tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post5627052037457492869..comments2024-03-29T12:03:37.344+00:00Comments on Bruce Charlton's Notions: The primacy of truthfulness in Western civilizationBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-54425207371490079402012-07-01T15:53:35.246+01:002012-07-01T15:53:35.246+01:00Sorry - I don't see the contradiction!Sorry - I don't see the contradiction!Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-42043595532146695732012-07-01T15:34:26.941+01:002012-07-01T15:34:26.941+01:00I find this in contradiction to your rhetoric vs. ...I find this in contradiction to your rhetoric vs. logic post.Author Gabriel Landhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09856660437181418313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-4047836987982713202010-09-07T10:44:25.799+01:002010-09-07T10:44:25.799+01:00@Sam Schulman. Thanks for your interesting comment...@Sam Schulman. Thanks for your interesting comment. <br /><br />But I think you are confusing truthfulness with open-ness. Americans are traditionally more open than the English - but less truthful, more corrupt (both on average and at the extreme), more prone to self-advertise and exaggerate in their own favour (hype and spin). <br /><br />(I say 'traditionally', leaving aside the past few decades.)<br /><br />However, leaving that aside, when comparing the traditional US and England we are talking about very minor differences in world historical terms. For most intents and purposes the two nations can be treated as one.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-43568907032422778162010-09-07T02:32:41.717+01:002010-09-07T02:32:41.717+01:00Mr. Charlton, this is one of the few instances in ...Mr. Charlton, this is one of the few instances in BCM, it seems to me, in which you have not pressed yourself as hard as you might have done. Mutually trusting, perhaps, but truthful, now or historically, is not the word that one connects with your great nation.<br />But let's grant that truthfulness is a value that is associated with the West, or with English-speaking nations or the English homeland - the interesting question is where does this truthfulness spring from? Is it Protestantism? But Protestantism encourages hypocrisy along with truthfulness. Is it from Aristotle? But Aristotle's teacher was Plato. <br />Dearieme's comment about the Britons who ruled India made me think of an embarrassing misjudgment of my youth about truthfulness and Englishmen. When I lived in England, during the Heath/Wilson years, I thought at first that the greatest difference between American me and my English contemporaries in Oxford was that I was direct, truthful, and forthright. They, on the other hand, were much more careful, calculating, cunning, secretive. I ascribed it first to my own virtue, then to my naivete, but I realized after a few months that what allowed me to be 'truthful' was my economic and political security. In 1972-75, my world had a different order of prosperity and possibility, and forgivingness. Too slowly, I realized that the Englishmen I lived with had to be much more concerned with their future, much more careful not to blot their copybook, lived in a world that was much more anguished and narrow than my own (which I fashionably despised at the time). For them, being truthful carried with it only risks, never benefits. My own "truthfulness" was cost-free to me - it must have seemed an absurd luxury to them, if not actually a sign that I was stupid or simple (perhaps I was, and am). The parts of the world where slyness and parsimony with the truth is proverbial - the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the "Subcontinent" - are places where individual security and communal identity has been contingent for millennia. Are islanders or continental powers inherently more truthful?Sam Schulmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-47167135327819491382010-09-05T20:08:30.179+01:002010-09-05T20:08:30.179+01:00@dearieme - Indeed it does.@dearieme - Indeed it does.Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-25586008498966972312010-09-05T19:59:08.913+01:002010-09-05T19:59:08.913+01:00Does this relat, I wonder, to a reply attributed t...Does this relat, I wonder, to a reply attributed to an Indian historian when he was asked how such a tiny number of Britons came to subdue India. "The British didn't betray each other".deariemenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4683970826895755480.post-33546976225594139632010-09-04T23:31:38.375+01:002010-09-04T23:31:38.375+01:00Excellent pieceExcellent pieceRollorynoreply@blogger.com