Reply #14 (Admin Jafo)..... BoXXi spots a rare spelling mistake. YAY!!

CAUSALITY.

  

Race and gender have no influence on whether somebody will become successfull, unless the society with which they have to work is racist or sexist.

But whether you are disabled or not certainly has an impact.

And religion is culture and why would culture not have an impact? It is rididulous to claim that it does not.

Culture is what we do. And what we do certainly affects how we do in life.

A culture that teaches reading and hard work will certainly generate more success than a culture that, for example, teaches that reading is not so important and that hard work for profit is a sin.

Some cultures are simply BETTER than other cultures.

High literacy rates are superior to low literacy rates.

Equality between races and sexes is superior to apartheid systems.

Cultures that recognise merit rather than high birth are superior to cultures that don't.

Jewish culture just happens to be among the best cultures. That has nothing to do with the Jewish ethnicity or "race". It has everything to do with a culture that is based on written law and a tradition of reading and writing and assimilating the best of other cultures. (Particularly American Jewish culture assimilated A LOT of the best of German and Anglo-Americabn culture!)

American and British culture are also among the best and since I believe that mixing cultures will often result in the best of both cultures to survive Jewish Americans or American Jews will very likely enjoy the benefits of having two great cultures to learn from.




Very good. You can read the facts and you make the decision whether you should learn from it or dismiss it.

If there is something in Jewish culture that causes people to become successful, you should learn from it.

It's a cultural thing. Some people will dismiss this, some people will learn from it.

The point is that perhaps many a Jew who reads something like this will try to learn from it.

(What? The English are best at X? Can I learn how to do that? If enough members of your society act like that your society will assimilate a usable component of English culture.)

AND then there's this arrogance issue...your mitzvahs are piling up.


Larry,

We're all glad your personal mythology works for you and it is something you are (very) proud of. But it's been really obvious from the outset that you posted this self-serving thread simply to try and bolster your own self-esteem, which would indicate that you have a problem in that regard.

Therefore, I suggest that, instead of trying to make yourself feel better about yourself by extolling the virtues of people who you only coincidentally share a common mythology with, you would serve your own ego better in the long term by actually accomplishing something of substance on your own.

Once you did that, you wouldn't be spending so much time trying to be associated with actual successful billionaires. You could actually become one of them.

After all, you've made it crystal clear that you've already got everything you need, right?

Say Hello to jews.
A little jew from far away of USA. I'm living in Iran. Toda Rabba

As measured and determined by WHOSE metric? Yours? I wonder who wins in your objective and totally unbiased analysis of other cultures. Ahem.



Tell that to the Palestinians...

Or, less cynically, the Chinese, Indians, or the other 99% of the human race that manages to live and die, prosper and multiply just fine thank you...without being Jewish or American.



As an American, I find your position ignorant and unsupportable.

We are NOT even close to the best when it comes to...

Taking care of our sick, hungry, or mentally ill. I think we're something like 37th.

Avoiding corporate corruption and undue influence of our political process. For example, the Chinese (one of the most institutionally corrupt governments in operation today) would have executed our current administration about 6 years ago...ahem.

Knowing the difference between justifiable acts of war (re: Afghanistan, in order to pursue Bin Laden) and unjustifiable acts of war (re: Iraq, simply for war profiteering). I think the Buddhists have us all beat on that score...and they seem pretty happy about it.

Respecting the inherent right of all peoples to live their lives under the beliefs and cultural norms of their own choosing. In other words, respecting religious tolerance and FREEDOM. We're not even on the same planet in that regards with the most of Europe, for example.

---

In short, I respect your right to believe in whatever mythology you were born to. If it helps you live a better life amongst your fellow men, then it is a good thing for you, and for the rest of us that share the planet with you.

But I ask that, in return, you respect the rest of the 99% of the human race that believes differently. You know...tolerance...the golden rule...that stuff. If you look hard enough, you'll find them in your Torah - infused into every single page.

As for the rest of us, we're doing just fine, thank you.

Whatever metrics you want.

I gave two examples. But feel free to make up any system of comparison. I am pretty sure that any metric applied will give you results that tell you that some cultures are simply better than others.

What's wrong with my metrics?

Culture is what people do. Are you saying that anything humans can do is equivalent, morally and with regard to productivity? If not, some cultures will be better than others.

I find western culture superior over, say, current Iranian culture. They kill women for adultery! Yes, American culture is BETTER than that.




Are you saying that you believe that "Palestinian" culture created a society as advanced and free as Israel's?

These people kill each other. And they produce NOTHING. Israel exports foodstuff, software, chemicals, and microchips among other things. Between 1949 and 1967 Israel grew to be one of the richest countries in the world, despite an influx of one million refugees from Arab countries. I'm afraid the Arab nationalist culture that ruled the rest of Palestine did not generate much wealth.




China has a VERY bad human rights record. I believe they are world champions in executing people. Communist China is one of the more productive cultures, but I wouldn't call them superior to or even equal to other cultures.

India is doing well, but some parts of their culture are clearly inferior to western cultures.



Well, American culture is not "all Americans" automatically. It is very possible that you are not part of it and that you are not actively supporting the culture I am talking about.

But I have grown up in West-Berlin and I saw a DIRECT comparison between American culture and Soviet culture. Trust me, American culture was BETTER.

It's easy to grow up where everything is as close to perfect as it can get and then not see how much you owe to where you were born. Had West-Germany not decided to follow America rather than Russia, my life would be rather worse now I am sure.




The fact that YOU disagree with a certain policy doesn't mean anything. But the fact that the US HAVE the technology to pursue that war tells you something about the productivity of America.

I have seen pictures of Iraq under Saddam, the gas attacks on the Kurds, the mass graves for Shi'ites... the people who profit from this war are those that survive because Saddam cannot kill them any more.

I would be willing to bet that you have never seen those pictures and that that is why you can so easily claim that the war is about war profiteering.

Feel free to take care of your sick better. As for the hungry, I have read about the American poor and how well they are off compared to most people in the world.



Really? Europe is great in respecting religious tolerance? Our synagogue had swastikas painted on it some time ago, synagogies in Switzerland and France burn, synagogues in Germany are under constant police protection; the former Yugoslavia had had several wars about religion and ethnicity and we have had some of the larger genocides in history within the last 100 years.

I reject the claim that Europe is more sophisticated than America when it comes to respecting religious beliefs. As for our freedoms... well... you can go to prison in some European countries for saying the wrong thing. Not that I am against that, but freedom?

You are right, you are not even on the same planet.




But when the results of following a certain mythology are better than the results of following another one, your tolerance ends?



I am NOT going to tolerate racism, sexism, stoning women, hacking the hands off as punishment for theft, the death penalty for insulting the president and all those other customs of some of the cultures in the world just because they "believe differently".

Some cultures are simply inferior to others. And any female Israeli fighter pilot is proof for the superiority of current Jewish culture over current Arab culture.



Not all of you are doing fine. You probably think you are very wise for posting the first politically correct reply to my claim.

Of course YOU are doing fine. You are an American. You profit from having been born into one of the greatest cultures that ever existed. Millions want to be what you are. But you can only be proud of that if you are part of the reason.

First thing to do would be not telling people complete nonsense about European tolerance for religious beliefs. You don't know anything about religion in Europe. That was very clear. I wonder what you based your claim on.
USA: Synagoges and mosques exist next to each other. Neither is burning. Lots of Christian sects co-exist and do not regularly fight it out in major inter-sectarian wars.

Continental Europe: Synagogues are occasionally burned down. There exist fewer Christian sects than in America. Occasionally Christian sects go to war with each other, like in Yugoslavia.

To me it looks that the closer one lives to George Bush, the more peaceful one is. And the more a country hates George Bush, the more violent is the society of that country.

Strange? I don't think so.

You are debating am american Poster Child Liberal. He should have responded to Rightwingers Glenn Beck post as that is exactly what the article was about. Moral relativism. There is no evil/bad. Just a misunderstanding of culture differences.

Excalpius,

I think you were so eager trying to post something politically correct that you managed to overlook what you were actually disagreeing with.

Let me remind you:



You are free to doubt any one of these.

Read this:

http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/98spring/peters.htm

Most people who write things like "No culture is superior" seem to think that they are very wise and have understood a deep truth that others have not yet grasped.

However, I have never found that statement with an argument behind it. It was always stated as an axiom. The real truth is that some cultures are BETTER than others.

Here are some metrics for you:

Restrictions on the free flow of information.
The subjugation of women.
Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure.
The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
Domination by a restrictive religion.
A low valuation of education.
Low prestige assigned to work.

Compare any two cultures based on those metrics. You will find that contemporary Jewish culture scores well on the positive side, better than most other cultures. You might also find that traditionally Judaism scored better than other contemporary cultures.

American culture is free speech plus gender equality plus entrepreneurial freedom plus individualism plus no single restrictive religion plus world-famous universities plus high prestige assigned to work.

Jewish-Israeli culture is a high degree of free speech plus gender equality plus entrepreneurial freedom to a high degree plus small family units plus basically ignoring the restrictive rules of the religion plus multilingualism and scientific research plus high prestige assigned to work.

Jewish-American culture is a mix of the two.

I was 'keeping it clean' I named no one, but YOU were the one to respond, if the arrow shot into the air hit you somewhere, then what can I say. No one else took offense to the remark or even mentioned it, why I must ask did you?

While I have never read you and am assuming you have not read me, if you did you would know I am not shy about naming someone that offends me.

And, um, so? I am so "named" as someone that offended you. Thank you for this honor. I'd like to thank the Academy...

Seriously, I called you out as someone who was calling those of us who disagreed with Larry Lovemyself as anti-semites (since I saw no antisemitism in ANY post). Would you like to point out just what you saw as antisemitism so we can discuss it intelligently?

Precisely. Well said, sir.

Um, you might want to check those serial numbers on those helicopters and the chemical weapons used to kill the Kurds. They were US manufactured and supplied.

When we lost our puppet Shah in Iran, the US needed a balance to keep a resurgent Iran from threatening Saudia Arabia/oil (the real key to all of this mess). So we built and supported and funded Saddam.

We gave him the money, technology, and weapons to fight Iran (Rumsfeld was the one who delivered these btw in a previous administration). Saddam first used the chemical weapons on Iran, so we didn't blink. It was only when the Iran/Iraq War was fought to a stalemate that Saddam turned inward and gassed his own people. We slapped him on the wrist for that.

After that, as long as he counterbalanced Iranian interests and did not threaten Saudi Arabian (re: Bush family) interests, we shielded and supported Saddam. It was only when he invaded Kuwait (with our weapons remember) that he actively threatened Saudi Arabia. This was why we had the curtail his ambitions and put him back in the doghouse.

It's also why we didn't take out Saddam wholesale at that time, since his loss would have led to a resurgent Iran, which was against US (re: oil, Bush family) interests.

We had declawed Saddam a decade earlier. And while he was clearly the scum of the Earth, we could have taken him out any time we wanted with a handful of well placed cruise missiles.

Since he didn't have anything to do with the 9-11 attacks, the only reasons to go into Iraq were oil and war profiteering from nation building. The neocon goal was to build a new counterbalance to Iranian power in the region.

So endeth the political history lesson on just one of your assertions. Ahem.

(duplicate post - deleted)

No I never named you sir, you named yourself.

larry this post is absolutely ridiculous.wrong topic,wrong site. post this junk somewhere else man.  

pjdark, if you don't like this discussion, don't read it.

You have been a member of this community since December 23, 2006.
I joined this community on April 1st, 2001.

You have not earned the right to tell me what should or should not be posted here.

Excalpius, I began with the assertion that Jews had contributed to the success of the Internet far out of proportion to their numbers in the general population. That is exactly what I set out to prove when I posed the question "So you would expect that our impact on the Internet would be proportional to our numbers." I went on to illustrate that by founding Google, Facebook, Digg.com, Paypal, and more. To this point no one has offered any evidence to the contrary.

Now there are plenty of successful non-Jews, both on and off the Internet. I never stated otherwise. But it is a matter of proportion. And I maintain that is due to cultural values.

Accumulation of wealth is not the only area that where people from Jewish culture exceed the statistical norm. Between 1901 and 2006, there were 750 Nobel Prize winners. Of these, at least 158 are Jews. Link:
WWW Link

If you think that anything that I have said is not true, offer sources to contradict me. Otherwise, you have time and time again fallen back on your opinions. Your strong, if unsupported, opinions. Oh wait, you offered anecdotal evidence from your relationship with Steven Spielberg. You stated he was a very, very successful man from a Jewish culture....but he wasn't religious. Then he started on the Shoah project...so maybe he was more Jewish than you though, but your opinion won't change.

I got it, you have a very strong opinion.

This is not the forum to discuss the war in Iraq (which I oppose, incidentally) or the peace process in Israel (which I don't really believe will happen in my life, but I support in spirit)or anything else off the topic.

Let me offer you an interesting source for material. Arthur Hu is an Asian American (anyone care to comment on the values of that culture?) who collects statistical material related to race. Here is his Jewish stats page: WWW Link
Please feel free to examine the statistics and the sources (Arthur Hu lists them all in text format) and tell me if you find anything to contradict my assertions.

But if you can't support your opinion with facts, don't feel that you need to say anything at all......

Precisely. He's just posting to hear himself speak. And he thinks reams of statistics will keep anyone from noticing that he's just being a self-serving bigot in an effort to bolster his own glaring inadequacy issues.

For example,



Which means almost 600 of them AREN'T Jewish. So what? Who gives a crap?

But, for now, I'll pretend your point isn't quite frankly irrelevant (to ALL of us)...

I'd argue that since Nobel Prizes are predominantly awarded to Westerner academics, and there is a disproportionally large Jewish element in Western academic culture (as opposed to say India or China or Africa or South America), I wouldn't be surprised that 20% of Nobel Prize winners are (to varying degrees) "of the tribe". In fact, it seems a bit low to me. Whatever.

However, I doubt that the Chinese or Indians are as impressed with Westerners giving awards to Westerners as you are with it.

It's all a matter of perspective and mutual cultural respect. I thoroughly respect Judaism's traditional support of clan (as Brad put so well) and for intellectual pursuits as a means of furthering one's personal and professional development (very much like the Buddhists in that regard actually).

Looking at your own link of Nobel Prize winners...

(NOTE: Even these numbers are suspect, as they don't indicate who may or may not be PRACTICING Jews. For example, your resource is clearly pro-Judaism biased since it names Einstein as Jewish, when it is well known that he outgrew Judaism early in his life, link-> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein#Religious_views)

...it's interesting to notice how many have contributed to medical and physical sciences, but how (in proportion) very few have contributed to the categories of World Peace or Literature.

One COULD make a couple of assumptions from this...

Jews can't write.
Jews are warmongers.
Jews are better at the sciences than they are as writers or peaceniks.
Etc. Etc.

I would argue that ALL such assumptions would be WRONG (and racist/disingenuous in one sense or another). I presented them above purely to make this point.

So, deconstructing just one of these fallacies:

The vast majority of Nobel Prizes for Literature are awarded to books written in English or once they have been translated to English. Why? Because the judges are predominantly English speaking. And why is that? Because English has absorbed so many adjectives and adverbs from other languages that it is currently the world's messiest, and therefore richest, language from the perspective of permitted and understandable sentence constructions, descriptive passages, rhyming possibilities, homonyms, etc. It therefore has a disproportionate ratio of writers and professors who study them (hence an equally high ratio of English speaking judges and academics). Since there's a good chance that many Jewish writers might not be writing in English, I would argue that one can make NO causal connection between the lack of Nobel Prizes for Literature and whether or not one practices Judaism.

Etc. etc.

In each case, there are COMPLEX and often non-causal relationships at work here. So, I neither blame no credit something as arbitrarily demographic as choice of mythology for the success or failures of ANY man. I instead measure each man according to his gifts and accomplishments.

If strong family/clan support helps, then great! My cousin's husband is from a large Italian family that does custom rock work in Canada. It's a family business and as long as you choose to be a part of it, you'll have the benefits of everyone's collective wisdom. They are, as a family, VERY successful in this regard...and not one bit of it has to do with their family's choice of religion.

Apologies to everyone NOT interested in this discussion.

And by equal measure you have not earned the right to post something so blatantly self-serving and off topic/off site and not have some of us call you out on it.

Nor am I going to fail to point out just how arrogant, hypocritical, and quite frankly un-American your comment to pjdark is (quoted above).

I don't believe in "success through association" any more than I believe in "guilt by association."

The point I was making that clan is more of a factor for Jewish success can be seen in the original article:

Rich student, Mark Zuckerberg, going to Harvard already is able to get capital from fellow member of his clan to expand his fairly straight forward idea.

This is an advantage most people don't have. Again, to use myself as an example, I could never have afforded Harvard. And even if I could have, it's difficult to get in without pull. 

And even if I had an idea for a great community site (like, oh say a blog community site in which activity generates points with users able to create their own custom blog pages with user info, images, photo albums, etc. that get syndicated) I could never have gotten the necessary capital at the time I started such a site (JoeUser.com was circa 2001 -- before Digg, before Facebook, before MySpace even though in concept it had features of all 3).

I would argue I have the right attitude for success having built a multimillion dollar business on my own.  What I lacked, and what many Jewish people have, is an instant support network with access to capital and expertise.  If I had had say $2 million in capital to put into a JoeUser.com back in 2001 then who knows what might have happened.  But i don't. I don't have a dad or uncle or "member of the tribe" who can instantly put me in touch with capital and expertise for every obvious idea I have (and I'm not trying to belittle face book but I think it's a pretty obvious idea and one that many others were trying to do but lacked capital -- JoeUser.com and Modblog come to mind).

I realize I'm repeating much of what I said in post 28 but I really do think that the article really just reinforces the advantages that members of a clan have over those who do not. I also think it is one of those things that creates resentment that is often mis-characterized as anti-semitism (as a capitalist, I certianly would never discriminate against Jewish people, I'm happy to leverage their advantages to my benefit if I can). 

I also feel strongly favorable to the Jewish culture of celebrating success.  But at the same time, I'm not going to aid and abet some sort of fantasy that Jewish success is due mostly to their culture when it's pretty apparent that it's due to the advantages of being part of a clan with access to capital and expertise (otherwise, why isn't the Internet dominated by Israel or Jewish people in other countries -- a winning attitude without ready access to capital and expertise ain't enough).

Having first hand experience in seeing the advantages in being part of a clan, whether it be a religion, an alma mater, a fraternity, or highly defined culture (judaism), can bring, I am not surprised to see that people who have the capability to call upon resources others do not have simply because they were born into a particular creed are dispraportionately successful.

Hello, my name is Jack and I'm a White Boy on the Internet! And I rock!!!

You know, in Western culture there is a disproportionate ratio of white guys who rock to those who do not.

Bravo.

I personally find it very very sad how so much of the above plays to stereotypes, in particular the one wherein Jewish people are supremely materialistic. The above posts seem to imply that the only measure of success is wealth.

Also the posts about Palestine are quite frankly racist and obscene and the poster should be banned. The Palestinians are a proud and noble people who have been beaten into the ground by Israel and its support from the US.

Wincustomize is a global website and community. Please do not assume we all subscribe to the Bush administration propaganda. Arab does not eqaul bad and jewish equals good. There are a lot of damn evil people everywhere- and you know what- there are a lot of damn rich and succesful people everywhere too. I put a lot more faith in those who work to better the lot of mankind as a whole rather than counting their little piles of gold, because that is what they believe is the right thing to do instead of their belief in some weird supreme entity...

Frogboy has his finger on the pulse with each of his responses.

I think overall our internet experience is in fact dominated by the Anglo culture, its just being an egalitarian group they don't go around blowing their own [tribal] trumpet. Just look at the modern world around you, from the jet engine to penicillin, mostly invented/discovered by someone British or American of British descent (you might not be alive today without some of these) yet we don't feel the need to tell everyone what clever people we are.

Added to this there seems to be a slightly vainglorious definition of what might be considered Jewish. I worked with a Jewish guy a while ago who was very proud of his heritage however as I got to know him I discovered he had an English Dad and indeed many other English relatives on his Mother's side. He was really only slightly Jewish but used this as leverage to get what he wanted from the Jewish community. Harmless enough but I wasn't impressed when he hired mostly Jews, admitted that he had favoured them because of that and then moaned to me when they turned out to be pretty useless.

I am of the opinion that a man stands on his own individual merit regardless of history and this original post smells slightly of supremacist tendencies in spite of its light-hearted tone.