Meine Antwort an Widdowson
Geschrieben von Andreas am 30. September 2003 18:41:44:
Als Antwort auf: 'Preisfrage' und etwas 'Reizgas' für unsere Umweltschützer : ) geschrieben von Andreas am 30. September 2003 17:46:14:
Hi Marc
As to your question referring to the 180 mio yen payment to China: I find it
difficult to make sense of this development from a dark age perspective.
First of all, in a way it is simply a "trancaction" of money with Japan loosing
and China gaining something. Now, if I understood the term "international
discohesion" correctly you mean by it something like the closeness of
attitudes and values among the different nations. Hence, insofar as Japan is giving in to China's anger about the war crimes committed by the Japanese in WW II, we are witnessing growing international cohesion.However, if we look at the term from another perspective, similar to the one
we apply to "internal cohesion", thus, trying to identify a general
"perversion" or "degradation" of traditional
attitudes - in our case traditional international values about diplomacy,
war and peace, we might come to the conclusion that this is a sign of
international discohesion. In a way it seems strange, that a country gives
in to demands and anger such a long time after having been defeated. The same goes for Germany which has been paying huge sums to Israel over decades despite
having recovered economically and reestablished itself in the international,
especially European arena of power. Don't understand me wrongly, I'm not
holding extreme political views, and maybe my thoughts are too far fetched, but
I'm pondering whether the the fact that states are giving in to public and
moral pressure rather than clear-cut and hard threats or sanctions could stand
in a way as an equivalent on the international and diplomatic level for the
sort of decadence you're hinting at when talking about "internal discohesion"
(i.e.: young men not joining the army, decay of art etc., universities
teaching subjects of dubious values).I come to say all this because I've the impression that your definition or
description of internal discohesion has two dimensions:
a) multiplicity of moral systems guidelining our behaviour (Islam,
Christendom, many small sects, atheism etc.)
b) general "degradation" of traditional attitidus: the individual is more
important, declining quality of schooling etc.Personally, I would say that component a) is easier to operationalise and
thus less open to criticism whereas component b) can be circumscribed as what
we in German call "Kulturpessimismus", which is as old as the human race.At the end of the day, I do not have a really satisfying answer at hand, but
rather find myself locked up in discussing your characterisation of
"discohesion".Best Regards