DixyCrat,
Your response seems to be digressing from the thread at hand. In essence, the point I made was that a lot of concepts of so-called "western" philosophy are actually taken from Eastern thought without any credit to the latter; this theft of knowledge is nothing new and continues even today - as with the case of panpsychism etc.
Regarding your other points...
Baasha,
The state of your argumentation being out of totalizing indoctrination is not meant ad hominem; I apologize for saying 'you' are indoctrinated, I've never had a beer with you, how the hell should I know who 'you' are! I did only mean to address the ideas you proffered. I meant the "Sounds like you've been indoctrinated." to be just that, it sounds as though, not that you are. But I get that I should address your ideas.
Let us both assume the other is being honest about the world as we experience it (even if we are mistaken about historical facts, in the eyes of the other) so that we can appreciate how the other came to the world of perspective we are both in.
Although a seemingly perspicacious point, the simple fact of the matter is that history, or rather how the west views history (HIS STORY) is in and of itself a framework that is incompatible with the Dharmic one that I come from. As defined commonly, history is by nature highly linear (as you state later on). Thus, our notions of particular events and certain times and places carries a different significance for the both of us (east vis-a-vis west). Further, I too was brought up and educated in the west - the journey of self discovery and self identity led me to research Dharmic philosophy and the perspectives contained therein.
For example, the argument you proffer totalizes indian culture; it argues that said culture survives when it is impossible for anything to survive as nothing is perpetual even for a moment, reification is a necessary shade of gray but in treating culture 'alive' vs 'dead' this creates a binary opposition.
I prefer the term "continuous civilization" instead of reductive nomenclature of totalization etc. This is because, the nuance of meaning can easily get lost in the statement as demonstrated here.
It is undoubtedly a fact, even admitted grudgingly by the most anti-Indian scholars, that the Indian civilization is the oldest "living" (aka continuous) civilization in the world. As mentioned in my previous posts, no other "ancient" culture survives today thanks to the brutal onslaught of Christianity and Islam around the world (and later, communism).
Yes, there may be remnants and traces of ancient civilizations elsewhere but they no longer thrive as they once did whereas Indian culture is still the dominant one in India (and shall remain so).
If your argument is true then bringing humanity to the brink of destruction by having a shooting war with Pakistan, a fellow nuclear armed power, is the hight of despicable culture. But I do not totalize, as your argument seems to, and I recognize that ideas are fluid and every changing; nations, cultures, ideas are all non-existent: simply put a localized lack of diversity (which we call national culture) is not nearly as beautiful as egalitarian acceptance of all humanity.
You seem to be highly misinformed about the topic of discussion here by bringing in something totally irrelevant. When India is threatened and attacked constantly by belligerent and aggressive neighbors, she has a right to defend herself. It is sad that America, the only country to have used nukes TWICE on civilians, dares to talk about other countries' peace processes. To equate a defensive move to protect its citizens by India to a belligerent Pakistan (who still attacks Indian soldiers to this day) is utterly obtuse. This has no relevance to what we are discussing here.
Further a better depiction of India's culture in the modern times is Mahatma Gandhi who showed the world that freedom can be won without bloodshed.
Ideas are continuous, people are continuous, but interactions between people and ideas are discursive when power (even the power of self identity) comes into play.
This essentially proves my point that due to the West's hegemony over the past few centuries, the asymmetry in power has enabled them to steal freely from cultures around the world - most significantly from India.
Panpsychism, is but an example.
YES
Anaximander, a greek, came up with the idea of evolution c. 600 BCE
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/ancient.html
This heavily influenced heraclitus and parmenidies from which Hedger developed (for modern audiences) an ontological structure of being in the world developed out of grounding in the hebrew concepts of existentialism c. 450BCE.
There are two issues with the above statement.
First, Greek civilization cannot be mapped on to the Judeo-Christian framework; this was in and of itself a clever but sly move on the part of Thomas Aquinas who wanted to meld the Hebraic and Hellenic cultures. In fact, it was the former that contributed significantly to the destruction of the latter.
Secondly, the concept of Involution as antipodal to Evolution is fleshed out in the Veda - dated to 4000BCE. Western scholars date the Veda to 1700BCE but that is not accurate since they have done so with the idea that the earth is only 6000 years old - a completely erroneous fact.
I pointed out Ken Wilber's duplicitous nature of studying the concepts of Indian philosophy (in this case Sri Aurobindo) and then pondering off as his own - utter dishonesty. This is the case with Involution although Wilber's corpus of works is referred to as "Integral Philosophy" while this thread talks about Panpsychism - another mapping of an Indian philosophical framework without giving credit. There is a pattern here.
I agree that modern thought is linearized and dichotomizing: but this is no more a reflection of its epistemic heritage than near nuclear war and repression of people via the cast system is a representation of hindu thought. No doubt ideas shared across humanity, particularly Hindu, have added greatly to our shared heritage as humans: but if anyone that can think to the end of the epistemic in order to reach the beginning of being from where they left is following the path that all culture and religion emanates from.
The very fact that you talk about "cast" (you mean caste?) system shows the state of "education" in the west; any topic on India is approached with a jaundiced eye. How many kids today learn about the contributions of India to the world in mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, philosophy etc. etc.? Instead, they are taught about cow worship, caste system, and dowry - as your post amply shows.
This is what I'm saying - not only are other cultures (in this case India) not given any credit, they are continually denigrated by various mechanisms in society in the west (education, media, and scholarship) that form not only a biased understanding of history, but of another people, culture, and civilization.
How aware are laymen in the west of the decimal system, numeral system, linguistics among many other things being developed and invented in India? Do people correctly give credit to Baudhayana's SulbasUtrAs when talking about the "Pythagorean" theorem (that preceded Pythagoras by over 300 years)?
The system is set up in such a way that one comes away thinking that the arbiters of knowledge in all of the world were only to be found in the west - this is an absolute falsity and this sort of prejudiced eurocentric "scholarship" has not been challenged until quite recently.
Thus, talking about panpsychism without showing its Hindu/Indian connection is only half the picture.
But the totalization of Hindu and India as the "epicenter of spirituality on this planet" is a bigoted statement and an argument full-tilt toward racist, ethnocentric, indoctrination.
There is no implication of "race" in my statement; another shortcoming in the western way of thinking. That Hindu/Indian culture that has been continuous for thousands of years is an undeniable fact; I don't see how this translates into "racism".
Which as moon pie pointed out, is an outcome of lived-experiences that I can understand and appreciate, even if I cannot respect it. (though this lack of respect for the lived experiences of those that espouse bigoted ideas may be my own failing)
As I mentioned before, my "interest" in panpsychism is next to nil, but I wanted to point out an important yet oft forgotten (intentionally?) link and source to the idea. That is all.