with understanding.

>Just to save time: Solarus never
>said this. "Western" is a
>culture, not a race. Africans
>raised in "the West" (America,
>Europe) are for the most
>part Western, for example. "Whites"
>are for all intents and
>purposes all Western (I personally
>dont know of any whites
>who weren't raised into Western
>culture),

THANK YOU!!!! FINALLY SOMEONE THAT CAN READ!
GEEZ PEOPLE!

Didn't I say:
"Oh yeah, I don't want to hear any responses from anyone like "Blacks can love whites..." This has NOTHING to do with the compatibility of Western and non-Western worldviews."

Therefore black DOESN'T (automatically) equal NON-WESTERN!

>however, i do not agree with
>Solarus' total and stark separation
>of Western and non-Western cultures,
>Especially with regard to love.
>ALthough I think that many
>aspects of Western culture greatly
>undermine love (particularly individualism and
>the separation of reason and
>emotion), i have personally seen
>"true love" flourish between Westerners
>(my parents!). i have personally
>seen two "Western" people become
>one.

There is a great difference in how this love manifest to not only another but the COMMUNITY. The two factors you mentioned (individualism and...) both make that "love" two totally different phenomena. In the West love tends to be equated with "romance" with is not in any way shape or form "love." I said the two types of love are incompatible because they are DIFFERENT in meaning.

>Also, we mustn't forget
>that in many non-Western cultures
>(and still in many Western
>cultures as well), such as
>in many parts of India,
>for example, marriage and love
>are forced upon people, particularly
>women, who have little or
>no power over whom they
>are betrothed to. How does
>this fit into this alleged
>drastic dichotomy between western and
>non-western conceptions of love?

This is a Western misunderstanding on a tried and true practice in many societies. India has in own problems that can historically trace back to "western" entities (India is a patriarchal society but the original civilizations were MATRIARCHAL). For now I'll leave that alone and discussed arranged marriages.

Westerners tend to degrade this practice because of some foolish notions of "freedom" that are lost in the choice. The fact is that in these societies one does not have to pick and choose out of a series of inadequate mates because individuals are RAISED to understand the roles they play in these relationships and society. They understand that these relationships are PERMANENT the only thing they can do IS GROW. If you know that you WILL be with someone for the rest of your life then you will MAKE IT WORK.

Some people do experience this type of commitment in the West but the vast majority... Most Americans don't KNOW who they are married to and find out AFTER MARRIAGE. I shake my head with pity (then laugh) when I hear pitiful statements like "Man, she changed into a whole different person AFTER we got married."
YOU DIDN'T KNOW THE PERSON IN THE FIRST PLACE!! This shows that most of these relationships are built on some type of imaginary "love" (called infatuation and lust) which dies after people get "use" to their mates. The statements that I hear stemming from Western people today are just pitiful and ridiculous: "You not suppose to be with only ONE person for the rest of your life." Why? This attests to the same comment I made earlier about "falling in love." YOu render yourself powerless. Noone is saying you HAVE to be with ONE person but it is entirely likely that you can. Most WEsterners can't do it because they have no discipline and sense of civilization. To make such a pitiful universal statement such as the one stated above is endemic of this childlike culture. Non-western methods of living ARE TRIED, TRUE and TESTED. We are talking about practices that have been used for THOUSANDS OF YEARS and maintained CIVILIZATIONS for the same amount of years. Why are they suddenly seen insufficient and "oppressive?" This coming from a people who are new to the scene AND inexperienced in HEALTHY relationships between men and women. Lest we look back only a hundred (if we go back any farther these relationship become even more pitiful) years to see how restricted women were in their choices of a mate and particularly how powerless and oppressed they were in the relationships.

In modern-day Western society, women's "freedom" and increased "power" greater than ANY non-western woman (or so is said) but how long do marriages last? HOw many single mothers are there? How many people have been married AT least twice?

It's so sad.

PEace
Solarus


"Activism is the practice of using an internal, self-determining source of power to live one's life and/or enact some sort of change. Power is the ability to define reality, while self-determination is to decide or define one's self. Therefore activism, is not simply something done to right some wrong or to fight some cause but rather it is a way of life. Activism is the way of life where one can define self and change anything that may impede or control the reality that one chooses to live."-Solarus

____________________________
"the real pyramids were built with such precision that you can't slide a piece of paper between two 4,000 lb stones, and have shafts perfectly aligned so that you can see a tiny aperture through dozens of these mammoth blocks