Yeah but that's the problem, what might be a tolerable aspect of your culture might be seen as intolerable by others. So what one culture may find barbaric, like the death penalty for instance another may not. However that again is to speak of the Governance of a nation. I'm confident that if open to a public vote on things many countries governments would find themselves at odds with the will of the people. For example I think the public in the U.K. would be as a whole be happy for sexually motivated child murderers to be executed. So sometimes we find ourselves in situations where the people may well be civilised and the government not (example being the mass protests against the Iraq war) but other times when the Governments protect us from our own reactionary natures(when we get emotive and want revenge).JimC wrote:I'm sure there are quite a few aspects of Australian culture which put us well behind the 8 ball in comparison to a collection of comparable countries.Gallstones wrote:Civilization in Australia: AKA is Australia civilized?
* treatment of indigenous peoples
* excess drinking culture (mea fucking culpa)
* denigration of intellectual effort as opposed to the glorification of sport
And I'm sure we could find quite a few others.
As I have said earlier in this thread, comparative degree of civilisation is a highly fraught subject, not least because it exists in many possible dimensions.
I have tried to be balanced here, and remind people that the intention of the OP, if read carefully, was not an anti-American smear, but to raise certain points, some of which I agree with, some of which I don't...
BG was at pains to say he was not talking about individual Americans, but aspects of society and culture which, arguably, could be seen as lacking in some dimensions of civilised behaviour; but only in comparison to other developed countries, not as some sort of universals, absolutist sneer...
Let's be honest, none of our cultures are quite there yet, at least not enough to adequately judge almost identical cultures uncivilised based on things like foreign policy. Literacy rates, clean water, personal safety, a legal system, reasonable governance may actually be better signifiers.
I think it also worth noting that at the height of its "Civilisation" The Empire of the United Kingdom was a brutal fucking monster without peer.