From my post precision vs. accuracy, Randall asks:

Razib, Why do you argue that it doesn't matter what the common canon is for the elites? Surely different canons promote different sets of values and those different sets of values produce different kinds of civilization.

I don't buy the idea that the various canons all express the same set of human universals. I think you would like that to be the case but that you really do not believe it either.

Samuel P. Huntington is right. The different civilizations have different rankings of values. Value surveys done across societies find this result.

This is an interesting question, as I've been addressing topics such as "memes," "human universals," and so forth, a great deal recently. Do the central documents of the literate class influence the character of a civilization? I suspect to some extent, but I can't frankly quantify in my own head with high certainty whether that amount is trivial or non-trivial.

For example, the Bible was the primary source document for Christian civilization from about the 6th century A.D. to the 13th century A.D.. Even after the 13th century, literacy for the vast majority of individuals within Christendom basically meant being able to read the Bible (in particular after Protestant translations into the vernacular). So, can we predict the nature of Biblo-centric cultures? To some extent, but...as I note in a comment below, the Bible has been used to justify just about every political and social system under heaven (I hyperbolize for effect, but those who have studied the literature of Christian libertarians and the Christian Reconstructionists might wonder if they are reading from the same book!). The Bible has within it enough contradictions that one can select whatever passage suits an individual. The Hebrew Bible has enough ethnic cleansing to satisfy the warrior while the parables of Jesus can be rendered in a pacifist fashion. Christian civilization itself is cleaved and subdivided, as Samuel Huntington acknowledges in The Clash of Civilizations, even splitting the "Orthodox" from the Western Christian tradition.

I have of course covered many of my sketchy and qualified opinions before, I do think explicit textual precedents can serve as constraints (perhaps the messy nature of the Christian Bible allows Western civilizations a flexibility that the more integrated Koran and Hadiths do not?). But, I would argue that the organic development of a civilization simply channels the interpretation of a text into whatever form it wishes. Look at how the modern Bible is seen in a universalist and anti-racial light by most Christians, while 200 years ago it seemed to justify segregation and slavery. The text did not change, the civilization did.

Moving on, I am curious why Randall believes I would like it to be the case that texts express a universal set of values? I will be frank and admit that I tire of the narrowness of scholars within any particular tradition when they express the sentiment that their particular text was "revolutionary" because it introduced certain principles to humanity (see my post that discusses "ethno-autism"). A quick reading of alternative religious & philosphical traditions would, in my opinion, show that ethics did not arise in the mind of Yawheh, Brahma or Confucius. Even the oppositional Hellenistic ethical philosophies of Epicureanism & Stoicism in practice sanctioned a similar life of moderation for most adherents.

As for Randall's last point, I agree, though I tend to view it as a complex process that evolved organically from within, rather than through textual influence. I suspect for example that if a complex society is open to the concept of individual liberty, it will manufacture justification for this principle in whatever texts are on hand. Scandinavia and Southwestern Europe both draw from the same Western Christian tradition, and yet their values differ a great deal. You see a form of this in the appeal of various contemporary camps to figures that have attained sainthood in American culture, for example, the Right and the Left now appeal to the words of Martin Luther King Jr. as if they were sacred text, each putting their own spin on King's message to forward their own political ends (personally, I suspect that the later King would sympathize with the modern Left's vision, but dead men don't dispute their legacy, and I think that the Rightist reading of King's message is perfectly sound if you selectively extract meaning from the text).

I know many readers disagree, but, here are two points:

1) Would an alien be able to predict the non-cosmetic differences between various cultures based on their texts? (that Scottish culture emphasizes individual liberty & autonomy more than Muslim cultures, though their central religious thinkers both tend toward predestinationism!)

2) One might be able to peruse a list of "top texts" selected by the intellectuals of a particular culture, and predict traits of the society from these, but of course, if a variety of texts are on hand, they will select those which are a reflection of the culture at the time (or more narrowly, emphasize certain books and chapters in texts and ignore others). It might not signal that those texts had any independent causative impact on the society in question, but only became prominent after-the-fact (or consider the decline of the model of the Roman Republic and the emphasis on Athenian Democracy with the transition of our republic from an elite to mass form).

Additionally, the example of Confucianism is cautionary, in the late 19th century, Confucianism was fingered as the reason that the inflexible Far Eastern cultures were in economic and cultural decline. Today, it is the one "reason" that the Asian economies have done so well, fostering a strong work ethic and social cohesion.

Addendum: Newer readers might be interested in similar posts:

• The Germanization of the liberal idea
  
• Christianity & liberalism-the wide view
  

Related note: One can agree on point Z, but it is important to delineate how one arrives at Z from point A. So, in the above context, I agree that there are:

1) distinct civilizational clusters
2) conflict/clash/tension between these clusters

But why do they cluster, and why do they conflict, are different questions with a variety of possible answers. And crucially, the string of propositions between A & Z that characterize one's opinion on a particular issue dictate what sort of "solutions" one proposes if Z is problematic. So, Victor Davis Hanson, from all I can see, has a highly propositional conception of the world. From where he stands based on his assumptions his solution might be:

A) Conquer them
B) Give them Western learning

Ergo, conflict resolved. There are other opinions about what the problem is, and how to solve it. Hanson fixates on the miraculous efflourescence of rational thought in Classical Greece, and imagines it as the universal model to emulate, exportable and translatable with the ease with which Prometheus gave man fire. But though man mastered fire, Prometheus was the one who paid the price....