User:Hlavac

I am a graduate of New York University with a degree in Politics and Business. I have been published in numerous magazines and directories in the Gulf South states, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, on a number of different subjects. In addition I have set up dozens of websites, providing much content, as well as design.

Not to mention that I am a piano player in New Orleans, where I also frequently exhibit my maze art.

I am not thrilled with formulaic recitations of "what is," but am driven by "what could be."

I am not thrilled with semantic adherence to western terminology which treats the history of all things in one part of the world as wholly different than in other parts of the world.

I am firmly of the belief that there are underlying principles that apply to all aspects of humankind, separate from a definition that we might use in the West or might be used in the East, or the South, North, or Middle for that matter.

I find that too often people think that because we know of something from Europe, or from China, that somehow they are wholly different because we are from different cultures -- the underlying principles that govern all societies can be discerned. After we strip away the terminology of today's language we find the concepts unnervingly the same all over the world.

I am also highly appreciative of people who edit my contributions for spelling, and who give more detailed information than I might have provided.

I am not thrilled with people who make wholesale removals of my articles because of their Eurocentric views or pedantic ideas that words can only mean what their sources say they mean. Words sometimes gather new nuances in meaning, therefore requiring modifiers. Such as the difference between royal prerogative and European Royal Prerogative.

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The problem is that in your discussions of the Royal Prerogative and the Divine Right of Kings, you are trying to fit history into your own vision of how things should be rather than how things were rather than seeing them as how they really were. *Some* things about China and the West are the same. *Some* things about China and the West are different. Figuring out which is which requires careful research. The problem I have with your mixing terminology is that it makes clear thinking and intercultural communication impossible. By using the same name for a Chinese concept and a Western one, it makes it impossible to compare and contrast them.

The other problem is that you are intentionally contributing to cultural imperialism. Royal prerogative and divine right of kings are Western terms which simply do not make sense in a Chinese imperial context. There are a lot of Chinese terms which do not make sense in a Western context, and I've been systematically creating encyclopedia entries to describe them. By forcing the use of Western terms and concepts to describe Chinese practices rather than using the Chinese terms and concepts, you are craming down Western and Euro-centric viewpoints which I don't think is your intent, and this does not increase cross-cultural understanding. Rather it decreases it.

You think you know how European royalty worked. You are assuming without studying the subject that Chinese Emperors worked the same way. I don't see how one could get more Eurocentric than that. There is a huge amount of nonsense in Western views of Chinese history that arises because people see a superficial similarity and then assume a deep one without studying the topic.

-- User:Roadrunner

Just as an example of a concept that *is* cross cultural. Look at rule of law.

-- User:Roadrunner

--- Given the vehemence and invective directed at me about royal prerogative and divine right I went ahead and created a non-wiki page on the subject:

http://www.geocities.com/practicalist/royal

that further delves into this idea without fear of retribution. Y'all have fun with this, now, hear.