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> violating the environmental laws of every western country. European nations aren't "western"?
by wyager 10y ago
> violating the environmental laws of every western country.
European nations aren't "western"?
- RhodesianHunter 10y agoThey violated European laws too, that's why they're recalling them over the next two years.
- DiabloD3 10y agoI think he was saying, essentially, "not only European nations, but America as well"
- developer2 10y agoActually, Europe is included in the common definition of "Western country". Yes, that definition is inflated by the US's ego of being the centre of the universe for no legitimate reason; but "Western country" is synonymous with "First World country". Strange but true.
- mehwoot 10y agoEuropean nations aren't "western"? Actually European nations is what it originally meant. Western European. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world The term originally had a literal geographic meaning. It contrasted Europe with the cultures and civilizations of the Middle East and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the remote Far East which early-modern Europeans saw as the East. In the contemporary cultural meaning, the phrase Western world includes Europe, as well as many countries of European colonial origin with substantial European ancestral populations in the Americas and Oceania.
- wyager 10y agoYes, I didn't realize Volkswagen violated European laws as well. So when he said "Every western nation", I was confused.
- pixelbill 10y agoThese terms were coined before the Americas were discovered by Europeans. Europe was the West, then you have the Middle East, then the Far East (China, Japan). That was the whole world to them pretty much. When the Americas were discovered they were known as the New World, and eventually became known as the West as well (Due to the fact that most of our culture comes from Europe, eg. Western Culture).
- Symbiote 10y agoAlso the Near East, which was roughly the Ottoman Empire -- countries around the Mediterranean, Black and Red Seas. ("Mediterranean": middle of land.) I suspect Rome (or some other city in Italy) is the centre of these terms, but I haven't looked for evidence of that.