny and trivial besides the us dollar in terms of share of international trade that uses it etcetera.

I am Indian. My history classes focused almost exclusively on Indian history. It started with Indus Valley archaeology, moved on to medieval India (Ashoka, Akbar) and ended with the nationalist movement. Everything else I learned, I did it on my own. I still know very little about British history except insofar as it pertains to the East India Company. None of my history books mentioned Gladstone, but they went into obnoxious detail on small time company administrators. I was taught next to nothing about Western and Chinese classical civilizations, or the history of the Caliphate. I would be shocked if the word "Babylon" occurred in any of my history books. In my experience, the Bengalis working with me in CS have never heard of the place.

Most Bengalis don't know much about Western pop culture either. It's a combination of general disinterest and an inability to get past the language barrier. I think the only Western icon who still exerted an influence on Bengali pop culture the last time I paid attention to that world is Tintin, and that's through translation. Personally, I exerted a disproportionate effort to learn other languages. I read English, but also Russian (my Communist father had a Russian language guide lying around in the house) and Japanese (and German in theory).

I don't think Indians in general learned anything from the British. I don't think humans are smart enough to have stable cultures. It's mostly random noise. Whatever regularities there are come from the economic base supporting social institutions. Countries supported by the devil's excrement and similar mining initiatives develop warlords, countries whose wealth comes from a working class laboring in factories get Marx-adjacent revolutions, countries that invest in post-industrial service industries oscillate between liberal and fascist policies, etc. That last type of country is loved by tourists, since consumers are all about getting services in exchange for cash. These days, consumers incorrectly associate "friendliness towards tourism" with the country being "good" in a universal sense. Across the world, countries that are good for tourism are not necessarily the ones that its natives are fortunate to be born in.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Wed Aug 21, 2024 7:32 pm I am Indian. My history classes focused almost exclusively on Indian history. It started with Indus Valley archaeology, moved on to medieval India (Ashoka, Akbar) and ended with the nationalist movement.

I don't think Indians in general learned anything from the British. I don't think humans are smart enough to have stable cultures.

Thank you for adding clarity and a lot of information to this discussion. It is very much appreciated.

Most Bengalis don't know much about Western pop culture either. It's a combination of general disinterest and an inability to get past the language barrier.

I guess I drew the wrong conclusions from English being in the list of official languages; sorry.

Torco wrote: ↑Wed Aug 21, 2024 1:35 pm how weird that is if you're not an ethnic european. imagine it by shuffling it around: the entire world, let us imagine, is persian: everything on the internet is written in persian, the world currency is the tuman minted in tehran, the expectation in every interaction you have online is that you're shia muslim, you grow up knowing more about the minutiae of iranian geography while at the same time not knowing much about your own country's provinces and cities, all of the movies are set in tehran, isfahan or tabriz, and you and everyone else in the world know exactly what the differences in vibe are between those three cities. btw all of the videgames are in farsi, maybe you get a bad dub here and there, programming languages don't go "print variable", they go "متغیر چاپ" or whatever, you know 500 iranian companies but like 3 from your own country, everyone in the world is always discussing who the next ayatolah will be or whatever... I don't know if disorienting is the word for it but, you know, it's a thing.

You know what, I saw a film at the last Cannes Film Festival whose pitch was exactly that...
Universal Language
in a contemporary Canada, everyone speaks Farsi...
plus the filmmaker, in a Canadian winter setting, shoots Kiarostami-style,
for an astonishing reverse exoticism, where you come out dis-westernized,
without any explanatory signposting of the hidden meanings of such a situation...
a must-see...

lmao fucking nice. alas, I'm not finding it online. sounds fun tho