Is Western culture the most superior in the world?

Question

I don't mean to be racist. It's just a fact, I think the White and Yellow race have contributed most to humanity. Technology, science, medicine, art...

What caused the white race, and western culture to be more superior than others ? Is there a relation between race and intelligence?

Don't start calling me names now, I'm referring to a fact.

And this is coming from a black person by the way.

Answer 1

Yes, Jared Diamond has much validity in his assessments, but he still does not answer the question; " why do some cultures meet their peoples needs and wants, while others don't "? The answer here is still elusive and as others have said, " every dog has his day '.

Answer 2

1. Cultures forced to cluster had to develop societies.

2. European geography and climate would have forced communities into conflict earlier which drove development of technologies just to achieve survival.

3. Conflict reaches a point of extinction (for western world 20th century), forcing cessation of conflict and hardening of property claims.

4. Population growth, natural resource usage, forces new pressures on international relations.

5. Replacing conflict as the innovation engine, is the concept of the worldwide free market.

Now you look at the poor countries, they are missing transition through some of the earlier steps...

Answer 3

I am white but in the past the non white races were so superior..what happened to the Mayans? or the Arab countries who had a long history in the middle east..once they were a great culture.  Why was Egypt so great until Moses left with the Children of Isreal?

Yes, there is some truth to what you say.  But I think there is a saying..."every dog has his day."  Maybe it is just our time in the sun and the Chinese culture has the need and we have the greed..lol

Answer 4

I guess you are right in some ways. Not Hitler though.

I can regard USA for their innovations

Israel for their toughness over their competitors and their jealous rivals!

India for IT technology, doctors and nurses who move to the US to work and make the USA merge with them for business and career growth in India. Thanks to the US but thanks to Indians for so much breakneck improvement in business

China for their new business ventures

Answer 5

I just wanted to add...read Guns Germs and Steel

fascinating!

Answer 6

there are cultures that are better than westerners but medias don't talk about it

It is funny to think that white and yellow have contributed most to humanity, u must talk about atrocity also with the industriaisation of killing by hitler (germans first tested it in Namibia)

how to define happinness

I am sure an african in the old africa living without any clue of what is science was happier than one's today who can study till getting degrees from university and don't have no idea about what to do except seeking a job

there is more than technology and science in the world that westerners didn't know for centuries and are continuing to ignore: it is peace

I guess u will say that there are more conflicts in Africa but it is amazing ! cauz there is no african country that make weapons except south africa ( not a pure african nation)

sometimes weapons are lent to african dissidents

it is sad that many think that there is superirity between races cauz certain races excell in certain domain, let me remind u even japanese left the society of nation cauz they were considered a second class race b4 the  WW I

the excellence in certain areas by certain races is due only to interests they put on it

a best culture is a culture where a man isn't a wolf for a man

Answer 7

Pure coincidence, that's the way the cookie crumbled.

Answer 8

Superior, how?  I mean, yeah, Europe and eastern Asia took over most of the planet.  That says that we are good warriors with great weaponry.  But we've almost destroyed the Earth and we've nearly used up many of our natural resources.  In that way, most hunter/gatherer societies are far superior to us, as they live in harmony with their surroundings.

I'm actually just reading an interesting book about this; I highly recommend it.  It's called "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and it's by Jared Diamond.  The gist is, there is no difference in intelligence amongst the various races.  Believe me, there have been studies.  It's just not there.  What Europe and east Asia did have were horses and intensive agriculture.  They were able to feed lots of people and support specialized craftspeople who could invent weaponry fulltime.  The horses were huge, as well.  Apparently, fewer than 200 Spanish soldiers were able to defeat an army of 80,000 Incas because they had horses and steel weapons.  Crazy.  But, yeah, it's a trick of geography, not of native intelligence.

Answer 9

welp, you leave yourself open to quite a few angry responses here...I would say that it has to do with cultures sure, but the color of the skin or race has nothing to do with it. Some things that contribute are not always good. i.e. greed. The desire for wealth and power is a very motivating factor to invent things that give you an edge over everyone else.

Answer 10

No, for many reasons: high rates of crime nationwide, high abortion rates, the US is the main perpetrator of global warming violations, the education and societal and political system is rapidly deteriorating, the economy is terrible (trillions of dollars of debt, devaluation of dollar worldwide), and so on and so forth...

Answer 11

Emulation is the best form of flattery. Of course the west is best - for now.

Answer 12

in our own eyes we are often seen that way - but this is realy a product of ethnocentrism - looking at another culture through the eyes of your own- and doe not reflect any reality.

The areas you mention may be more technologically advanced in modern days - but that does not make them superior.  Even groups that still survive by hunting and gathering have very complex societes, kinship, relgion, politics, etc.

As for why the technological advnaces exist - mos tof them come as the result of warfare and inventions designed to helpyou win wars (weapons, battlefield medicine, reconnaissance....etc.  Does that sound like a superior culture to a peaceful stoneage group?

Answer 13

n

no way

Answer 14

No, it is not a fact. Open your eyes wider. Why are most people who enter the scientific fields (medicine and technology) Asian? They have contributed quite a lot to society since ancient times. And why would the U.S. have to import cars from other countries like Germany? Because they are of better quality.

Just because the U.S. is the richest nation does not make it superior. Imagine: you walk by a rich person. They see you and look at you as if you are inferior. But everyone knows that it isn't the money that matters.

People from nations around the world take what they have for granted.

And I don't think there is a correlation between race and intelligence. I think that expectations set the stage for intelligence. I know from experience. Being an Asian-American, people have high expectations for me. It  forces to try harder which pushes me to accomplish more.

The western culture just have high expectations from other countries.

Anyhow, superiority shouldn't be a measure of intelligence or the amount a group contributes. In fact, superiority shouldn't be measured at all. That is where racism starts. Thank You for not trying to be racist, but until you stop thinking about superiority the fact will remain. The same applies to the rest of the world. We won't be able to abolish prejudice until we stop thinking in such a manner!!

Answer 15

your question is sooo wrong in the eyes of any anthropologist. for a start, cultures and societies are not superior and inferior, only different, and the only means of measure is their subsistence and reproduction, not their "wealth", "arte" or "comfort", because those are western terms.

if you are talking about what we understand as art, sciences and control on the environment, you can find many great achievements from different cultures arround the world, many of those inffluenced and determined thr modern western way of life, and you not knowing that, and taking all traits in your own life for grantes, and think it was all invented by "whites" it's ignorant and foolish.

Answer 16

Here's my theory -- which I have never heard anywhere else, so be prepared:

Humans are communal, or tribal by nature. Survival within the tribe depends on attaining a rank, and so very tribal societies also have a lot of  dominant-subordinate behaviors. As the tribe becomes larger and competition for rank grows fiercer, someone finally says,"What am I doing here? I'm sure I can do better on my own.'  And they take off. They migrate away from the crowd, and they take their genes for original thought and self-sufficiency with them. What's left behind, are people with no original thought because the original thinkers up and left them to continue procreating  their "follow-the-leader" gene pool.

If you watch the patterns of human migrations, the new kids on the block were always of superior intelligence. So, northward migrating homosapiens took over neanderthal, and later, those that up and left the "old country" tended to be brighter and more adventurous than the safety-seeking ones they left behind.

In the last 200 years or so, America has been flooded with bright, courageous, out-of-the-box thinkers, and I believe that is what made America dominant.

The countries they left behind have, each in their turn, been on the leading curve with incoming waves of explorers, and then deflated as the explorers moved on.  Africa was home to some great nations; the Arabs and Asians were once amazing; the Greeks, the Romans, the Italians, the French and finally the English - each in their turn, rose,then fell.

Still today, the best of the best in any country wants to leave and come to America. But for how long, and then where next?

At this point, the original thinkers have migrated all the way to the Pacific, and we're jamming up again. There's no place left to go but space. In the meantime, Americans are developing those ugly traits of social sycophancy, and will eventually collapse, like the great civilizations before us.

Ancient African nations, by the way, like Nubia and Kerma, did contribute greatly. Somewhere along the line, man learned to control fire, to herd animals, to plant seeds and make tools. DNA tests have shown that we all are of the same race, the physical differences are merely adaptations to climate.

Answer 17

Superior? Inferior?  Best? Worst?  

Talk about your mis-placed values!

You may not "mean" to be racist, but you are a little self-hating.

Tell me something: where have you traveled?  Are you getting you views from what you have personally seen and heard for yourself, or from what the media tells you about the world?

Answer 18

Define superior?

i mean seriously... is the western culture superior if it brings great technology and medicine and ends up destroying 80-90% of complex life on earth in the process?

Answer 19

During the so-called Dark Ages in Europe Muslims in Arabia were more advance in medicine, astronomy, philosophy etc.   The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries witnessed the military and administrative superiority (for example in terms of tax collection) of the Turkish Ottoman Empire in the European theater.  So it is not a problem of "race" or ethnicity, but one of prevalent historical/sociological dynamics.

Answer 20

You have a great question which - deserves a great answer, but it's not a short one - sorry.

There's an AWESOME book on that very question called Guns Germs and Steel. And the short answer is that it doesn't have alot to do with the white or yellow or black "races", it has ALOT to do with geography.

The old line about location,location,location is very important.

Put another way, why is it that "modern" Europeans visited the Americas before anyone else?

The short version there were three primary reasons why European culture thrived.

1. Geographic limitations, while Europe is mostly blessed with regular rainfall and river systems and temparate climate which allows regular crop-growth, the mountains/rivers and such also form many natural boundaries which have prevented many empires from persisting or effectively conquering lands and moving onward.

This is important because in China, for the most part, a single reigning empire conquered and then ruled the bulk of the people in the region, so while the Chinese had gigantic trading barges moving up and down the coastline, which had apparently discovered as far south as Australia, As far West as India and as far East as perhaps Alaska or British Columbia, a single imperial decree eliminated the barges as a matter of imperial policy and sea-trade and exploration were essentially forbidden.

In Europe, there were imperial decrees but if one emperor was insular and stopped his trade-fleet , some other kind or emperor might take advantage of that, and so the constant antagonism of the smaller European kingdoms meant that no king could be entirely comfortable that his policies were absolutely correct or would ALWAYS be in place, so eventually better policies or better weapons or whatever were discovered by "the other guys", and that's how it was and has been for about a thousand years in Europe.

2. Crops, unlike the middle-east (to which most grain crops are native), the european eco-system is not as fragile as the middle-east and so, while smaller empires (the babylonians and assyrians etc, might have had an early lead on crop production, they did not have the best location with which to sustain a long-lasting empire which could have regular surplusses and such.

Given the fertile soils and relatively mild climates of central europe and the mediterranean area, where crops could be grown relatively easily, it stands to reason that more frequent surplusses could be had in these areas than in a semi-arid dessert region like Turkey, Israel, Syria, Iran or Iraq, It might have been a fertile crescent at one point, it's just not any more.

3. Pack Animals. Without the humble donkey and horse or oxen, Eurasians would have been limited to having slave-based civilizations (like in Africa and in pre-Columbian America) where peasants or worker-classes had to be VERY large in proportion to the amount of overall production you could get out of them, since you have to have movers and carriers and helpers for everything you wanted to do, vs. the humble European farmer who could have one or two horses and do some multiple of the amount of work he would otherwise have been able to do.

Put these factors together and your civilization will have temparate climate, farmers producing surpluses which can be traded with your neighbors, if you're neighbors aren't totally friendly you can use the workers that aren't farmers to make better weapons than they have and so on - before you know it, you have arms races and trade blocks and economics etc.

Because your populations become larger by virtue of all this extra food, if someone gets the flu and you don't know what to do about it, alot of people are going to die.

Now lets say one of your "defense" ships gets blown off course, and discovers this whole new island or whatever, - well who knows what's next.

So when the Europeans "discovered" sub-saharan Africa, the native populations had no access to horses or guns or had food which could be milled into bread or war-biscuts and loaded on a ship made of plentiful hardwoods, which were cut by high-grade metal from those miner that europeans could employ because of all that extra food.

It's fair to say that Europe was a GOOD petri dish for Europeans to grow up in, (bad for almost everyone else) only occasionally was it so miserable that things actually cause the populations to decrease significantly (the Crusades, the Plauge and the wars preceeding the Peace of Westphalia) all decimated the populations so badly that economic collapse of the region was not unlikely.

A fictional book about his subject are

The Years of Rice and Salt - which presume that the Plague of 1650 (the black death) was 95% deadly instead of just 30%. There are similar subjects, by Harry Turtledove etc.

The two best books on your question though are probably

Guns Germs and Steel, by Jarred Diamond and

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, by Paul Kennedy

Basically Diamond covers human history from 11000BC to about 1400 or so AD

Kennedy covers from 1500-onward.

Also, however its worth noting that nearly EVERY other "race" that europeans had come into contact with - prior to the 1940's or so were NOT dealt with in a good way.

First were the Eastern Europeans (Slavics, the Baltics, Poles, Romanians etc) who were turned largely into serfs and peasants with a tiny aristocracy, and still suffer from those who think similarly to this day since communism functioned in many ways like a 20th century time-capsule.)

Africans largely got HOSED by history, tribes along the west coast did not form lasting alliances but instead took weapons technology deeper into Africa and helped to bring africa low pretty quickly, but even today, africa has problems due to infighting because of the legacy of colonial rule.

The same exact thing happened in the Americas with even more devistating effect because the Americas were largely depopulated "automatically" and "unintentionally" for the most part, by European explorers who explored some village and had an explorer team member with smallpox or the flu or something, and presto, an entire village or region of the americas might become depopulated in just a few months.

However, the first-contact situation with the Incas is probably the worse first contact in human history, with the largest part of the entire Inca Army (some +20,000 warriors) defeated in one single encounter, totally outclassed (having spears and clubs and lots of harsh language) against a few dozen  Spanish imperial soldiers with some primitive musket guns, heavy armor and war-horses, it's not a pretty story.

Kennedy's book does the heavy lifting regarding more modern societies , looking at HOW the "superpowers" became superpowers, investing in education, raising commerial sectors, promoting savings and signficantly fiscal and military discipline, resisting temptations or desires to go to war, or spend lavishly at the governmental level.

It speaks to how some cultures like Japan turned their culture on a dime after world war 2 and how China has managed to implement many changes since Chairman Deng in the 1970's. However the book was written just around 1988-9 and so does not include more relevant lessons about a culture or civilizations' tendency to fail by virtue of over-militarization and bad fiscal policy, both of which are usually a very bad sign for civilizations, leaving room for other competitive civilizations, it's all VERY (15th century old school European) in a way.

So it's not that Europeans or Asians are "superior" they just were - in a way - lucky to have some of the circumstances they did in their early history from about 1000BC to 1500AD.

Today, however, there is a serious leveling of the playing field, because primarily of globalization. What might happen in the next few decades is that most of the countries of the world will start to look alot more like "each other", but not necessarily in a good way.

Most countries will not look like the United States with a large middle class, malls and paved streets and reasonable housing for most all of the citizens.

It might be that the "middle" ground is like India where there are some cities which are nice, and some areas have skyscrapers, but that you have to look hard to ignore the shantytowns and the millions of starving people in the streets who don't have housing or healthcare or much education to speak of.

Thomas Friedman wrote a book called "The World is Flat" , which is frankly quite a frightening read from someone who enjoys electricity and my own computer and the ability to eat food regularly under a roof of my own.

Americans, ALL Americans generally have it great, by way of comparison to Indians or Chinese (especially rural citizens of either country), we may not think we do but consider that almost all of us can read, almost all of us have housing,

mostly clean water and cheap access to (at least edible) food, as well as free or cheap access to public institutions like libraries and bookstores in which we could educate ourselves. In and of itself this is not a receipe for success,

but its ALOT more than many other countries have.

These conditions and services may or may not exist in these other countries and services like hospitalization or general healthcare may be spotty at best. They are even rare in some parts of the US but if you move to areas where they are, you are in good shape.

I also think that the stereotype that blacks are "smarter" or "dumber" than whites or anyone else, is just that - still a Stereotype which is no more true even if many black folks think it might be true themselves.

Speaking for myself, I might come from a people who are considered not terribly bright either, but I don't care what other people think, I try my best, try to read a book a week and I am pretty serious and experienced at what I do professionally.

I DO NOT consider myself very good or best because there is ALWAYS someone better than you or anyone else.

I'm a plodder, I work my *ss off and have since I was 14...that's what keeps me employed, it kept me working when I worked in a gas-station, a coffee shop, a graphics printshop ,behind a desk at school, a computer terminal at my first office job, and has kept me there ever since, for better or worse.

Life doesn't seem to ask much more, but that is not to say it's easy but it's alot easier than many folks have it.

Having said all that, This is NOT to say that certain pop-culture sterotypes don't help or hurt a particular group of people. Oriental Asian (Japanese, Korean, Chinese and others), Many (but not all) European (English/French/German and others), and some religious groups (Quaker, Catholic, Jewish, Calvinist, Sufi & Confuscian) groups come to mind, all have cultural traditions which encourage studing and rigorous work ethics on the part of their children especially and members generally.

If we look at general culture in the United-States, it generally DOES NOT support the idea of education as valuable or useful, in fact being "too smart" is considered strongly socially negative, sports games and distractions on TV are all that this delivers, news in 30 seconds, doesn't leave a lot of room for deep thinking on your subject of the 1/2 minute.

The popular-culture of the US is downright toxic, where it's not possible for you to be "cool"  unless you wear 400$ sneakers, eat out at some Generica food place, have thousands of IM friends, drink to excess regularly, and have s*x with anything that will talk to you, all while playing video games and texting your friends and chatting on the phone simulatneously from the age of about 12.

Working towards learning a skill, or becoming skilled in an art form or developing yourself in some other way is akin to suggesting that you MIGHT also be from Mars.

This toxic cocktail spread in the media is practically force-fed and explicitly tailored by the corporate media culture spending billions of dollars convincing everyone of the truth of their arguments. Its POWERFULLY worth it to try and ignore these influences , it's just very hard in todays' culture.