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Latin America is an offshoot of Western civilization obviously through colonialism but sometimes for whatever reason, geopolitical, cultural or otherwise, there are some people who see it as more separate from the West, when English-speaking people talk about the "West".
Also, Eastern Europe is part of Western Civilization too (Western Christendom, classical Greek and Roman heritage etc.), but again often English-speaking people try and set it apart from the "West" as defined for geopolitical reasons.
Do you think both regions belong equally to the "western world"?
Latin America. They use the Roman Alphabet and have the cultural heritage of a religion from the Western Roman Empire, Catholicism. Eastern Europe has traditionally been more Orthodox and thus separated from the West because of the schism, uses Cyrillic, and has been politically dominated by Russia which never considered itself part of the West and was for most of its history quite isolated from it. So I think Eastern Europe is on the whole more culturally European, but Latin America is more specifically Western, on the whole.
That's a tough one. Eastern Europe has a parallel but divergent history from the classically defined West, but is certainly not the orient by classical definition. In a global and modern perspective, Eastern Europe is percievably Western in many ways, though. Especially those Central European nations that some people describe as 'Eastern Europe'.
Latin America is definitely institutionally Western, but it has significant indigenous and African cultural influeneces in many parts, while being model Western in others.
Latin America. They use the Roman Alphabet and have the cultural heritage of a religion from the Western Roman Empire, Catholicism. Eastern Europe has traditionally been more Orthodox and thus separated from the West because of the schism, uses Cyrillic, and has been politically dominated by Russia which never considered itself part of the West and was for most of its history quite isolated from it. So I think Eastern Europe is on the whole more culturally European, but Latin America is more specifically Western, on the whole.
Maybe before around 1800.
But since then I view it more in terms of industrialization, and on that score the answer is clearly eastern Europe, including Russia, whose inhabitants, after some struggles, embraced it and even have advanced it further in some specializations, even to this day.
In contrast, Europeans of the pre-industrial, but circumnavigating and fire-arms era, invaded what we call today Latin America and its basically stone-age inhabitants and brought over stone-age slaves. Now, while some of them have embraced industrialization in the past 20 years or so during this the globalization of industrialization era, believe me, there are still plenty of them who perceive and measure such basics as time and risk in a very different way than what is typically considered western or rational by western measures.
I have lived in both eastern Europe and Latin America, and on the basis of the perception of time and risk I can relate on more understandable terms with an eastern European.
On the other hand, being from the western hemisphere, in the Americas as a whole I find that we share more in common a perception of space, and today's Latin Americans on the whole are more open to change in the sense of embracing modern conveniences and not being hung up on the past which sometimes imposes exasperating impediments in some European countries and in relations among them.
On that note, it may be worth mentioning that someone in another thread suggested that Russia's future is in Asia and that it should move its capital eastward to around the center of the country.
But since then I view it more in terms of industrialization, and on that score the answer is clearly eastern Europe, including Russia, whose inhabitants, after some struggles, embraced it and even have advanced it further in some specializations, even to this day.
In contrast, Europeans of the pre-industrial, but circumnavigating and fire-arms era, invaded what we call today Latin America and its basically stone-age inhabitants and brought over stone-age slaves. Now, while some of them have embraced industrialization in the past 20 years or so during this the globalization of industrialization era, believe me, there are still plenty of them who perceive and measure such basics as time and risk in a very different way than what is typically considered western or rational by western measures.
I have lived in both eastern Europe and Latin America, and on the basis of the perception of time and risk I can relate on more understandable terms with an eastern European.
On the other hand, being from the western hemisphere, in the Americas as a whole I find that we share more in common a perception of space, and today's Latin Americans on the whole are more open to change in the sense of embracing modern conveniences and not being hung up on the past which sometimes imposes exasperating impediments in some European countries and in relations among them.
On that note, it may be worth mentioning that someone in another thread suggested that Russia's future is in Asia and that it should move its capital eastward to around the center of the country.
What do you mean by stone age inhabitants and stone age slaves?
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