CatratchoPalestino

yeah except it really doesn't fit well with the western world and spain or portugal. conflating the two is only going to reduce people's understanding

well obviously its not used as it is used today but you can't say the term didn't have its origins that far back. things gradually change meaning over time

The concept we're referring to isn't simply the direction of west, nor even the opposite of The Orient, as multiple people have pointed out. Have you given them the benefit of the doubt and looked it up on the dictionary? The earliest claimed English use of the term in the way we are discussing, the thing you wrote a huge effort-post about, calling out a bunch of people, is in the 1890s. The racialized hierarchies you're talking about mostly predate it.

I've read the latin works myself I know what they say. the old latin saying Ex oriente lux, ex occidente lex or "from the east comes light, from the west comes law" would not make sense if you were correct

Mine own judgment is, that even if all the Greeks and all the barbarians of the West were gathered together in one place, they would not be able to abide my onset, not being really of one mind. But I would fain know what thou thinkest hereon

herodotus quoting xerxes in histories page 464 translated by george rawlinson

what "we" mean by west is evidently different since some of us think it describes a sort of culture while others think it describes the countries that are majority white as defined by 19th century nordicists

england of the mid-1600s was in the middle of a civil war and spain had the spanish netherlands until 1714 which is where capitalism as you're defining it first developed so I would say you're being very iffy with your timeline and being very generalizing. not to say you're wrong. it would probably be better to break it up into different spheres so you talk about economic theory starting with physiocrats and moving to england, stock exchanges beginning in the netherlands and moving to england, etc

the term western goes as far back as the ancient greeks who used it to differentiate themselves from the persians I think you're just confusing your terminology. I also don't know what exactly you mean by hegemony causing the use of the term. you mean like British or american academics talking to Spanish ones which helped them propagate its usage within Latin America?

I wouldn't hold your breathe for all that to happen. also the Japanese don't identify themselves as the west that's purely other people who do so

can you really say spain was in decline through the 1600s when the end of the spanish golden age was by some accounts 1681 and spain maintained high regard and relevance until napoleon invaded it? its very whiggish or teleological

I’m in honduras visiting my family for christmas and you have some seriously strange views on biracial marriages in china or the imminence of “the collapse of the west” whatever the hell that would look like. are you expecting all the businesses to collapse, all airports and seaports to shut down, all government functions to stop, and mass chaos on the streets?

I don’t doubt for a significant portion of people western civilization is code for WASPs but for a significant portion of people, including the majority of people in my country it has a different meaning and i’ve shown multiple scholars from the past and today who view it having a different meaning as well. I also have to note that wallerstein is not a marxist, his analysis puts my country as periphery while mexico a fellow latin american country is semi-periphery, portugal which is a western european country is semi-periphery putting it as the same level as mexico, while spain is core despite not being part of this “nordic race”.

my country is different how? we have higher percent natives than you who get mistreated and stolen from and are made to integrate into western culture. guatemala too was literally doing a genocide up until the late 90s

this is all true as a narrative or framework but still is a fairly american-centric understanding of the western vs indigenous dichotomy. you only have to look at the caste system in latin america, for however much it actually existed since english scholars have overemphasized its racial nature and existence, to see that traditional latin american racial frameworks put the spanish at the hierarchical top, followed by peninsulares or people from iberia, followed by isleños or people from the islands around spain, then followed by non-iberian europeans. our traditional racial framework did not put anglo-saxons on top. or let’s look at the case of arabs in latin america who make up the upper elite and despite not being “western” easily integrate into westernness and further propagate this dichotomy