Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2001 13:19:27 +0200
From: Erik Hoogcarspel <jehms-AT-kabelfoon.nl>
Subject: Re: Genetic Fallacy




Ali Rizvi wrote:

> Knowing where nationalism came from tells us almost nothing about its 
> configurations and how it will be adapted in cultures that are 
> receptive to it. For instance, Michael Ignatieff distinguishes between 
> "civic nationalism" and "ethnic nationalism." In civic nationalism the 
> bonds of a political community are defined by a common creed and set 
> of political institutions. In ethnic nationalism, the community is 
> thought to belong to people marked by ethnic bonds.
> 
Maybe nationalism is even a 17th century Dutch invention, because the 
Dutch were the first to free themselves as a nation from the dominance 
of an emporer. This doesn't mean however that the Tibetans in the 21th 
century, who also feel like a nation occupied by a strange army, have 
any knowledge of the becoming of the Dutch state or that you need to 
know this in order to understand what they feel. Many of them even 
cannot read! I think you are too much influenced by Heidegger who 
thought that everything is historical and that philosophy is just as 
part of Western history as the battle of Waterloo. In 'Antropologie 
Structurale' Levi-Strauss mocks those who think that everything must 
come from influences from outside. Well,  Levi-Strauss says it's very 
well possible that different people at different times in different 
places get similar ideas and I don't see how you can prove him to be wrong.

> yes but one should also ask such questions as, why is it that the 
> spread of nationalism in Kurdish people leads (invariably) to spread 
> of Western values and life styles in them and leads them away from 
> their Islamic heritage?. Or one should also ask why spread of 
> nationalism in Japan makes her increasingly a country less and 
> less recognisable as distinct society from Western societies? I would 
> think that avoiding these question might also lead to laziness.
> 
I know Kurdish people who trace their identity back to pre-islamic 
times. I think the islamic identity is a myth (just as any identity).
The spread of western ideas may not be as important as you think. 
Science is western and it spreads because it's can prove itself to be 
effective, but maybe it also spreads, because it can be understood from 
within many ideologies. What however is spread much more everywhere are 
Western things. If Japanese wear skirts and suits with neckties in stead 
of kimono's and drink more Coca Cola then green tea, it doesn't mean 
that they have changed entirely. Even if they work in an scientific 
laboratory it might be hard to determine. I think it's quite difficult 
to find out in what way they have changed, because people always 
change.  You cannot say that people have been their own old original 
self all along untill an event X just made them to be something else.

erik