Greatest Culture...

[hypatia_]

You have to be more specific with "greatest" when talking about music. there's artistry, there's integrity, there's pop culture, there's influence.

[The Atheist]

That's why boxing is such an excellent subject for this kind of thing. Everyone knows who The Greatest was.

Culture is pretty subjective.

[mortalterror]

That's why boxing is such an excellent subject for this kind of thing. Everyone knows who The Greatest was.

Culture is pretty subjective.

Actually, there's a great deal of debate on the boxing forum I visit about who the greatest are. Of course, Muhammad Ali was nicknamed The Greatest, and he's generally considered the greatest heavyweight champion of all time, but some people say that title belongs to Joe Louis, and younger people like to say Mike Tyson. In the pound for pound sense, most people agree that Sugar Ray Robinson was the greatest, though others will say that Henry Armstrong, or Harry Greb deserve that title more. Then there are the moderns who think that everything new is better than everything ancient and propose Roy Jones Jr. or Floyd Mayweather as the best there's ever been.

[hannah_arendt]

If we're speaking globally then in addition to China I think India deserves mention. Indian philosophy undoubtably influenced the ancient Greeks. To what extent I am not sure, but if its as great as I sometimes suspect then western religion and philosophy owe India a great debt. Its the land from whence Buddhism sprung. Yoga is all the rage now and that system originated in India. Much new age thought is heavily influenced by Indian sources.

Do you think that chinese culture is attractive for Europeans or Americans?

[JBI]

I thought my post was so obviously humourous that nobody would be silly enough to argue against it, but there you go.

You do make some nonsensical points, though.

The population is irrelevant when talking about either culture or economy, and apart from the past decade, China has never had much influence on anyone outside of their direct sphere of influence. The percentage of cultures outside of South-east Asia that embrace more than a touch of Chinese culture is close to zero. Chop suey, anyone?

Drinking tea out of porcelain hardly counts as a major cultural shift, but please do post evidence about the time when China accounted for 70% of the world economy - this I have to see.



Now you're on track, Spanish culture was the obvious one, given South America alone.

You still forgot France, though, which did have just a little impact on the dominant culture today - American.



Speaking of knowledge of history, yours must indeed far outweigh mine, since mine totally lacks any knowledge of China dominating the world at any stage of history. In terms of truly dominant, worldwide cultures, you have England, Rome and not much else.

Your view of history is skewed to China for some inexplicable reason, but I'm open to evidence, so please go ahead and back up your points.

Covering the 70% of the world's economy will be an easy one for you, but when you're demonstrating China's "grip on the world" that I missed, please do include how that is possible when they never even crossed the Pacific Ocean, or even Bass Strait.

China has been influential in India, most of South East Asia, and all of East Asia. It has also been influential in much of Central Asia, all of Northern Asia, and had extensive trade and communication with Persia and Turkey for an extended period of time. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but that is somewhere near the bigger part of the world population.

You miss something, that sphere is significantly larger than the rather late-developing Western world, which for most of history was centuries behind China in terms of economic and cultural development, including science and technology. The big shift it would appear began in the 17th or early 18th century when England developed rapidly and Chinese development halted. Until then nobody would ever have considered England important on an historical scale.

You forget yourself. If you wish to speak of exploration, Zhang He made it to Africa far before European exploration - that has been documented extensively. They never crossed the pacific, that is true, but you forget another thing - What was Columbus actually looking for when he set sail? Oh that's right, he was looking for the place where all the fashionable and excellent things came from, namely China.

The Han territory was as extensive as the roman, and the economy and culture as developed, if not more. I personally own at least 3 books on the subject giving direct comparison between both empires, as they generally lasted through similar periods, and peaked at similar times, it is actually interesting to note their similarities.

Your biggest problem seems to be that you cannot realize that the majority of the world's population has historically not been in Europe, and centred more in Asia, which developed faster than Europe for several reasons. The so called dark Ages were about 600 years earlier in arriving to the Sinosphere, and the sort of peak of Chinese traditional culture in terms of international dominance was on the eve of the Mongol invasion, the same cultural event that would lead to the stunting of the growth of the British islands, through the importing of Mongolian plague to England (known as the black death). The renaissance came late to England in part as a result of the stunting of growth accompanying the black death, as well as a culture of warfare, and general submission of the peasants to a brutally ingrained feudal system - of which More would write extensively in Utopia.

None of these arguments are any bit uncommon or unwritten, and have been the common discussions and knowledge of sinologists in Europe since Matteo Ricci, who, though Christian wrote extensively of the superiority of Chinese culture.

That you are ethnocentric and culturally isolated does not excuse you for being ignorant, it only illustrates the point that you are unread in world history.

The Americas in general were undeveloped and rather unpopulated throughout history, as was Europe in comparison to Asia. China has always had a significantly larger economy and population than other cultures, as has been the trend for the past 2000-odd years. The early development of centralization and agriculture in China had led to a system that maximized output - for a nice overview on the subject check Ledderose's Ten Thousand Things, which outlines how the Chinese economy developed into a mass-production machine as early as the Bronze Age (which came relatively late to the area).

As for China not having a direct influence outside of their sphere, how many of Bacon's great advancements of his age didn't come from China? Gutenberg and the printing press, China, Gunpowder and the canon, China, the Compass (which fueled exploration one might add), China. Paper in general was a Chinese invention long before it made it to the west.

I am not trying to advocate a sort of Chinese-centered history, though one could easily read world history with China in the centre, without being far off from a fairly accurate portrait. Yet one cannot help but feel such an argument for English-centered world views is symptomatic of ethnocentric upbringings and general lack of knowledge on anything in world relations and history pre-1700.

[mortalterror]

Fascinating, JBI. I hadn't made the comparison of the Han Dynasty to the Roman Empire before, but it's staring me in the face now. However, I did a quick internet search and unearthed this article http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/ind...ope-and-china/ comparing their respective economies. At least in that article and in the studies he cites The Roman Empire was slightly more prosperous and there is reason to believe that medieval Europe when considered as a whole would be the near equal of China economically if not technologically. Also, I know that the Chinese invented many things before the West, but I've heard that they were very secretive and often would not share their advances; leading Western countries to re-invent them independently much later. Is there actual evidence that Gutenberg and other inventors had knowledge of the Chinese machines before they reproduced them here? For instance, I think Egypt invented paper on it's own, and that's where the Greeks and other Europeans got it from.

[OrphanPip]

In terms of science, Europe has certainly pulled far ahead in the last 500 years. The scientific method revolutionized European approaches to science, and it was largely due to Bacon's influence on the Royal Society and the emergence of international scientific communities in Europe around such organizations. Of course, a great deal of the success of European scientists during this period can be attributed to the economic success of Europe, but the Enlightenment's quick adoption of methodological science allowed Europe to refine a number of imported technologies in ways they never had before, which combined with an emergent proto-capitalist culture gave them the thrust to take over the world. A history teacher I had back in college, who got her PhD in East Asian history from Cambridge (so sharing JBI's biases probably), said to me once that the only thing Europeans are really better at than the rest of the world is music.

[cafolini]

That's why boxing is such an excellent subject for this kind of thing. Everyone knows who The Greatest was.

Culture is pretty subjective.

As much as I dislike letting you win this argument for finality, I have to say you are correct. JBI once threw a hook that played well. Since then, he has been a delirium of BS. I would guess he works for some group related to the Chinese government. Obviously forced to consider numbers to try to impress with useless propaganda.

[mortalterror]

In terms of science, Europe has certainly pulled far ahead in the last 500 years. The scientific method revolutionized European approaches to science, and it was largely due to Bacon's influence on the Royal Society and the emergence of international scientific communities in Europe around such organizations. Of course, a great deal of the success of European scientists during this period can be attributed to the economic success of Europe, but the Enlightenment's quick adoption of methodological science allowed Europe to refine a number of imported technologies in ways they never had before, which combined with an emergent proto-capitalist culture gave them the thrust to take over the world. A history teacher I had back in college, who got her PhD in East Asian history from Cambridge (so sharing JBI's biases probably), said to me once that the only thing Europeans are really better at than the rest of the world is music.

That's an interesting point, Pip. I've found the literature of the East and to be just as good as the West's. The fine art isn't quite as good. There are many fine pieces, but nothing I would compare with the finest works of Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Bernini, Rubens, Praxiteles, or Rembrandt, however much I like Qiu Ying, Kano Sanraku, Abid, Ogata Korin, Utamaro, Purkhu, Sultan Muhammad, Guo Xi, Unkei, and Wang Ximeng. But the music, I've been completely unable to find anything from the East that is anywhere near as good as western classical music. Even StLukesGuild with his fondness for Ravi Shankar will probably back me on this. Chinese opera is no match for Italian opera. Sitars and zithers don't match the piano and nothing I've heard is as good as Mozart's Jupiter Symphony or Vivaldi's Four Seasons. That doesn't mean there isn't anything, but just that I haven't heard it. Perhaps, I've been listening to the wrong instruments or compositions. I'd have a much different idea of western musical traditions if all I'd ever heard were bagpipes, accordions, saxophones, and yodeling.

[Ecurb]

Without the influence of Australian aboriginal culture, the Crocodile Dundee movies would not have been possible. Case closed.

[mal4mac]

Over the last 100 years would have to be America, in terms of the mass media, film etc. Of all time (Western) it would have to be the Greek/Roman culture, cornerstone of Western thought etc, I can't see any arguments with that...

But even the best films are inferior art. You might say that America is unequivocally top for popular entertainment, but for "Culture" with a capital C you have to produce better arguments if you want to pitch for yankees. It's interesting that top film critics, with rounded cultural pretensions, often make this argument. Bryan Appleyard is famous for it in the UK, another critic who often points this out is Ronald Bergen:

http://www.theartsdesk.com/film/opin...test-ever-film

"... if one accepts the fact that the majority of film critics in the world think that Vertigo is the best film ever made, it raises the question of whether film as an art form is perhaps inferior to the other, older, arts. As someone who has made a living of sorts for over 30 years writing about film and teaching film history and film theory, that may seem like sacrilege. But if one were to assess the greatest works in each art in categories like at Crufts, then bring the winner of each category together for the Best in Show, then I’m afraid Vertigo, whatever its many virtues, wouldn’t stand a chance against, say, Don Giovanni, The Divine Comedy, Ulysses, Hamlet or the Ninth Symphony.... is there really a film that can match any of the genuine masterpieces in the other arts?"

[mal4mac]

I'm a huge fan of German expressionist painting, and Herman Hesse was the author who really got me into literature, so German culture would be near the top for me. Its hard though to deny America's 20th century cultural preponderance. That nation produced Hemingway, Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, Eliot, Pound, Faulkner...

All round I think Britain has a good claim for the last hundred years, with writers like Lawrence, Woolf, Huxley, Orwell, Pinter, Larkin, ..., plus composers like Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Britten... And the other major European nations could easily come up with a list to match or better America, I feel. Given the differences in population size, it's perhaps fairest to compare "Europe" with "the Americas", and then victory is obvious... Don't be too sad America, you are a young culture and given a few centuries you might catch up...

Hitchcock is British, by the way, but film is an inferior art form...

[mal4mac]

As far as popular music goes, I'm no expert on world music, but America did invent jazz, country, blues, rock, and hip hop. However, there is one caveat to that opinion, since perhaps the best performers of those styles (at least rock and roll) were British: ie The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Pink Floyd, Ozzy Osbourne, Iron Maiden, etc. vs Americans: Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, Nirvana, Metallica, Elvis, etc.

This is *popular* music, not "Culture" with a capital C. There may be some connection between the two, but you need to distinguish. Vaughan Williams is Culture, "the Who" are not, though they are very good "pop".

[mal4mac]

Culture is a tough one. If you are talking classical music then Germany...

St Luke specified "the last hundred years" and I don't think you can be so sure about Germany for this period... France and Britain have strong claims, and Russia very strong...

[mortalterror]

But even the best films are inferior art. You might say that America is unequivocally top for popular entertainment, but for "Culture" with a capital C you have to produce better arguments if you want to pitch for yankees. It's interesting that top film critics, with rounded cultural pretensions, often make this argument. Bryan Appleyard is famous for it in the UK, another critic who often points this out is Ronald Bergen:

http://www.theartsdesk.com/film/opin...test-ever-film

"... if one accepts the fact that the majority of film critics in the world think that Vertigo is the best film ever made, it raises the question of whether film as an art form is perhaps inferior to the other, older, arts. As someone who has made a living of sorts for over 30 years writing about film and teaching film history and film theory, that may seem like sacrilege. But if one were to assess the greatest works in each art in categories like at Crufts, then bring the winner of each category together for the Best in Show, then I’m afraid Vertigo, whatever its many virtues, wouldn’t stand a chance against, say, Don Giovanni, The Divine Comedy, Ulysses, Hamlet or the Ninth Symphony.... is there really a film that can match any of the genuine masterpieces in the other arts?"

I don't know anyone who thinks that Vertigo is the greatest film ever. It's not even the greatest British film ever. That is probably David Lean's adaptation of Dr. Zhivago, and that is as great a piece of art as any opera, which is what it should be compared to. Opera and cinema are both combinations of writing, acting, music, and visuals. I'd say that Pulp Fiction, Gone With the Wind, Schindler's List, 2001 A Space Odyssey, Goodfellas, 8 1/2, Wild Strawberries, Seven Samurai, Andrei Rublev, Citizen Kane, and Casablanca count as great examples of art. Cinema is only a century old so it may not have had enough time to produce it's Shakespeare, Mozart, or Michelangelo, but it's done pretty well for all that. Kubrick, Fellini, Bergman, or Kurosawa are probably worth as much to the history of this young art as Monteverdi was to a nascent opera.

All round I think Britain has a good claim for the last hundred years, with writers like Lawrence, Woolf, Huxley, Orwell, Pinter, Larkin, ..., plus composers like Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Britten... And the other major European nations could easily come up with a list to match or better America, I feel. Given the differences in population size, it's perhaps fairest to compare "Europe" with "the Americas", and then victory is obvious... Don't be too sad America, you are a young culture and given a few centuries you might catch up...

Hitchcock is British, by the way, but film is an inferior art form...

My general impression of Europe is that in the 20th century it became a trash factory, destroying all of it's great traditions, self-inflicting crippling psychic wounds, and systematically dismantling all of the tools it once used to make beautiful art.

It's a little weird that you'd try to poach the music prize with such feeble offerings as Vaughan Williams, Elgar, and Britten. They are good but hardly iconoclasts. I didn't offer America as a classical music idol just because I didn't think we compared to the Russians with Copland, Ives, Bernstein, and Gershwin.

This is *popular* music, not "Culture" with a capital C. There may be some connection between the two, but you need to distinguish. Vaughan Williams is Culture, "the Who" are not, though they are very good "pop".

Well, considering that the popular culture has frequently produced better art than the high culture this last century I feel it's worth including the two in an assessment.