Post: #1

It is possible for men to pursue a path of self-development in any peaceful society in the modern world.

It is also possible to build a highly complex, developed, prosperous, and functional society in non-Western cultures.

But is Western culture unique in that can both produce advanced societies AND allow men the social and cultural freedom to develop themselves?

I think it is. We can see this in the contrast between East Asian and Western cultures. These are the only two cultures that have built modern societies with a high standard of living and a strong middle class.

The East has taken the "obvious" approach of enforcing social conformity and emphasizing harmony to produce an advanced society. Basically force everyone, men and women alike, to go along with the program. Listen to your parents, elders, teachers. Don't rock the boat. Just keep your head down and do as you're told. Get married, have kids, and continue this system. Save as much money as possible, even if you have to live with your parents until you get married.

The West took the less-obvious path, building upon the tradition that was a mix of logic, religion, law, science, and philosophy to create a relatively free society that still respects the individual. Not perfect, but really an impressive feat when you consider how foreign these concepts are to the traditional cultures of the rest of the world. More precisely, the western tradition has created a set of ethics, laws, and morals that imposes minimal obligations on people's behavior: don't murder, steal, or bang your neighbor's wife. Other than that, be wise and make the most of your life.

The East has also taken many western concepts and incorporated them into their societies, especially in the legal, economic, and political systems. Developed Asian countries are exceptionally well-run in terms of economy and infrastructure. But they have not adopted the western mindset. The East Asian mindset just happens to be very good at implementing what it sees working in the West. The modernization of Japan and Singapore are great examples of this.

Some people on this forum have called Eastern culture red pill. Maybe the culture has good things to say in theory. But practically speaking, is it really an environment that is good for a man's development, when you're always culturally subordinate to other people? When you're pressured by parents to do well in school, get a stable job, and get married, it leaves little room for undertaking the hero's journey. When you're always bent on pursuing status symbols and keeping an image in front of other people, it detracts from introspection and growing in wisdom.

Note that this is not about Western men who expat to Asia as adults. It's about men who have had their whole outlook shaped by Eastern culture since they were young.

Post: #2

East Asian culture is ultimately about following the Dao and staying on the path of non-intention. What this means is that while there are rules, the rules do not always stay the same (the Dao that can be spoken is not the unchanging Dao). In the main, Eastern peoples are not dogmatic. The emphasis on conformity and order is just a tool to keep society from going off the rails, or getting it back on track after a cataclysm.

Western culture seems to prioritize "leveling up" — to be the most powerful, the most intelligent, the most advanced, the most humane — whereas the basics of Eastern philosophy exclude perfection as being unattainable and warn of the consequences should one seek it too keenly.

Post: #3

(05-05-2018 03:57 PM)BlueMark Wrote:  The East has taken the "obvious" approach of enforcing social conformity and emphasizing harmony to produce an advanced society. Basically force everyone, men and women alike, to go along with the program. Listen to your parents, elders, teachers. Don't rock the boat. Just keep your head down and do as you're told. Get married, have kids, and continue this system. Save as much money as possible, even if you have to live with your parents until you get married.

The West took the less-obvious path, building upon the tradition that was a mix of logic, religion, law, science, and philosophy to create a relatively free society that still respects the individual. Not perfect, but really an impressive feat when you consider how foreign these concepts are to the traditional cultures of the rest of the world. More precisely, the western tradition has created a set of ethics, laws, and morals that imposes minimal obligations on people's behavior: don't murder, steal, or bang your neighbor's wife. Other than that, be wise and make the most of your life.

I think this is a modernist misconception. The West was just as much concerned with what you would consider 'petty' daily issues: conformity to strict norms was just as heavily enforced (about pretty everything). This was either done legally, by ostracism or both. This started to majorly change after the Protestant Reformation, which reduced Christianity (and its underlying framework of rules and guidelines) to a matter of personal faith and based solely on scripture, rejecting ultimately the authority of the Church to dictate anything.

From this the concept of 'freedom' as we know it arose, which is actually simply licentiousness, 'do what thou wilt'. The thing is, now as before, we are only free to do whatever is non-threatening to the system. You can fuck whoever you want, you can watch whatever kind of entertainment, but you can't educate your kids as you see fit or hold certain opinions or you become persona non grata and won't be able to feed yourself or your kids.

This is to say, both East and West (and every system really) must enforce conformity, the question is which type of conformity and to what. I would say the current globalist system (which includes Singapore, Japan and Korea as well) promotes conformity to hedonism alone. Maybe in the East they still have some cultural leftovers from an earlier era, but we don't anymore - as we've been engaged in the industrial globalist system for longer.

Post: #4

^^^Yes, the above notions are textbook 'Asian studies' concepts. i.e. overly general and thus divorced from the reality of life in Asia.

I think one of them was posting something similar elsewhere here.