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I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Sout

I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly exposed to Christianity and its cultural heritage, read the same books and watch many of the same shows as Europe, the US, and Canada, I use sit-down toilet, not squat toilets, and I eat mostly with forks and knives, not with chopsticks or with my fingers. While it is true that the culture of the Mayans in my country is slightly foreign to me (as it is to most Mexicans, since most of us are not Mayan, and the Mayans have always had separatist tendencies to begin with), I still feel like the Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world than any other part of the world. We shouldn't be so foreignised. My resentment, of course, comes because "Western" is being used here in the sense of money-having, with a certain air of superiority, however well-intentioned or benign this air may be. True that culture and wealth go hand-in-hand, but I think we're all more alike than different. I didn't like doing chores as a kid and I don't know a lot of Mexicans who did. We're more alike to those who self-apply and exclude us from the "Western" label than we are different.

euske 8y ago
I think the term "Western" is often mixed up with "Westernized", which has a rather different connotation. I live in Japan that is not technically Western at all, but very well Westernized.
- Izkata 8y ago
  Pretty sure it's this above all else. The US is also not in "The West", but it is in a sense "westernized" (it just never had a period where it wasn't "westernized" because of its origins). The two terms are holdovers from centuries ago, when "The West" really did mean Europe and "The East" meant east Asia (and The Orient was in between, the Middle East + west Asia). There's even an XKCD about how confusing it can be from the US (or, really, the Americas in general): https://xkcd.com/503/ https://xkcd.com/503/
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Orient is just opposite to Occident. But as an en-gb native I've never heard it used for anything other than, basically, [Silk-Road era] China. I guess people might use it for Japanese, Thai, Mongolian, Malaysian, etc. but definitely not for anywhere from India Westwards.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  Westernized made sense 100 -200 years during the era of the first huge cultural exchange (or imposition). Nowadays Americans drive Hondas and play Nintendos, calling Japan "Westernized" makes less sense.
aaron695 8y ago
I see Western is about a weak social structure. You don't just respect your grandparents or your boss or your parents or your culture or your coworker. There's no hierarchy. Respect is earned, and it's constantly challenged. For Mexico to be Western it would mean a movie like "Coco" is so utter bullshit it totally disrespects the entire country. This I didn't hear, hence I would not say Mexico is Western. Without the blind respect of your boss or company, the theory is money reigns supreme and the country gets richer, hence why western countries are richer. The fact you as a Mexican take offence kinda means to me you're not too western. If you were western you'd give less of a fuck about the place where you came from being mis-classified, it'd be more about who you are as a person. (Unless it's because people are stupid and don't realise what a country you know well is really like, that would be annoying)
cambalache 8y ago
My friend, this was something that surprised me 15-20 years ago when thanks to the Internet I started to interact with Americans. At the end Western is a code word for White dominated places or sometimes just Anglo. This came from Huntington's Clash of Civilizations a profoundly ignorant work. As you wrote you can live in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo or Mexico City, huge cosmopolitan places, maybe you have some recent relatives who came from Italy or Spain or Portugal, speak Spanish or Portuguese, are Catholic, read Cervantes, Proust, Camoes. Listen to Opera or Rock or Baladas. But somehow you are at outsider. Sam from Indiana is the only true inheritor of Homer, Pindarus and Quevedo legacy. At the end my advice is to scoff and move on.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Reminds me of a quote about culture in star trek: somehow, in this utopy, they only know of Shakespeare,an edgy hard boiled detective character, Captain Proton and baseball. The vision americans had for the ST utopia was very los angeles centered.
  - Bakary 8y ago
    Are there any notable SF works where it's more or less impossible to estimate the culture and era of the author?
    - girvo 8y ago
      Perhaps the Culture series?
    - johnchristopher 8y ago
      It's an SF precursor but it seems to me few people know that Frankenstein comes from a book written by a woman 200 years ago (I just realized it's that old. Surprised no one produced a 200th anniversary movie).
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world "Western" is used as short-hand for the cultures "that have some origin or association with Europe. The term also applies beyond Europe to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence." Modern Mexican culture could be argued to be "Western". It would be difficult, on the other hand, to argue Maya culture is Western. > I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian Linguistically, the use of "USian" strikes back at your argument. There is no ambiguity when someone says "I am American," as people from only one country identify themselves as such. Using the term "USian" thus explicitly rejects one's affiliation with the United States.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  > difficult, on the other hand, to argue Maya culture is Western. At this point, many of the younger generation of Maya are quite western, at least in Mexico (go to university to become doctors or engineers, live in the city (or are urbanizing their communities), wear blue jeans and makeup and basketball shoes, listen to rap music, build houses with flush toilets and big TVs, drive SUVs, post to facebook from their smartphones, etc.), and their children absolutely will be. Their grandparents who only speak their indigenous language, are illiterate, spent their careers as migrant agricultural workers, etc. were not “western” except insofar as the broader western political system shaped their society and economy and ruthlessly exploited them. > Using the term "USian" thus explicitly rejects one's affiliation with the United States. In Mexico, the USA is called the Estados Unidos or EE.UU. The Mexican word for what you call “American” is “estado-unidense” (or maybe more commonly, “gringo”), and when writing in English, USian seems like a reasonable translation. Calling US citizens “americanos” sounds unnatural and presumptuous in Spanish [it doesn’t help that there is a lot of bad blood between Mexico and the USA, what with us starting an unjustified war and conquering/stealing half their country, something which is discussed thoroughly and bitterly in Mexican schoolbooks]. I think you are misinterpreting the grandparent poster intended based on your own biases. What the term “USian” rejects is not “one’s affiliation with the United States”, but rather it rejects the United States’s perceived imperialist claim to the whole western hemisphere. But the grandparent poster did not necessarily intend this rejection consciously, but may just be mirroring his own cultural context.
partycoder 8y ago
English and French colonists did not mix a lot with other races, unlike Spanish colonists. There are many exceptions, like the Métis in Canada, but that did not happen very often. Later, the US and Canada received various waves of immigrants from Europe, making multi-racial people an even smaller portion of the population. In recent years, multi-racial couples have increased. This happened mostly because interracial unions were illegal in some states (examples include Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924) until a US Supreme Court ruling invalidated that and any similar laws. That being said, what is considered "Western" or "white" has changed over time. For instance, Italians and Irish were once not considered white. Honestly, it's not important and I strongly recommend you to stop worrying about that. I highly recommend these links if you want to explore cultural differences between US and Mexico: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHqSHZyUMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHqSHZyUMc - https://archinect.com/tacos/casa-vs-house-differences-in-us-and-mex-domestic-architecture https://archinect.com/tacos/casa-vs-house-differences-in-us-... Personally I think Mexico's top priority is get rid of its pseudo caste system, dominated by the descendants of Hacienda owners, nepotism and corruption.
- spicymaki 8y ago
  @partycoder you are dead wrong about that. The English and French racially intermingled a lot more than you might think. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals...
  - partycoder 8y ago
    I read the article and it do not see how it refutes my point at all.
noobermin 8y ago
You did say the Mayans are foreign to you. This article is specifically about their culture, not broader Mexican culture. Can you expand why you want to be considered to be Western? I don't, even though I live in the US and face discrimination (sometimes) because of it.
baxtr 8y ago
If you want to use words to differentiate, there have to be some break points. The same could be asked by Russian. They are mostly of Christian Faith, and, speak a language that is very similar to some European languages. If I remember right, Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) introduced the Ukraine, Turkey and Australia as countries that needed to make a decision which part they wanted to belong to finally. Maybe, one could argue that Mexico is in a similar spot.
- Bakary 8y ago
  What alternative does Australia have?
  - baxtr 8y ago
    Asia
rangibaby 8y ago
I agree with you. I mostly see "Western" used as a synonym for "NATO". In addition to Mexico, there are countries in Europe (Russia) or democracies with huge economies (Japan, ROK, India, Brazil) that aren't described as Western.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > I mostly see "Western" used as a synonym for "NATO" I think of it as the corpus of cultures drawing heritage from the Ancient Greeks and Romans. If the Homeric epics have a home in your culture, it's Western. That said, the term is muddied enough to be somewhat useless for general discussion. Particularly given how it's been co-opted by racist elements in American politics.
  - maw 8y ago
    Except that Islamic culture drew heavily on them too, especially the Greeks. Those of us who consider ourselves Western are right to consider the Greeks and Romans among our cultural forebears, but we're not the only ones who can or should do so.
    - badosu 8y ago
      > Except that Islamic culture drew heavily on them too, especially the Greeks. Most of the reason Europe was able to even have access to Greek works was due to Arabic translations, in many cases the originals do not exist anymore. While in Europe the barbarians were ravaging the remains of the Roman Empire and entering into feudalism and the 'dark ages', Hindu and Greek works were being studied and improved in the Arab world (e.g. Algebra, Algorythm words coming from Arabic works). These later would be brought to Europe via trade with italian city states and copied by the church.
M_Bakhtiari 8y ago
I see your point. I'm also puzzled by how Americans seem to talk about Spanish-speaking people as if they are some kind of race.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  It's data compression. Americans talk about "white" people as if they are some kind of race!
cerealbad 8y ago
You are American (Latin). Western means not-communist, since almost the entire world favors collectivism over individualism, almost no culture is 'western'. The default position is socialism, in the case of the North America colonies (post revolution) the model of ancient Greece was re-imagined to create a new type of country, so far it has been highly successful yet not very equal. this means if you work hard you can provide for yourself but if you work smart you can leapfrog a lot of hard workers and if you work hard and smart you can become filthy rich and start manipulating the entire system. the checks and balances and freedoms in place are supposed to limit some of the economic imbalances when a ultrarich guy like Rockefeller with Standard Oil or Bezos with Amazon wants to make himself defacto king. If you want a comparison with ancient Rome, Trump is Crassus, and the outrage and resistance to his nomination and presidency hints at an established dynastic patrician class of American politicians who refuse a common businessman to infiltrate their halls of power. If you prefer to be a competitive individual who is only compelled by their own inner morality to help others you are western. If you prefer to live in a society where everyone thrives and there is broad equality, safety and harmony then you are of an eastern mind. The argument of having both or a mixture becomes a contentious historical and political issue, having your cake and eating it too. China is making a strong attempt at blending these two ideas into a new political theory, spearheaded by Xi Jingping's One Belt One Road Initiative and the addition of new member states to the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation).
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Western means not-communist, No, it doesn't. > since almost the entire world favors collectivism over individualism, almost no culture is 'western'. You can favor collectivism and still not be communist, so that doesn't follow even if the preceding claim were true. > The default position is socialism No, it's not, and you seem to be conflating socialism, collectivism, and communism, which are not the same thing. > in the case of the North America colonies (post revolution) the model of ancient Greece was re-imagined to create a new type of country No, it wasn't. While classical references (Roman as much as Greek) were trendy at the time, the basic model of government was very closely modeled on contemporary European models with vary slight tweaks.)
coldtea 8y ago
>I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? It's not about the geography. It's more about development (e.g. money) and culture -- and in essence an arbitrary historical capture of the term by Western Europeans and WASP-like Americans to mean themselves. It's best to not thing such terms as about what their etymology or direct meaning is "western = west", etc, but instead consider how they are used in practice. >I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly exposed to Christianity and its cultural heritage, read the same books and watch many of the same shows as Europe, the US, and Canada, I use sit-down toilet, not squat toilets, and I eat mostly with forks and knives, not with chopsticks or with my fingers. Hundreds of millions of people in the areas you've mentioned have all the same characteristics as well. >True that culture and wealth go hand-in-hand, but I think we're all more alike than different. I didn't like doing chores as a kid and I don't know a lot of Mexicans who did. We're more alike to those who self-apply and exclude us from the "Western" label than we are different. Why try to be a member of a BS club that doesn't want you anyway? It's not as if being Western is any great achievement, that's just the way westerners use it when they laud themselves. With the rise of China, India, Brazil, and eventually Africa, the "West" is an increasingly insignificant part of the world. It just had a head start on plundering a new continent, and then the rest of the world -- which put it ahead of the rest of the planet for a while -- then again, Rome once was important too.
- Bakary 8y ago
  Insignificant or not they will live on through the consumerist culture they have refined and disseminated, just like the Romans live on in Western mores themselves.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Even that is easy to change. All it takes if a few economic busts and/or environmental issues, and here comes religion and frugality and so on again... Like those Roman mores had themselves been supplanted by orthodox/catholic Christian (and then puritan protestant Christian) mores the west.
jimmy1 8y ago
Reading this article, I don't really get everything under "What About Western Kids?" subheading. Everything listed there you would have found during the frontier days of America (and still do in some parts), so does that make America not western? I don't know it's very confusing. My parents are from Greece from large families and had this exact same experience growing up -- you had to do your part -- and Greece is known as the the birthplace of western civilization. Again, confusing to me. Western is just some huge bucket now that doesn't really have meaning. On another level, I can kind of relate to you not knowing what type of "western" you are. On a whole, (this might sound confusing) it's the Roman West that is overrepresented in "Western Civilization", but you also had the "East" western civilization as well, and very much has some things in common with what some people know was "East" (as in Asian), but still distinctly "Western" But I am with you, I don't know either sometimes.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  My ancestors a few generations back who lived in the American west (or a generation or two before that were rural peasants in western Europe), and my rural Mexican peasant friends today live pretty similarly. You could take many stories of white Americans’ own great-great-grandparents who migrated to the US from Europe, change all the names and places (but few of the other details), and the story would be entirely plausibly that of an undocumented Mexican or Central American migrant today. This is one of the reasons that anti-immigrant hysteria is so ironically and tragically hypocritical. I think it would be fair to call frontier America “non-Western” in the sense of the word used by this discussion. Maybe “non-industrialized” would be a better word. jordigh: if you grew up in a middle class Spanish-speaking family in a city in Mexico, you are most certainly “Western” in the sense used here.
- namarie 8y ago
  > Western is just some huge bucket now that doesn't really have meaning. I sincerely think it just means "northern european" to some people.
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
Most Mexicans I know remind me more of Italy (where I'm from) than USA. Might be my personal experience. Take it as just my 0.02.
- namarie 8y ago
  So? Isn't Italy western?
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Re use of "Western" in the article: This in no way whatsoever invalidates your complaint, but my suspicion is they were looking for some acceptable means to indicate "well-heeled, two career couples from wealthy developed countries who don't pay enough attention to their own children." They were looking for a polite way to characterize their target audience that doesn't sound racist, classist or -- worse -- judgy of the very people who pay their bills that they would like to gently tell "It's a good idea to make the time to involve your messy toddler. It will pay dividends later."
HillaryBriss 8y ago
i can't help but wonder if what you're feeling is magnified by the tone/voice/perspective of that particular collection of the population known as "NPR reporters." IMHO, NPR's view of the world, its culture, its word choice and tone are unique to NPR. i personally don't always relate very well to it.
poisonarena 8y ago
If you are reading, understanding, and participating in Hackernews you are western.
michalskop 8y ago
I'm from central-eastern Europe and I feel the same. I've spent a few years in Latin America and I'd call both the regions "new" or "satellite" or "not-core" West. Germany or the US may be the original core West, but LatAm and CEEurope are West, too. Whether to include also Russia, that would be my question.
- unixhero 8y ago
  Russia is certainly out since they don't share even the same alphabet.
  - adam-a 8y ago
    Yes, and out with Greece too!
    - ithkuil 8y ago
      Yeah, I guess alphabet is out too. It's abecedary in the West!
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    Russia is not part of, nor "recently" founded from, nor relatively heavily influenced by, Western Europe. I don't know why there's a rush to identify as Western; usually it's used pejoratively.
dalbasal 8y ago
You are right, but "western" as its used colloqially doesn't really mean anything. The term "western" has multiple origins, but the two dominant ones are: (1) European (especially british) terminology, from 17th-19th century history and political science (2) Cold War concepts where the world is divided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd world countries depending on political alignment. West European narratives from the late British, French & Dutch Empires goes roughly like this. (1) Classical greece is the "craddle" of (western) civilization. (2) Greeks spread "the light" worldwide with alexander, What he called hellenization they call westernisation (3) Rome eventually took over. (4) The pure values of the west empire was degraded by the decedant east. The (wrestern) roman empire fell and the dark age began. (5) The light of the west was rekindled in the Renaissance (6) The torch passed to west european empires, who dutifully picked up the white man's burden, spreading civilization and light to the world again. (7) britain passed the torch to America, which is Athens' true succesor. This is the basic narrative running through most 17th-19th century anglo-american history and philosophy. It's comically self serving. So bogus it's hard to know where to start. First, Greece was never "Europe," in any sense that includes britain, germany, etc.. Europe remained tribal and "uncivilized" (non-urban) for 2,000 years after the Classical Greek civilization spread far and wide. Greece (and after that, Rome) was a place the western periphery of the Mediterranean and middle eastern cultural complex. This region including lots of long lived, large & complex civilizations: Egyptian, Bablylonian, Hittite & Persian empires. Advanced Phoenician city states. Greece's urban culutre fits squarely into this wider culuture. Nothing western about it. This would not have been controversial to plato, alexander or julio cesar. They looked to egypt, persia and the "east" as the predecessor and contemporary civilizations. They credit Egypt constantly. They didn't know or care about europe as we think of it, and certainly didn't consider themselves part of it. Second.... this kept happening in every age. The European dark ages actually ended when Europeans regained cultural contact with the "east," via the arab expansion into western Europe and the crusades. Basically, the concept of "western civilization" is a farce. There is no such thing. It's a false narrative about the origins of european civilization, giving it an indigenous origin. It was just to embarrassing to admit that Europe was tribal until 600-700 years ago while the east had been "civilized" for thousands of years. Later on (now) it gets equated with democracy, rule of law and such, the political ideals of western europe and the US. None of these originate in the west. None of these are even traditional in the west. American democracy is no more descendant from Athens' than a hundred other ancient city states' political systems. They just happened to know about athenian democracy, through an accident of history. These days, "western values" has come to mean feminism, liberalism, pluralism, gay rights... Anyone over 30 can tell you that these are not traditional western values. These are modern, cosmoplitan values and they thrive in the places which are not traditional. TLDR, Western values roughly mean descendant from greece, according to silly 18th century british intellectuals. Mexico is (culturally) more descendant from Greece than the US or Brittain. Basically, it's BS. Western doesn't mean anything.
gfyrt 8y ago
Western culture is rotten...it's overhyped for what is actually worth....all that they have is money and tech ....
bmn__ 8y ago
> I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. […] about the culture Don't worry, you are part of Western high culture. Anyone who would not acknowledge this as true is quite ignorant of history. Many of my thread neighbours are astonishingly unable to provide an accurate definition of our culture or have the wrong idea in their head. The toilet and eating utensil preference is not important, but the shared values are important: guarantees of civil and human rights, living in freedom, rule of law, equality, individualism, tolerance, practising liberal democracy, society implementing market economy with free wage labour and historically shaped by Christianity and Enlightenment.
daveslash 8y ago
Keep in mind that this article was written in response to a book that an anthropologist recently wrote. At the risk of sounding distrustful of academics, I do sometimes wonder if some anthropologists view the world through an "us vs. them" lens - trying to understand the differences in cultures. FWIW, as a person of 100% European decent who grew up in New England, I consider all of Latin America to be Western for the reasons you pointed out (with the exception of the un-contacted Amazonian tribes).
wahern 8y ago
I don't think it's petty, but I think maybe people should be a little more charitable. If you point-blank asked the writer whether she considered Mexicans Western, I have little doubt (though we can't be sure) she would respond in the affirmative. The issue is context. What seemed to happen here was the idea that the Mayan parenting method has seeped into the broader Mexican culture to varying degrees. I don't know the extent to which that is true (maybe strong geographic component), but that's the idea that the author is reporting on. That's the context that was setup. From there sloppy writing and sloppy language made it easy to equivocate cultures and, finally, make a seemingly absurd distinction between Mexican culture, as a whole, and Western culture. Some of the blame should be placed at the feet of her scholarly sources, if the author's quotations and paraphrasing are accurate Also, FWIW from 1970s to 1990s there was the Chicano cultural movement in the U.S. (and perhaps Mexico?) that sought to distinguish and emphasis indigenous Mexican cultures from Western culture. I don't think there's denying that as compared to the U.S. the national identity of many Mexicans is complicated by the fact that indigenous identities and cultures are far stronger, in numbers and emphasis. (And this is different than the hyphenated American identities, or the identities of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. And it's different from Native Americans in the U.S. because they're disenfranchised and have no political power.) That reality can be difficult for Americans of any ethnicity to fully appreciate, but especially for white Americans. It's not that white Americans don't understand complex identities. There are plenty of people who strongly self-identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American, etc. It's just that many of these identities no longer conflict with the broader national identity (particularly the former) and so they have little experience navigating the tensions that other people struggle with, particularly with nuances around vocabulary and context. It's definitely worth pointing out. But people don't respond well to opprobrium. Resentment is harsh. Do you really mean resentment or just frustration? To my mind resentment implies you feel no shared identity with Americans, which conflicts with your statement about having a shared Western identity. I'm a white American who has traveled enough (including in Mexico) to not only feel a shared identity with Mexicans, but one much stronger and closer than simply Western. I couldn't even begin to articulate the bounds of that identity (the precise bounds are no doubt peculiar to each individual), but I feel it when I travel (to Asia, to Europe) and I have a conviction that it exists, objectively and independently, whether people realize it or not.
Torwald 8y ago
I am 40 and from Europe, when I was in school, "latin" America, that's how it's called, was clearly considered West. What you are experiencing is something that seems to arise from the US only in more recent times, maybe the last 15 years or so.
toasterlovin 8y ago
There are some significant cultural/heritage differences between Mexico and the United States. The current population of Mexico is a result of large scale admixture between indigenous people and European colonists, whereas essentially no such admixture occurred in the US. Also, the US is culturally descended from Northern Europeans, whereas the European aspect of Mexican culture is descended from Southern Europe. The Northern/Southern cultural divide in Europe is pretty significant and I would guess that, in practice, the term “The West” primarily refers to Northern Europe rather than Southern (or Eastern) Europe.

euske 8y ago

I think the term "Western" is often mixed up with "Westernized", which has a rather different connotation. I live in Japan that is not technically Western at all, but very well Westernized.

Izkata 8y ago
Pretty sure it's this above all else. The US is also not in "The West", but it is in a sense "westernized" (it just never had a period where it wasn't "westernized" because of its origins). The two terms are holdovers from centuries ago, when "The West" really did mean Europe and "The East" meant east Asia (and The Orient was in between, the Middle East + west Asia). There's even an XKCD about how confusing it can be from the US (or, really, the Americas in general): https://xkcd.com/503/ https://xkcd.com/503/
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Orient is just opposite to Occident. But as an en-gb native I've never heard it used for anything other than, basically, [Silk-Road era] China. I guess people might use it for Japanese, Thai, Mongolian, Malaysian, etc. but definitely not for anywhere from India Westwards.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
Westernized made sense 100 -200 years during the era of the first huge cultural exchange (or imposition). Nowadays Americans drive Hondas and play Nintendos, calling Japan "Westernized" makes less sense.

aaron695 8y ago

I see Western is about a weak social structure. You don't just respect your grandparents or your boss or your parents or your culture or your coworker. There's no hierarchy. Respect is earned, and it's constantly challenged. For Mexico to be Western it would mean a movie like "Coco" is so utter bullshit it totally disrespects the entire country. This I didn't hear, hence I would not say Mexico is Western. Without the blind respect of your boss or company, the theory is money reigns supreme and the country gets richer, hence why western countries are richer. The fact you as a Mexican take offence kinda means to me you're not too western. If you were western you'd give less of a fuck about the place where you came from being mis-classified, it'd be more about who you are as a person. (Unless it's because people are stupid and don't realise what a country you know well is really like, that would be annoying)

cambalache 8y ago

My friend, this was something that surprised me 15-20 years ago when thanks to the Internet I started to interact with Americans. At the end Western is a code word for White dominated places or sometimes just Anglo. This came from Huntington's Clash of Civilizations a profoundly ignorant work. As you wrote you can live in Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo or Mexico City, huge cosmopolitan places, maybe you have some recent relatives who came from Italy or Spain or Portugal, speak Spanish or Portuguese, are Catholic, read Cervantes, Proust, Camoes. Listen to Opera or Rock or Baladas. But somehow you are at outsider. Sam from Indiana is the only true inheritor of Homer, Pindarus and Quevedo legacy. At the end my advice is to scoff and move on.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
johnchristopher 8y ago
Reminds me of a quote about culture in star trek: somehow, in this utopy, they only know of Shakespeare,an edgy hard boiled detective character, Captain Proton and baseball. The vision americans had for the ST utopia was very los angeles centered.
- Bakary 8y ago
  Are there any notable SF works where it's more or less impossible to estimate the culture and era of the author?
  - girvo 8y ago
    Perhaps the Culture series?
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    It's an SF precursor but it seems to me few people know that Frankenstein comes from a book written by a woman 200 years ago (I just realized it's that old. Surprised no one produced a 200th anniversary movie).

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Mayans and I are by now part of the greater western world "Western" is used as short-hand for the cultures "that have some origin or association with Europe. The term also applies beyond Europe to countries and cultures whose histories are strongly connected to Europe by immigration, colonization, or influence." Modern Mexican culture could be argued to be "Western". It would be difficult, on the other hand, to argue Maya culture is Western. > I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian Linguistically, the use of "USian" strikes back at your argument. There is no ambiguity when someone says "I am American," as people from only one country identify themselves as such. Using the term "USian" thus explicitly rejects one's affiliation with the United States.

jacobolus 8y ago
> difficult, on the other hand, to argue Maya culture is Western. At this point, many of the younger generation of Maya are quite western, at least in Mexico (go to university to become doctors or engineers, live in the city (or are urbanizing their communities), wear blue jeans and makeup and basketball shoes, listen to rap music, build houses with flush toilets and big TVs, drive SUVs, post to facebook from their smartphones, etc.), and their children absolutely will be. Their grandparents who only speak their indigenous language, are illiterate, spent their careers as migrant agricultural workers, etc. were not “western” except insofar as the broader western political system shaped their society and economy and ruthlessly exploited them. > Using the term "USian" thus explicitly rejects one's affiliation with the United States. In Mexico, the USA is called the Estados Unidos or EE.UU. The Mexican word for what you call “American” is “estado-unidense” (or maybe more commonly, “gringo”), and when writing in English, USian seems like a reasonable translation. Calling US citizens “americanos” sounds unnatural and presumptuous in Spanish [it doesn’t help that there is a lot of bad blood between Mexico and the USA, what with us starting an unjustified war and conquering/stealing half their country, something which is discussed thoroughly and bitterly in Mexican schoolbooks]. I think you are misinterpreting the grandparent poster intended based on your own biases. What the term “USian” rejects is not “one’s affiliation with the United States”, but rather it rejects the United States’s perceived imperialist claim to the whole western hemisphere. But the grandparent poster did not necessarily intend this rejection consciously, but may just be mirroring his own cultural context.

partycoder 8y ago

English and French colonists did not mix a lot with other races, unlike Spanish colonists. There are many exceptions, like the Métis in Canada, but that did not happen very often. Later, the US and Canada received various waves of immigrants from Europe, making multi-racial people an even smaller portion of the population. In recent years, multi-racial couples have increased. This happened mostly because interracial unions were illegal in some states (examples include Virginia's Racial Integrity Act of 1924) until a US Supreme Court ruling invalidated that and any similar laws. That being said, what is considered "Western" or "white" has changed over time. For instance, Italians and Irish were once not considered white. Honestly, it's not important and I strongly recommend you to stop worrying about that. I highly recommend these links if you want to explore cultural differences between US and Mexico: - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHqSHZyUMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuHqSHZyUMc - https://archinect.com/tacos/casa-vs-house-differences-in-us-and-mex-domestic-architecture https://archinect.com/tacos/casa-vs-house-differences-in-us-... Personally I think Mexico's top priority is get rid of its pseudo caste system, dominated by the descendants of Hacienda owners, nepotism and corruption.

spicymaki 8y ago
@partycoder you are dead wrong about that. The English and French racially intermingled a lot more than you might think. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals-surprising-ancestry-many-americans http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/12/genetic-study-reveals...
- partycoder 8y ago
  I read the article and it do not see how it refutes my point at all.

noobermin 8y ago

You did say the Mayans are foreign to you. This article is specifically about their culture, not broader Mexican culture. Can you expand why you want to be considered to be Western? I don't, even though I live in the US and face discrimination (sometimes) because of it.

baxtr 8y ago

If you want to use words to differentiate, there have to be some break points. The same could be asked by Russian. They are mostly of Christian Faith, and, speak a language that is very similar to some European languages. If I remember right, Huntington (Clash of Civilizations) introduced the Ukraine, Turkey and Australia as countries that needed to make a decision which part they wanted to belong to finally. Maybe, one could argue that Mexico is in a similar spot.

Bakary 8y ago
What alternative does Australia have?
- baxtr 8y ago
  Asia

rangibaby 8y ago

I agree with you. I mostly see "Western" used as a synonym for "NATO". In addition to Mexico, there are countries in Europe (Russia) or democracies with huge economies (Japan, ROK, India, Brazil) that aren't described as Western.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> I mostly see "Western" used as a synonym for "NATO" I think of it as the corpus of cultures drawing heritage from the Ancient Greeks and Romans. If the Homeric epics have a home in your culture, it's Western. That said, the term is muddied enough to be somewhat useless for general discussion. Particularly given how it's been co-opted by racist elements in American politics.
- maw 8y ago
  Except that Islamic culture drew heavily on them too, especially the Greeks. Those of us who consider ourselves Western are right to consider the Greeks and Romans among our cultural forebears, but we're not the only ones who can or should do so.
  - badosu 8y ago
    > Except that Islamic culture drew heavily on them too, especially the Greeks. Most of the reason Europe was able to even have access to Greek works was due to Arabic translations, in many cases the originals do not exist anymore. While in Europe the barbarians were ravaging the remains of the Roman Empire and entering into feudalism and the 'dark ages', Hindu and Greek works were being studied and improved in the Arab world (e.g. Algebra, Algorythm words coming from Arabic works). These later would be brought to Europe via trade with italian city states and copied by the church.

M_Bakhtiari 8y ago

I see your point. I'm also puzzled by how Americans seem to talk about Spanish-speaking people as if they are some kind of race.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
It's data compression. Americans talk about "white" people as if they are some kind of race!

cerealbad 8y ago

You are American (Latin). Western means not-communist, since almost the entire world favors collectivism over individualism, almost no culture is 'western'. The default position is socialism, in the case of the North America colonies (post revolution) the model of ancient Greece was re-imagined to create a new type of country, so far it has been highly successful yet not very equal. this means if you work hard you can provide for yourself but if you work smart you can leapfrog a lot of hard workers and if you work hard and smart you can become filthy rich and start manipulating the entire system. the checks and balances and freedoms in place are supposed to limit some of the economic imbalances when a ultrarich guy like Rockefeller with Standard Oil or Bezos with Amazon wants to make himself defacto king. If you want a comparison with ancient Rome, Trump is Crassus, and the outrage and resistance to his nomination and presidency hints at an established dynastic patrician class of American politicians who refuse a common businessman to infiltrate their halls of power. If you prefer to be a competitive individual who is only compelled by their own inner morality to help others you are western. If you prefer to live in a society where everyone thrives and there is broad equality, safety and harmony then you are of an eastern mind. The argument of having both or a mixture becomes a contentious historical and political issue, having your cake and eating it too. China is making a strong attempt at blending these two ideas into a new political theory, spearheaded by Xi Jingping's One Belt One Road Initiative and the addition of new member states to the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation).

dragonwriter 8y ago
> Western means not-communist, No, it doesn't. > since almost the entire world favors collectivism over individualism, almost no culture is 'western'. You can favor collectivism and still not be communist, so that doesn't follow even if the preceding claim were true. > The default position is socialism No, it's not, and you seem to be conflating socialism, collectivism, and communism, which are not the same thing. > in the case of the North America colonies (post revolution) the model of ancient Greece was re-imagined to create a new type of country No, it wasn't. While classical references (Roman as much as Greek) were trendy at the time, the basic model of government was very closely modeled on contemporary European models with vary slight tweaks.)

coldtea 8y ago

>I know this is a bit petty, but I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. What am I, then? Eastern? Central? Southern? It's not about the geography. It's more about development (e.g. money) and culture -- and in essence an arbitrary historical capture of the term by Western Europeans and WASP-like Americans to mean themselves. It's best to not thing such terms as about what their etymology or direct meaning is "western = west", etc, but instead consider how they are used in practice. >I'm not just arguing about the geography, but about the culture. I feel much more like a Canadian or a USian (or a Guatemalan) than I feel like an African, Middle Easter, East Asian, or South Asian. I speak the same languages as Europe, have been mostly exposed to Christianity and its cultural heritage, read the same books and watch many of the same shows as Europe, the US, and Canada, I use sit-down toilet, not squat toilets, and I eat mostly with forks and knives, not with chopsticks or with my fingers. Hundreds of millions of people in the areas you've mentioned have all the same characteristics as well. >True that culture and wealth go hand-in-hand, but I think we're all more alike than different. I didn't like doing chores as a kid and I don't know a lot of Mexicans who did. We're more alike to those who self-apply and exclude us from the "Western" label than we are different. Why try to be a member of a BS club that doesn't want you anyway? It's not as if being Western is any great achievement, that's just the way westerners use it when they laud themselves. With the rise of China, India, Brazil, and eventually Africa, the "West" is an increasingly insignificant part of the world. It just had a head start on plundering a new continent, and then the rest of the world -- which put it ahead of the rest of the planet for a while -- then again, Rome once was important too.

Bakary 8y ago
Insignificant or not they will live on through the consumerist culture they have refined and disseminated, just like the Romans live on in Western mores themselves.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Even that is easy to change. All it takes if a few economic busts and/or environmental issues, and here comes religion and frugality and so on again... Like those Roman mores had themselves been supplanted by orthodox/catholic Christian (and then puritan protestant Christian) mores the west.

jimmy1 8y ago

Reading this article, I don't really get everything under "What About Western Kids?" subheading. Everything listed there you would have found during the frontier days of America (and still do in some parts), so does that make America not western? I don't know it's very confusing. My parents are from Greece from large families and had this exact same experience growing up -- you had to do your part -- and Greece is known as the the birthplace of western civilization. Again, confusing to me. Western is just some huge bucket now that doesn't really have meaning. On another level, I can kind of relate to you not knowing what type of "western" you are. On a whole, (this might sound confusing) it's the Roman West that is overrepresented in "Western Civilization", but you also had the "East" western civilization as well, and very much has some things in common with what some people know was "East" (as in Asian), but still distinctly "Western" But I am with you, I don't know either sometimes.

jacobolus 8y ago
My ancestors a few generations back who lived in the American west (or a generation or two before that were rural peasants in western Europe), and my rural Mexican peasant friends today live pretty similarly. You could take many stories of white Americans’ own great-great-grandparents who migrated to the US from Europe, change all the names and places (but few of the other details), and the story would be entirely plausibly that of an undocumented Mexican or Central American migrant today. This is one of the reasons that anti-immigrant hysteria is so ironically and tragically hypocritical. I think it would be fair to call frontier America “non-Western” in the sense of the word used by this discussion. Maybe “non-industrialized” would be a better word. jordigh: if you grew up in a middle class Spanish-speaking family in a city in Mexico, you are most certainly “Western” in the sense used here.
namarie 8y ago
> Western is just some huge bucket now that doesn't really have meaning. I sincerely think it just means "northern european" to some people.

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

Most Mexicans I know remind me more of Italy (where I'm from) than USA. Might be my personal experience. Take it as just my 0.02.

namarie 8y ago
So? Isn't Italy western?

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Re use of "Western" in the article: This in no way whatsoever invalidates your complaint, but my suspicion is they were looking for some acceptable means to indicate "well-heeled, two career couples from wealthy developed countries who don't pay enough attention to their own children." They were looking for a polite way to characterize their target audience that doesn't sound racist, classist or -- worse -- judgy of the very people who pay their bills that they would like to gently tell "It's a good idea to make the time to involve your messy toddler. It will pay dividends later."

HillaryBriss 8y ago

i can't help but wonder if what you're feeling is magnified by the tone/voice/perspective of that particular collection of the population known as "NPR reporters." IMHO, NPR's view of the world, its culture, its word choice and tone are unique to NPR. i personally don't always relate very well to it.

poisonarena 8y ago

If you are reading, understanding, and participating in Hackernews you are western.

michalskop 8y ago

I'm from central-eastern Europe and I feel the same. I've spent a few years in Latin America and I'd call both the regions "new" or "satellite" or "not-core" West. Germany or the US may be the original core West, but LatAm and CEEurope are West, too. Whether to include also Russia, that would be my question.

unixhero 8y ago
Russia is certainly out since they don't share even the same alphabet.
- adam-a 8y ago
  Yes, and out with Greece too!
  - ithkuil 8y ago
    Yeah, I guess alphabet is out too. It's abecedary in the West!
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  Russia is not part of, nor "recently" founded from, nor relatively heavily influenced by, Western Europe. I don't know why there's a rush to identify as Western; usually it's used pejoratively.

dalbasal 8y ago

You are right, but "western" as its used colloqially doesn't really mean anything. The term "western" has multiple origins, but the two dominant ones are: (1) European (especially british) terminology, from 17th-19th century history and political science (2) Cold War concepts where the world is divided into 1st, 2nd and 3rd world countries depending on political alignment. West European narratives from the late British, French & Dutch Empires goes roughly like this. (1) Classical greece is the "craddle" of (western) civilization. (2) Greeks spread "the light" worldwide with alexander, What he called hellenization they call westernisation (3) Rome eventually took over. (4) The pure values of the west empire was degraded by the decedant east. The (wrestern) roman empire fell and the dark age began. (5) The light of the west was rekindled in the Renaissance (6) The torch passed to west european empires, who dutifully picked up the white man's burden, spreading civilization and light to the world again. (7) britain passed the torch to America, which is Athens' true succesor. This is the basic narrative running through most 17th-19th century anglo-american history and philosophy. It's comically self serving. So bogus it's hard to know where to start. First, Greece was never "Europe," in any sense that includes britain, germany, etc.. Europe remained tribal and "uncivilized" (non-urban) for 2,000 years after the Classical Greek civilization spread far and wide. Greece (and after that, Rome) was a place the western periphery of the Mediterranean and middle eastern cultural complex. This region including lots of long lived, large & complex civilizations: Egyptian, Bablylonian, Hittite & Persian empires. Advanced Phoenician city states. Greece's urban culutre fits squarely into this wider culuture. Nothing western about it. This would not have been controversial to plato, alexander or julio cesar. They looked to egypt, persia and the "east" as the predecessor and contemporary civilizations. They credit Egypt constantly. They didn't know or care about europe as we think of it, and certainly didn't consider themselves part of it. Second.... this kept happening in every age. The European dark ages actually ended when Europeans regained cultural contact with the "east," via the arab expansion into western Europe and the crusades. Basically, the concept of "western civilization" is a farce. There is no such thing. It's a false narrative about the origins of european civilization, giving it an indigenous origin. It was just to embarrassing to admit that Europe was tribal until 600-700 years ago while the east had been "civilized" for thousands of years. Later on (now) it gets equated with democracy, rule of law and such, the political ideals of western europe and the US. None of these originate in the west. None of these are even traditional in the west. American democracy is no more descendant from Athens' than a hundred other ancient city states' political systems. They just happened to know about athenian democracy, through an accident of history. These days, "western values" has come to mean feminism, liberalism, pluralism, gay rights... Anyone over 30 can tell you that these are not traditional western values. These are modern, cosmoplitan values and they thrive in the places which are not traditional. TLDR, Western values roughly mean descendant from greece, according to silly 18th century british intellectuals. Mexico is (culturally) more descendant from Greece than the US or Brittain. Basically, it's BS. Western doesn't mean anything.

gfyrt 8y ago

Western culture is rotten...it's overhyped for what is actually worth....all that they have is money and tech ....

bmn__ 8y ago

> I've stared to resent a little that even though I'm Mexican, I'm not considered Western. […] about the culture Don't worry, you are part of Western high culture. Anyone who would not acknowledge this as true is quite ignorant of history. Many of my thread neighbours are astonishingly unable to provide an accurate definition of our culture or have the wrong idea in their head. The toilet and eating utensil preference is not important, but the shared values are important: guarantees of civil and human rights, living in freedom, rule of law, equality, individualism, tolerance, practising liberal democracy, society implementing market economy with free wage labour and historically shaped by Christianity and Enlightenment.

daveslash 8y ago

Keep in mind that this article was written in response to a book that an anthropologist recently wrote. At the risk of sounding distrustful of academics, I do sometimes wonder if some anthropologists view the world through an "us vs. them" lens - trying to understand the differences in cultures. FWIW, as a person of 100% European decent who grew up in New England, I consider all of Latin America to be Western for the reasons you pointed out (with the exception of the un-contacted Amazonian tribes).

wahern 8y ago

I don't think it's petty, but I think maybe people should be a little more charitable. If you point-blank asked the writer whether she considered Mexicans Western, I have little doubt (though we can't be sure) she would respond in the affirmative. The issue is context. What seemed to happen here was the idea that the Mayan parenting method has seeped into the broader Mexican culture to varying degrees. I don't know the extent to which that is true (maybe strong geographic component), but that's the idea that the author is reporting on. That's the context that was setup. From there sloppy writing and sloppy language made it easy to equivocate cultures and, finally, make a seemingly absurd distinction between Mexican culture, as a whole, and Western culture. Some of the blame should be placed at the feet of her scholarly sources, if the author's quotations and paraphrasing are accurate Also, FWIW from 1970s to 1990s there was the Chicano cultural movement in the U.S. (and perhaps Mexico?) that sought to distinguish and emphasis indigenous Mexican cultures from Western culture. I don't think there's denying that as compared to the U.S. the national identity of many Mexicans is complicated by the fact that indigenous identities and cultures are far stronger, in numbers and emphasis. (And this is different than the hyphenated American identities, or the identities of 1st and 2nd generation immigrants. And it's different from Native Americans in the U.S. because they're disenfranchised and have no political power.) That reality can be difficult for Americans of any ethnicity to fully appreciate, but especially for white Americans. It's not that white Americans don't understand complex identities. There are plenty of people who strongly self-identify as Irish-American, Italian-American, Mexican-American, etc. It's just that many of these identities no longer conflict with the broader national identity (particularly the former) and so they have little experience navigating the tensions that other people struggle with, particularly with nuances around vocabulary and context. It's definitely worth pointing out. But people don't respond well to opprobrium. Resentment is harsh. Do you really mean resentment or just frustration? To my mind resentment implies you feel no shared identity with Americans, which conflicts with your statement about having a shared Western identity. I'm a white American who has traveled enough (including in Mexico) to not only feel a shared identity with Mexicans, but one much stronger and closer than simply Western. I couldn't even begin to articulate the bounds of that identity (the precise bounds are no doubt peculiar to each individual), but I feel it when I travel (to Asia, to Europe) and I have a conviction that it exists, objectively and independently, whether people realize it or not.

Torwald 8y ago

I am 40 and from Europe, when I was in school, "latin" America, that's how it's called, was clearly considered West. What you are experiencing is something that seems to arise from the US only in more recent times, maybe the last 15 years or so.

toasterlovin 8y ago

There are some significant cultural/heritage differences between Mexico and the United States. The current population of Mexico is a result of large scale admixture between indigenous people and European colonists, whereas essentially no such admixture occurred in the US. Also, the US is culturally descended from Northern Europeans, whereas the European aspect of Mexican culture is descended from Southern Europe. The Northern/Southern cultural divide in Europe is pretty significant and I would guess that, in practice, the term “The West” primarily refers to Northern Europe rather than Southern (or Eastern) Europe.