If you said "non-westerners" to mean countries which don't think of themselves as rooted is Greek and then Roman cultural history, then yeah I suppose. But any European country I would expect people to have learned it through osmosis.

[–] zeca 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

im curious to know if you think of a country like Brazil as western. Its interesting to see how the perception of "western"-ess varies.

[–] MLRL_Commie@hexbear.net 1 points 8 hours ago

I was creating a definition for this case, really. 'Western" generally is a relation to non-western, defining it malleably to suit imperialist needs. Sometimes Brazil is western (not Muslim, for example, in the war on the middle eastern Arab countries), but others it's not.

In this case, I was saying that functionally, the important aspect for whether someone would absord stuff about the Odyssey has more to do with whether their country sees itself as a descendent of Greek and Roman culture. The west seems to think it's the true followers (enlightenment and such) and so focusses more on it. Why would Chinese people care when the base of their culture was already also in existence with writing that also exists to read now?