alt Hacker News> There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not.
The West is the Latin Church. From the Latin Church came the Protestants. From that West meant and means anything influenced by or in protest of the Latin Church in Europe and its colonies. Very easy to understand, makes less of a difference today than it might have 100 years ago but to pretend it's hard to define or not a real thing isn't serious.
that defines "west" as the american protestantism values, but catholic southern europe is not as west as Japan has become after decades of american influence. Even china is more western nowadays in its mindset than whatever would be called "east" nowadays (muslim world + russia and india? what is latinamerica?).
"West" is mainly used in US propaganda in order to keep its allies behind them. I feel that europe doesn't want to be defined by the "west" anymore.