Posted on 11/22/2025 7:01:19 AM PST by Starman417
I don’t remember the first time I heard the phrase “ethnocentric”, but I remember the context. I was in some history class and we were studying a primitive South American tribe. They lived essentially the exact same way their ancestors had thousands of years ago. Our teacher told us their civilization was equal to ours, and we should never think that any civilization was superior to any other. Doing so would be “ethnocentric”, which apparently was a belief that our society was superior to others.
The truth is, when we were first admonished about this I remember thinking something wasn’t quite right about it, but as a kid in school, who was I to argue with the teacher? It was only years later that I would realize that teachers weren’t all knowing and that that little piece of wisdom was anything but.
Of course almost no one uses the phrase ethnocentric anymore. No, it’s been replaced by the ubiquitous and multifunctional moniker “racist”. Different word, but it means basically the same thing, everything white or western is bad and anything else, whether color or culture, is good.
Whatever the name, the lesson was: Every society is equal.
But is that true? No. While common sense suggests it’s wrong, how does one really know? Who decides? Well, if we left it to academia and western elites to decide, we’d all be wearing dashikis, praying towards Mecca five times a day, eating out of a communal plate with our hands and then wiping our posteriors with those same hands. Not that the elites themselves would be doing any of that, but they coerce the unwashed masses into following such diverse practices.
As for deciding, the majority have already decided. Are there millions of people risking their lives every year to illegally migrate to Africa or South America or South Asia? No. Where do the millions of people seeking to flee conflicts in Syria or Libya or anywhere else in the Muslim world go? Do they go to any one of the 50 plus Muslim majority nations? Other than passing through Turkey on their way to Greece, the answer is largely no. Where do those seeking to escape economic malaise throughout much of the southern hemisphere go? Mexico City or Timbuktu? Unlikely. Where do CCP or Hamas or banana republic leaders send their kids to be educated and live? Saudi Arabia or Venezuela or Burkina Faso or Vietnam? No, they send their kids to Paris, London and New York.
But the history! For example, India has a history going back thousands of years. We’re told that British rule decimated the Indian GDP, taking it from 23% of the world’s GDP in the mid-18th century to less than 4% today. That’s obviously a story of western civilization destroying a superior civilization, right? Not so much. While the Brits did bring substantial and sometimes negative changes to the Indian subcontinent, the reality is, India’s share of GDP shrank largely because western advances grew world GDP at an extraordinary rate never before seen. To put that in perspective, between 1750 – about the time Britain took control over India – and 1990 the GDP of the entire 3rd world grew by about 15 times. During that same period, Britain and the developed world grew GDP by 123 times. India didn’t lose it’s economic powerhouse status because Britain destroyed its economy, it lost its status because the west became an economic juggernaut, powered by the advances of the Industrial Revolution building on those of the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, all of which were western.
So, why is it that for half a century elites have been telling us that westerners are not allowed to take pride in the advances of their civilizations or celebrate the forces that brought about unprecedented freedom and prosperity?
Because they are spoiled, entitled brats who are ashamed of the prosperity their forebearers created. P.J. O'Rourke perhaps put it best. “At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.”
Like the children of so many successful entrepreneurs, those boomer elites (the fount of today’s liberalism) found it hard to live up to the achievements of their progenitors. In the century before 1970 western civilization literally revolutionized the world. Automobiles. Telephony. Radio. Television. Movies. The structure of DNA. Flight. Heart transplants. Microchips. Nuclear power. The electric light bulb. And much more. They even put a man on the moon and brought him back safely! Since then? Not so much a revolution as changing the curtains. Sure, the PC, the Internet the iPhone, Netflix, Amazon and Facebook have impacted our lives, but nothing revolutionary on the scale of many of those from the previous century. No time travel. No teleportation. No cure for cancer. Not even roads without potholes!
(Excerpt) Read more at floppingaces.net...
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Just take a few minutes to look at Somalia or Pakistan, and you will know its true.
There are other barometers by which to measure culture:
- US is still reeling from opioid epidemic
- So mental health…
- Life expectancy
- Marriages that last vs. end in divorce
- Violence
etc…
US is very divided. And it’s not just by race. White Americans are communally fractured in many ways.
We also have gender dysphoria, sexuality crises…which I’m sure leaves many countries watching that scratching their heads.
Certain aspects of healthcare are relatively mediocre for a developed country….
Infrastructure needs revamping.
Education system is…not the best.
Can’t claim the high ground on many things right now…
BUT still way better than vast majority of the world…and even better than ages past.
Our greatest export used to be Western Civilization. Now if we had the stones our greatest export would be the non-Western civilization that has taken root within our boarders.
“All Cultures Are Equal”
You might as well say all types of fruit taste the same......it’s a stupid notion on the face of it.
All influenced by the other cultures that have been imported over several decades ...
Birth rates…
Pregnancies carried to term vs. Aborted.
Treatment of the elderly…
Back in the 1930s the Nazis pushed a huge lie: There is only one master race.
In response, the West swung to the opposite extreme: All cultures are exactly equal.
Both are deadly. The first kills quickly. The other slowly.
The people who promoted this dangerous lie seem to have all disappeared. I remember reading their drivel back in the 70s. “Hey hey, ho ho, western civ has got to go.”
the transgenderism debacle is definitely homegrown. and momentum is not on its side right now thank God.
Traced to its origins, the “all cultures are equal” notion comes from anthropology as an admonition necessary to the discipline to understand other cultures on their own terms. Applied outside of that context, it makes no sense.
“African culture” is not equal to “American culture” ———both are incredibly diverse.
“African culture” itself is not a monolith, as the African continent is home to thousands of distinct languages, tribes, religions, and traditions.
“American culture” is also not monolithic, with a wide variety of regional and ethnic subcultures, but it also has a mainstream that emphasizes individualism, future orientation, and practicality, as opposed to some traditional African cultures that may prioritize community, tradition, and fate.
Differences between African and American cultures
Diversity:
Africa: A continent with over 1,000 languages and diverse ethnic groups, religions, and traditions.
America: A melting pot of cultures from around the world, with its own diverse regions and ethnic subcultures.
Cultural values:
Africa: Traditional African cultures often emphasize community, group welfare, and tradition.
America: Mainstream American culture tends to emphasize
individualism, personal control, and practicality.
Social structure:
Africa: Hierarchical workplaces can be common in some African nations, where higher positions are earned through long tenure.
America: Social structures can vary, with individualism often being a core value.
Food and customs:
Africa: Local foods and traditional diets are more common in many parts of Africa, though processed foods are also becoming more common.
America: Processed and frozen foods are more common, and portion sizes tend to be larger.
Language:
Africa: Many different languages are spoken across the continent.
America: English is the dominant language, but many other languages are spoken throughout the country.
"They're just like us!" is a massive lie and everyone knows it.
Thankfully, Trump is fighting back...
The missive from the state department goes on to say:
Officials will also report policies that punish citizens who object to continued mass migration and document crimes and human rights abuses committed by people of a migration background. These issues have plagued citizens of Western nations for years
https://notthebee.com/article/stop-what-youre-doing-and-read-the-state-departments-statement-on-mass-migration
it’s also a complete myth that everyone is born equal, which has now been conclusively proven by genetic differences ... A Down’s Syndrome child is CLEARLY not equal to a baby Einstein ... and for centuries, esp. the last couple of centuries, farm animals have been selectively bred from superior individuals to improve the qualities of subsequent generations, thus we already know and accept that not all animals are born equal ... since humans are animals, not all humans are born equals ...
They actually don’t believe that all cultures are equal. They 100% believe that white culture is inferior.
You ignored the actual truth and reality of the OP to make this an America sucks and isn’t any better thread?
Cultures are different and don’t mix well. Some cultures have achieved more in particular fields than others. Habits that are taken for granted in one culture may be repulsive and destructive in another.
Flopping’s teacher may have been trying to get the students not to go around saying “We’re #1” or “We’re better than them” all the time and to recognize that we couldn’t make Vietnam into New Jersey or Somalia into Minnesota. The idea that we’d end up making Minnesota into Somalia may not have occured to the teacher.
Make America Great…
“Again” <—
Is a slogan for a reason.
Think kamikaze pilots-told to take their fighter planes and crash them into the side of American battleships. That way they wouldn’t miss their target.
There is something to be said for taking one for the team but one would have to ask: Are You Serious?
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