Book review:
Daniel Mendelsohn's "Waiting for the Barbarians" a scholarly take on cultural change
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"Despite its apocalyptic-sounding title, his new collection 'Waiting for the Barbarians' takes a more benign view of cultural change. The title comes from a poem by the fin-de-siècle Greek poet Cavafy; from it, Mendelsohn draws this moral in his lively introduction:
...there rarely are any real 'barbarians.' What others might see as declines and falls look, when seen from the bird's eye vantage point of history, more like shifts, adaptations, reorganizations. ..."
Of course it prejudices the case, and allows any writer to wriggle out of the whole un-PC question of outsiders moving into more advanced--yes, by modern standards--societies, and what that means as far as "cultural change," by choosing the word "barbarians," with its negative connotations. And obviously the term is relative. Linguists tell us that throughout history most cultures in isolation have thought of outsiders as barbarians or even less than human, but that cannot really be used as an excuse for us to dive headlong and immerse ourselves in the cowardly waters of extreme cultural relativity.
The term "cultural change" also packs a powerful bias, since ultra-enlightened Western ruling elites have been propagandizing to their subject peoples for decades that such change is almost always good, rich, vibrant, to be celebrated, transformative and, well, you know the drill. As contrasted to those poor devils who might summon the courage to put forth a peep of doubt as to its blessings, those who, by definition, represent ignorance, fear, anger, xenophobia , hate, racism and, well, you know the drill.
Yes, "what others see as a decline" will be judged differently by different groups. If you are, say, the head of a swarming army of barbarians in the middle of sacking, burning, raping and pillaging an advanced civilization it must seem like the most glorious thank-God-its-Friday-times-10,000 celebration you have ever attended, and a tremendous advance for your people. And so well deserved! Of course most civilizations probably come to an end much less dramatically, say, for example, demographically.
Which leads to this question. If an advanced civilization is supplanted by a hodgepodge of other less developed cultures is that merely cultural change? Or is that the death of a civilization?
Of course it goes without saying that any consideration of inherent genetic differences among populations is a please-cut-off-my-laptop-fingers-before-I-strike-again taboo. Some who were once considered barbarians were Germanic tribesmen, who were capable of eventually building advanced civilizations themselves. On the other hand, there are some cultures today that are still in the Stone Age. We can't say that our civilization is superior or supreme to any others in some cosmic sense, but we do know that much of the world's peoples have been emphatically voting with their feet.
"Through sheer accumulation of example, Mendelsohn makes the point throughout this collection that there is scarcely a stick of our mental furniture that hasn't been fashioned from that lush Greek wood. Think about it: character, drama, history, tragedy, rhetoric — the Ancient Greeks not only invented them but codified them better than anyone has since."
Hmm, so I guess Mendelsohn and Broening have slipped on a banana peel and tumbled down a bit from their culturally relativistic "bird's eye vantage point." Welcome, boys, to where the rest of us must dwell. And relatively contentedly, I might add, if it weren't for all the clueless utopian social engineers merrily trying to erase us.
http://www.denverpost.com/books/ci_21804440/scholarly-take-cultural-change
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