On topic: Clash of civilizations or not?

[luvdovz]

Interesting overview of the issue of the clash of civilizations that many have been talking about in recent times. It also mentions Huntington's concept of the "swing civilizations": essentially fault lines between core civilizations which are doomed to remain conflict points for a long time. He speaks of "bloody borders", where blood will spill

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

Anyone who references Amartya Sen must expect most people to not get it. Really great thinkers, like Sen, often get sidelined and left in their ivory towers. Governments, when enlightened enough, or pushed by an enlightened civil service, occasionally listen to such genius, but the public...nah. Sen and his ilk are too clever by half

[mahnmut]

He predicted that Saudi Arabia and Iran would be geopolitical rivals? Gee, what a genius.

[johnny9fingers]

Sen is critical of Huntington: a critic who talks about complexity rather than simplification. Sometimes he says obvious things, especially if they are both obvious and need restating as a rebuttal to stupidity.

Huntington is not a genius, I would say. Far from it.

[luzribeiro]

The clash of civilizations is a myth that has been used by exceptionalism-leaning neocon types to justify their perpetual war. There's no such thing as a clash of civilizations. There may be cultural conflicts in an increasingly interconnected world, but civilizations? That's bunk.

[oportet]

We don't want the world to do things our way, we want the world to want to do things our way.

[htpcl]

Dailyquoted.

[underlankers]

Huntington's thesis is a piss poor attempt to ape Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. It lacks a fraction of Spengler's depth and nuance, and decides that Argentines and people in the USA aren't the same civilization where Omani and Indonesians and Malaysians are. Somehow Japan is a unique core of civilization where Korea is not, and the thesis conveniently lines up with the predilections of a narrowly American brand of conservatism. Likewise, if simple descent from Rome and Christianity are factors, Russia and Eastern Europe are as Western as France and Germany. Huntingon, like Victor Davis Hanson and Howard Zinn is a partisan hack masquerading as a historian. But birdcages and toilet paper substitutes do need business, too....

[luvdovz]

Well, gratitude for your invaluable input - as usual.