The Western stance

Interesting Link | Clarissa's Blog

Maybe unrelated, but here is THE quintessential Western perspective, especially from someone who may have had a bit of education.

“Objectivity, outside of brute matter, has no place in the dictionary of my life. It’s a nonsense word; a false substitute for subjectivity. It takes massive courage to accept that our universe is most likely without inherent meaning. Honour is a subjective word; it can mean virtually anything in the mouth of someone else. I don’t relate to, or buy the whole racial/cultural-pride/sentimentality thing, which, I believe, can translate or morph into simple racism with the drop of a hat. I’m a citizen of the world – planet earth – and not fully blinded by the numerous assumptions and prejudices of the culture I was born into, though I’m the first to stress that western culture has as many good things to offer as any other. The individual is all that really exists; the rest is bullshit. If that’s childish idealism, or coldheartedness, so be it. But I would disagree. Nor would I agree that this position is exclusively western.”

Key points: 

The denial that their postmodernist perspective is “Western” and insistence that it could be anything at all, presumably.
The fear that sentimentality (acknowledging one’s roots) leads to racism. Perhaps it leads to Auschwitz? Naughty Westerner! Disavow.
The insistence that only individuality has any meaning.
IMPLICITLY: the derision of any viewpoint apart from this, Western one: “the rest is bullshit”
Also the delusion that one is capable of being tough-minded in one’s stance when one is only disappearing up one’s own butt-hole: “If that’s childish idealism, or coldheartedness, so be it.”