budd@arizona.UUCP (09/10/83)
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Please note that the following is not a right-wing diatribe. I
can be accused of many things, but being right wing is not, i think, among
them. Rather I want to raise a serious question as to the degree to which
our collective cultural background influences our actions.
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I find it interesting to wonder to what extent recent russian
actions, and russian actions in general, are a product of their cultural
traditions, or more generally their lack of OUR cultural traditions.
Recall that well into the nineteenth century russia was a feudal
agrarian society (read Turgenev, for example). "Man is the measure of
all things" is a sixteenth century european idea, not a russian one.
"All men are created equal..." is pure enlightenment (18th century) thought.
russia really didn't "join" the western civilized world (not that they were
uncivilized, just not western - there are other civil traditions in the world,
after all), until
the industrial revolution was well underway in europe. Although the
writings of Marx can be seen as somewhat of a natural outgrowth of european
history and thought from the enlightenment to the revolutions of 1848,
the society Marx had in mind for his revolutions was rather different
from russian society of 1915, and I doubt Marx would have appreciated the
way his name was used.
I have been told that english schoolboys used to be told
(among many other things, i'm sure) "Scratch a russian, find a tartar"
(which somehow always left me with images of some thick white stuff
driping out of someones body). Nevertheless, it might have a lot of
truth to it. How can we expect a people to have a decent respect for
human dignity when they have not been told for the past several centurys
that all human beings are worthwhile.
(Note I am making some assumptions here that some might easily disagree
with. The most notable of these is that "the intrinsic worth of every
human being" is not an idea all humans are born with, but is rather a
product of our rather recent cultural tradition. I think I could
support this, if pressed, by european history prior to the 16th century,
or by various noneuropean historys).