To be honest, though many historians today might disagree, I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization,” even if it is a vague family of things that cannot be strictly defined. I know they are trying to correct for certain harmful attitudes out there, but articles like these feel to me to put the social message above all.

It is especially when a certain perceived problematic attitude is the focus, without much actual teaching the wider history, that leaves me feeling disappointed. I think teaching the complete history is a far better antidote than emphasizing a bad trend. Like I’ve read many articles accusing the brothers Grimm of being masculinist, but rarely will those same articles attempt to educate the reader of the Baroness D’Aulnoy, who coined the very term fairy tale!

The ancient world was indeed complicated and interconnected, rich in so many cultures and peoples and stories. We should talk more about these other civilizations! The Phoenicians, the Celts, the Chaldeans, Akkadians, Seleucids, Numidians—-those are just a few from “the West”, around the world offers an even broader view. There is so much more to wonder at, it is a shame that the discourse has the toxic backdrop it does.

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rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization"

This is perhaps the least controversial statement in history. It's obviously true. Western Civilization is:

1) Greece

2) Rome, borrowing from the Greeks

3) Christianity taking over Rome

4) Germanic tribes adopting Roman law + the Christian religion

5) Protestantism

6) The Renaissance

7) The Enlightenment

You can read Plato, and it all makes sense to you, but a lot of contemporaneous Asian sources would be quite alien. Its a weird kind of ethnocentrism to deny such a thing exists, because it leads to thinking that western civilization is in fact universal.

	▲	chrisco255 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Sun Tzu is quite popular even in the west today. Agree with your general points. It is hard to know the boundaries of your culture if you've never been intimate with another, as in really getting to know the memes and patterns of thought that make up cultures outside of your own.
	▲	GolfPopper 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		And yet, Rome borrowed from far more than the Greeks. Norse deities are popular, and seemingly more recognizable than classical Greek myth to those in North America with whom I've spoke about such things. Rome was taken over by a particular flavor of Christianity, which was changed by the Empire at least as much as it changed the Empire, and changed more by those who claimed it. (Christmas and Easter are not originally Christian holidays.) "Protestant" now, means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. The Renaissance was significantly tied to the Muslim world's own traditions of Civilization, and a major thrust of contemporary politics is that the Enlightenment was not a positive thing. And hardly anyone is a farmer anymore, even though that's what 90% of Western Civilization was until the last century or so. So yes, all of those influence any definition of Western Civilization, but they're neither some direct line of succession, nor a list of the most massive influences - they're a selection of popular nodes in a vast web of connections.