Pirates me hearties, pirates!

[--Pete]

Hi,

I think, to even start to come up with a "big regions" map of world civilizations, you'd have to block off a whole series of areas.

Depends on what differences you want to emphasize. Look at the Balkans. From the outside, they all look about the same, but (at least from their behavior) they think they are all different, hostile, species.

The boundaries may be both tenuous and flexible, but I think that there are partitions that can be drawn with a size that lies somewhere between 'he' and 'humanity'. And some of the boundaries of those partitions are religion, common folk stories, shared assumptions, language structure. All those things that come under the nebulous umbrella we call 'culture'. And I think 'Western culture' is a definite, identifiable entity.

--Pete