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Slymonides's avatar

My sense has been that Russia seems impossible to integrate into "the West" or the vague general projects of Europe because it is historically something defined by being what *isn't* Europe or Asia. Even this boolean sociological expression has more specific context for its topics: the European and Asian powers under which the Rus and other peoples were subjects and gradually integrated as a group (Vikings, the Horde) were the inverse expressions of their geographic continental spheres' cultural centers. That is to say, even the initial formation of the Rus was either influenced or differentiated by particular long-distance warrior cultures, on the earlier and western side by immensely capable seafaring frontier settlement exploration, and with ensuing centuries eastern nomadic horse geniuses, neither of these representing the prominent intellectual or artistic center of either medieval Europe or South or East Asia (I think the Vikings tended to trounce and smoosh those regularly, as a thing).

Besides its innate suggestion of other aspirations of western countries' historical appetites, "the West" lacks easy luster as an idea/attributes because it offers no guidance or historical instruction on how human societies ought to live alongside the natural world. Any prescriptive cosmology or cultural core which does not predict or treat the ecosystem's critical current state of health (arguably an outcome, if hijacked, of the principled individualistic values of "the West") does not easily attract a popular ethical/moral/cultural/political/economic clarity or forwards inspiration. Plato and Aristotle hint at overlapping ideas (this is likely what the discussion of Atlantis was about presumably, which only seems topical now to alien weirdos or something), but it's oddly never been an influential criteria in western ideas or governance. The western fine art painting movement of note which focused upon the natural landscapes of the outdoors occurred as a reaction to industrialism and colonial ambitions but also kind of empowered them while also alongside the rise of mystic nationalism. Basically the romantic paintings of the wilderness from the 19th century are difficult to separate from the sentiments of Manifest Destiny or dudes like Fitzcarraldo. Ralph Waldo Emerson was excited by the benefits of an eremitic perspective, but he never entirely left society nor took to considering trying to create a community (tellingly I think, Emerson's retreat was into the experiment of lifestyle for himself and explaining to everyone about it, but I also haven't read him or about him in like 15 years so maybe I can be fact-checked here).

Also, maybe my idiosyncratic requirements for stuff are not the centrally determining factor here. Still, I want to believe.

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Michael A Alexander's avatar

The West can be thought of as the descendents of the empires of Charlemange, Cnut the Great, the Teutonic Kinghts and the Iberian pennisula. The center was France, where Western Civilization got its start in the 10th century. It is Catholic in orgin, from whose Marriage and Family Program the WIERD psychology evolved, according to Joseph Henrich. Poland adopted Catholicism rather than Orthodox Christianity and can be thought as Western in some ways, particularly since a large portion of the country was under German (either Prussian or Austrian) for a century and a half.

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