Quote Originally Posted by Rogue Shadows View Post
Hey, bad stuff is western too. The Holocaust, chattel slavery, etc.

I'm not holding Western culture up as ideal, simply dominant and, therefore, most important.
You are, however, claiming that all the trapping of modernity are specifically western. Are cars or public schools as specific technologies western? Or were they merely invented by the west and adopted by others because they work?

I think that every day of history is a practice run to this very moment in time. The past is important, but the past has also already happened and can't be changed. The future is important, but we won't get there if we don't start building it now. The present time is the most important time in history.
History is not teleological and it has no purpose. All that happened in the past did so for a multitude of reasons that made sense in the past. Aristotle didn't write his philosophical works so that they might be discussed in western universities today, he wrote them so that other Greeks might read them and be convinced of his views. Columbus didn't miscalculate the size of the planet and sail west so there could be a US with the impact that has had on the planet, he did it because he sucked at math and wanted to be rich. Nobody, ever, did what they did for the sake of a society that would exist ages after they died and which they knew nothing about.

Yes, I think a turn of the century American, though bewildered by the technological change of New York City, would find its culture almost instantly recognizable. Comparatively, I don't think that a turn of the century Chinese person would recognize the culture of Beijing, and consider it to have been thoroughly Westernized.
So said hypothetical American wouldn't be bewildered by the lack of people speaking Italian, Polish and Yiddisch or confused by all the Asians, Arabs and Indians in the streets? What about men who were clearly in a romantic relationship with other men? Or what about the highly different vernacular? Nor the lack of tenement housing and sweatshops right by the Hudson?

Really, what specific aspects is it that you think will be instantly familiar? They speak English, yes, but it appears that your hypothetical time traveler wouldn't feel the same familiarity if he ended up in London or Melbourne. Culture as a specifically national entity that exists in a fixed state is a philosophical and quasi-religious notion first developed by the German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder in the second half of the 18th century. It operates with each culture being imbued with their own soul that perpetuates them as a culture regardless of changes in expression. It has some obvious problems, such as pointing out how exactly it manifests if it is to allow for 6th century Saxons being the same culture as modern English people. It also cannot explain how a new culture comes to be, because, really, if there is such a permanent form of culture, how do a group of people become a new one?

The reason we can see that continuity is that we have the ability to see each link of the chain and relate them to what they developed from and what they developed into, each having clear continuities forward and backward, but these aren't necessarily the same. A hypothetical time traveler would lose this sense of continuity and have to look around for the things that are the same and they'd be quite few. He'd be surrounded by technology he didn't know, people who weren't there before and even something as basic as the pavement and the buildings would look completely different.

Sure, the language would be similar enough to communicate, but less so than the language of his contemporaries in England was, except of course if he was an immigrant, in which case his community had vanished. He could go look up the constitution and look at landmarks, but while they would be recognizable they'd still have changes and additions, often ones he wouldn't be able to make sense of since they were meant to address issues that didn't exist in his time. The food would be almost completely different, the clothes would most of the time be made of fabrics that didn't even exist in his time, employment structure, political organization and religious establishments would all be completely different. The political debate would be about issues that were bizarre and alien to him, given the massive legislative changes of the last century and major political events. In short, nothing would be the same as he remembered it, though some would be close enough to fit into the uncanny valley. So tell me, how would he instantly recognize it and feel he belonged?