Of course the list will contain broad generalities because you asked for a list and a more detailed comparison could fill volumes. Also, culture, like the beings who construt and adhere to them evolve, contract, expand, and manifest in many variing ways. Also, varing cultures can do the same things under different motivations and for different outcomes. It’s easier to deal the the outcomes or products of cultures becase that can be documented and measured more so than the culture itself. I’ll stop stalling and give you my short list.
African (AF) vs. European Cultures (EU)
- AF: Communalistic vs. EU: Individualistic
- AF: Synthical/Synthetic (Unifying) vs. EU: Analytical
- AF: Subjective vs. EU: Literalistic
- AF: Intuitive vs. EU: Rational
- AF: Matrilineal vs. EU: Patriarchal
- AF: Spiritual vs. EU: Dogmatic/Religious
- AF: Xenophilic vs. EU: Xenophobic
- AF: High Context vs. EU: Low Context
- AF: Multigenerational Family Units vs. EU: Nuclear Family Units (Although the Nuclear family is a relatively new addition to EU culture, all cultures started off having multigenerational family units.)
- AF: Accommodating vs. EU: Conquering
- AF: Polyandrous/Polygamous vs. EU: Monogamous (note: multiple sexual partners is common, but additional sexual partners are not integrated into larger family unit.)
- AF: Eldership is Sacred vs. Youth is Worshiped
- AF: Now-centric/Present vs. Futurist
- AF: Nature as Self vs. Nature as the Enemy (to be conquered, overcome, or subdued)
Arab culture is essentially a Western culture, in fact many Whites and Asians were classified as White when the Racial distinctions and hierarchies were being determined by the Europeans. Dr. Bobby E. Wright stated that “to see the Arabs as anything other than White invaders is a pathological denial of history." The Arab and Persian cultures are basically Western cultures that have had mixing and exposed to Asian and African cultures many centuries before their European kinfolk.
Asian culture is a whole differnt thing all together, I don’t know much about it’s Asili because I’ve only studied their culture and practices since their encounters and many conflicts with the West. Some Asian cultures like Japan, South Korea, India, and China seem to have mastered and are beating the West at their own games by fusing their own cultures with the Western cultural norms to forge ahead of the West economically; but I think history will show that they are on a dead-end path unless they turn away from the Western cultural mores they’ve adopted over the years. Japan’s nuclear disaster and China’s emerging ecological collapse are just the tips of the icebergs.
That’s also why I oppose Captilism, Western Industrialization, and adopting the overall model of "Western Development” for African nations and Black communities in the US, that way of being has no real future; even a small segment of the European community is coming to understand this. It hurts me to see Africans posting list of African Billionaires with pride, that’s not us, our value system, or culture; Africa don’t need Billionaire, and the emergence of African Capitalist Billionaires is evidence of Africa’s greater impoverishment and exploitation, not evidence of it’s rise. African needs to developed according to it’s own cultural standards and values, it’s own Cultural Asili; or we will be lost even if we achieve “freedom.” Just look how decolonization played out in the 60s and 70s if you need more evidence of how securing freedom from the West while still holding to the culture and values of the West plays out.
To fully understand these distinctions between EU and AF culture you’d have to study the “Cultural Asili;” or the Cultural Seed, how the culture evolved independent of foreign interference. Since the African explorations of the world and the Arab and European conquest of African, there has been mixing of cultures, and adaptations of cultural norms. Booth the invaded and the invaders influenced each other.
I don’t think the AF culture is all good or the EU culture is all bad, there is value in both, the real problem is the imbalance brought by EU conquest and imposition of its culture across the globe, which brings us to an Omnicidal global imbalance. If not for the Hyper Aggression that the West displayed towards all cultures it encountered, I imagine that they could have been valued members of the human community, instead of it’s conquers and oppressors because there are some redeeming elements to Western culture, and all cultures, just as all cultures have flaws.
I wouldn’t even support African culture dominating the entire world, any more than I accept Western culture doing so. We need “cultural diversity,” not the bullshit CD that they teach in schools or push in corporate America, but the kinda diversity that was in the world prior to European global conquest and colonization.
Having one culture and it’s economic system and values dominate this planet is as deadly to the world’s ecology and humanity as having one species of animal overruning any ecosystem.
Check out; ‘Yurugu’ by Marimba Ani or ‘The Iceman Inheritance’ for more info on this topic.
Oh, and ‘The West and the Rest of Us’ by Chinwezu. It’s a little off topic but still give insight into AF and EU culture and how they collide.
I’m stopping here, because I have much more to say on the issue, and I don’t want to be tempted to add more to the list, LoL! I hope I’ve at least provided you with a good start into the study of EU vs. AF culture. I think it is an important issue and one I’m still studying and leaning more about.
