| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"maff" |
| Date: |
01 Apr 2005 10:51:25 AM |
| Object: |
OT: Mark Mazower |
The west needs a new sense of self
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/c935e2da-a180-11d9-95e5-00000e2511c8.html
By Mark Mazower
Published: March 31 2005 03:00 | Last updated: March 31 2005 03:00
Once upon a time there was the west, winner of history's race to
modernity, and there were the rest, trying to catch up. Every society
was thought to make the same journey, at greater or lesser speed, from
hidebound tradition to the bright promise of industrial modernity and
unrestricted economic growth. If it did not, something had gone wrong:
it might be excessive attachment to (non-Christian) religions and
creeds, or to pre-modern sources of loyalty such as the family and the
tribe. Women were a litmus test: where their feet were bound or heads
covered, there was little hope for their communities without radical
change delivered by western-oriented saviours. Secularism,
urbanisation and market forces would propel them forward.
During the cold war, fleshing out this self-congratulatory model kept
academics busy. According to the historians, the west owed its ascent
not just to anything as recent or crudely violent as 19th-century
colonial expansion or the preceding industrial revolution but to
other, more venerable institutions and values. For some, the west's
ascent was thanks to a 17th-century "scientific revolution" - the
moment at which humanity supposedly asserted its claim to knowledge
over the censorious power of religious authorities; for others, it was
the rise of capitalist bank ing, perhaps even the emergence of a
church-state balance of powers centuries before.
Mark Mazower
http://news.google.com/news?q=%20%22Mark%20Mazower%22&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mark+Mazower%22&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&tab=nw&sa=N
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Mark+Mazower%22&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&output=search&cat=gwd/Top
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_epq=Mark%20Mazower&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
.
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
