Talk Islam

razib

  • 03:29:01 am on May 21, 2008 | # | |

    fareed zakaria is kind of irritating me. he keeps saying that china & india don’t believe in god because they don’t believe in the abrahamic god. he also keeps saying that chinese don’t have universal-ethical principles (not that they’re amoral, just that they’re really pragmatic is his implication). lee kuan yew, former PM of singapore, once said that in the west everyone has a soul, while in the east everyone is just an ant. i think these glib generalizations totally ignore the reality that chinese society for 2,000 years was notionally undergirded by a religion of ethics; i.e., confucianism. there was always a strong line of confucian thought that one must uphold justice and the right no matter the pragmatic consideration. this was to encourage scholar-officials to be honest and truthful to the ruler, even if that might entail their own downfall or execution.

    there is obviously something to what fareed is saying. i just don’t think that these grand generalizations which attempt to adduce the state of present conditions really model reality as it is. one might have stated during the soviet period that eastern orthodoxy predisposed the russians to amoral materialism. after all, amoral materialism took over russia; QED.

    i don’t deny the reality of cultural generalizations.  but too often those making arguments know some cultures far better than others, so that the density of their priors is extremely skewed (i have labeled this “ethno-autism,” but autistic people got real mad).

     

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Comments

  • aziz 10:03 pm on May 21, 2008 | #

    Where did Zakaria say that and in what context?

    BTW, seems that Zakaria’s got the attention of the people who matter: http://tinyurl.com/6et6v2

  • razib 10:20 pm on May 21, 2008 | #

    it’s an argument in his new book that he’s repeating on radio interviews.

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