[nova]

> Every society on Earth exists as it does because it destroyed much of the previously existing landscape and natural inhabitants,

THANKS.

Every human culture out there is responsible for wars and horrible crimes and destruction; primitive societies were no better (Hobbes Was Right (TM)), but only a few have built advanced and prosperous civilizations, and what is more, the West is basically the only which reflects on its past.

I'm over with modern western ethnomasochism.

[hsitz]

You seem to think "reflecting on its past" is one of the advances that came with Western civilization. Not sure what "modern western ethnomasochism" is, but I imagine it goes along hand-in-glove with "reflecting on its past." Can you really have one without the other? Do you really think reflection is going to reveal only good things? Why reflect at all if you're not trying to identify things in past that can be fixed or improved upon?

[nova]

> You seem to think "reflecting on its past" is one of the advances that came with Western civilization

Not if taken so far as to become self-destructive.

> Not sure what "modern western ethnomasochism" is,

It means that here in the West we are (were) the best (in relative terms) but we think we are the worst, and wish for our own end.

> Can you really have one without the other?

Oh yes. Godspeed to Asia which will inherit the future, learning the good bits from the West without the suicidal self-flagellation.