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Comment by EUROCARE | Hacker News Reader

I really dislike calling these kinds of attitudes "western". Asia has plenty of hyper-individualistic behavior, even (or especially?) where nominally socialism or communism rules.

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It is a philosophical framework that grows directly out of Western culture per philosophical tradition during the Enlightenment era. Western culture had much more of an effect on this tradition than Eastern cultures did.

It's not about where the philosophy exists in individuals, but about what socio-systemic forces brought those modes of thinking into being. Ironically this mirrors the point above about how the framing of this issue itself is rooted in individualist perspective.

it’s a misreading, they’re projecting something onto societies they evidently haven’t read up on

Somewhat orthogonal to your point, but it is interesting to me how easily some will dismiss perspectives or ideas by referring to them pejoratively as "western".

I think you’re projecting. I’m not sure how I could have caveated my statement more than I did — I am not dismissing the perspective I describe as “western” at all, merely noting the existence of alternatives that may offer other perspectives on the question at hand.

It’s not perjorative in GP’s case, simply an observation IMO. It’s valuable to assess ideas from varying cultural standpoints

I’m all ears if you have a better descriptor for philosophies emerging from enlightenment-era thought in Western Europe. (Sure, I could say all that but it’s a mouthful!)

The point is, these behaviors clearly did not emerge only there as we have plenty of examples in completely unrelated cultures. There is no point in calling something "western" only because it's happening there as well - you have the same thing everywhere else, so why not call it "eastern" or "southern" instead - or why use meaningless names at all?

In this case, the name is really only indicative of where the current canon of philosophical thought identifies the first recordings of these notions as explicit philosophical notions, and has nothing to do with “these behaviors” as were not even talking about behaviors.

The name isn’t meaningless — and I’m not using it from a belief that “western” people are more “individualistic” or something than others, as you and others seem to be implying. Obviously there are plenty of individualistic behaviors in people across cultures.

But the notion of the individual with agency creating a state to protect individual agency is recorded explicitly by Kant and enlightenment rationalism, collectively typically referred to as “western” by philosophers. The OP here was discussing freedoms and values, and I was pointing out that they seem to derive from this notion of the individual, which is only one among many.

Do you also open discussions of Newton’s Law of Gravity with a critique that it’s misnamed because gravity is present everywhere?

Apologies to anyone triggered by this jargon, it wasn’t my intent.

it’s funny bc i’m specifically citing research from indigenous populations mostly in the americas and asia

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