The idea of being ashamed of being born somewhere is just weird, as is trying to draw any sort of meaningful distinction between west and east like that. It’s like being mad at someone else because of astrology or something.
The West can be a valid concept, though. It’s not a boolean like this person describes - it’s not that you are Western or you aren’t - but that it can be used to meaningfully describe a series of related cultural influences in a country’s history. Greek culture, the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church and those it gave birth to (🤢), the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the advance of capitalism in the Industrial Revolution. Arguably, the European colonial empires and then subsequently American international hegemony have been an exporter of Western culture as well, though, especially in the former case, not always to willing recipients.
The idea of being ashamed of being born somewhere is just weird, as is trying to draw any sort of meaningful distinction between west and east like that. It’s like being mad at someone else because of astrology or something.
A bigotry they “coincidentally” share with right wing nationalists.
The West can be a valid concept, though. It’s not a boolean like this person describes - it’s not that you are Western or you aren’t - but that it can be used to meaningfully describe a series of related cultural influences in a country’s history. Greek culture, the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church and those it gave birth to (🤢), the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the advance of capitalism in the Industrial Revolution. Arguably, the European colonial empires and then subsequently American international hegemony have been an exporter of Western culture as well, though, especially in the former case, not always to willing recipients.