12th November 2008, 9:49 AM
(This post was last modified: 12th November 2008, 10:33 AM by A Black Falcon.)
It's all a matter of debate, really... where do you draw the line, what's included in which grouping, etc... none of those are absolutes. The world is round, you can draw lines wherever you want and call them "east" and "west". Different people have different definitions of the areas and where they are -- does the "East" just include East and Southeast Asia and the eastern Pacific (except for Australia and New Zealand (and Hawaii, if you go that far west), or does it include the Middle East and/or Asian Russia too?
As for the Americas, we are, of course, both east and west of Europe, and both east and west of Asia... and we're a lot closer to Europe than Asia, and our culture and most of our people come from there. It'd be pretty odd to put the Americas in the East... I don't see why that would make any sense, my any measure cultural or geographic. The generally accepted east/west line on that side goes through the Pacific, as I said, leaving Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas on the "west" side. The line on the other side is better defined, with the Urals, Caucasus, Sinai (depending on where you put Africa), and various bodies of water forming the rest of the boundary.
Saying "Europe is east of me so it's the east" is just weird... things like the Western World and Eastern World have absolutely nothing to do with the exact location of any one person. Sorry, but in my opinion, that comic's just stupid really... there are legitimate reasons for some people to question the alignment of the world into an 'east' and 'west', as as I said the line gets very fuzzy in places particularly when you consider how in the modern world many ideas have traveled around the world from one culture to the next (though it must be noted, even the ancient Greeks saw a difference between their civilization (which they saw as more 'free') and more 'despotic' Asiatic (Middle Eastern) civilization, though European and Middle Eastern cultures have always closely interacted and have always been closely connected, unlike European and East or Southeast Asian ones), often changing as they go, but "that part of the world is east or west of my exact location so it's "East"? Stupid.
Look at this section of this article, it shows a whole bunch of different ways of separating the world into "worlds". Which one do you prefer, or do you have something else you like? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_wor...efinitions
As for the Americas, we are, of course, both east and west of Europe, and both east and west of Asia... and we're a lot closer to Europe than Asia, and our culture and most of our people come from there. It'd be pretty odd to put the Americas in the East... I don't see why that would make any sense, my any measure cultural or geographic. The generally accepted east/west line on that side goes through the Pacific, as I said, leaving Australia, New Zealand, and the Americas on the "west" side. The line on the other side is better defined, with the Urals, Caucasus, Sinai (depending on where you put Africa), and various bodies of water forming the rest of the boundary.
Saying "Europe is east of me so it's the east" is just weird... things like the Western World and Eastern World have absolutely nothing to do with the exact location of any one person. Sorry, but in my opinion, that comic's just stupid really... there are legitimate reasons for some people to question the alignment of the world into an 'east' and 'west', as as I said the line gets very fuzzy in places particularly when you consider how in the modern world many ideas have traveled around the world from one culture to the next (though it must be noted, even the ancient Greeks saw a difference between their civilization (which they saw as more 'free') and more 'despotic' Asiatic (Middle Eastern) civilization, though European and Middle Eastern cultures have always closely interacted and have always been closely connected, unlike European and East or Southeast Asian ones), often changing as they go, but "that part of the world is east or west of my exact location so it's "East"? Stupid.
Look at this section of this article, it shows a whole bunch of different ways of separating the world into "worlds". Which one do you prefer, or do you have something else you like? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_wor...efinitions
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