I think we both have valid questions...

The Second world is North America and maybe Australia, New Zealand.

The US is 2nd world?

I guess I remembered wrong. They used the term during the Cold War where the major communist countries were consider the Second World.

Ha, that trod on a few toes...

The point being that we never really talk about their being a Second World (don't mention the war).

their = there,

stupid Apple keyboard, rotten to the core.

Winston Churchill attempted to clarify the use of distictions of the Orient early on in his career as Prime Minister. He explained that the Near East is Palestine and the Lebanon. The Middle East is Mesopotamia and Persia. The East is India and the Far East is China and Japan.
I think he had more success with his military efforts.

In America, we don't use the word 'Orient' or 'Oriental' any more. 30 years ago, Koreans and Japanese and Chinese were 'Orientals'. Now they are 'Asian'. But I think in Britain you still use 'Oriental'?

During the cold war, the First World was the U.S. and her allies, the Second World was the U.S.S.R. and her allies, and the Third World was the unaligned countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_world

I guess the U.S. would the the Really, Really Far East.

The term Orient is an antiquated term for east. Using the adjective Oriental to refer to people is rather unPC but in other senses just makes you sound like you're 135.

And a retired Colonel

Which I am

Parallel, I assume you are from the US.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental
"Oriental is not usually considered an offensive term in Britain."

(And for what its worth, I'm 41. The Taiwanese boy in my class in 4th grade was 'Oriental'. It wasn't meant to be insulting, thats just what it was. I'm not sure when it switched to 'Asian', but I am certainly not 135.

Wikipedia is, of course, renowned for its accuracy and is considered, in academic circles, to be the final arbiter of all things true and right.

Considering the fact Japan is literally named after the fact it's in the east (Nihon/Nippon means sun [ni-] root [hon]) I find it a little silly to say it's unacceptable to use the terms orient/oriental...all they mean is "east/eastern". In most people's minds the Far East is on the far east side of the map (Far East is just as bad as orient, it means the same thing).

Even though the Japanese place their country at the center of maps (at least generally speaking) they still call their country the Origin of the Sun - the east (in fact the two characters paired together to form the word "Nihon" can actually be combined to form the Japanese word "higashi," which means "east").

While the term is no longer in wide use, once in a while in academic papers and such you can still see the term occidental, which simply means "western" and I've never heard anyone say that is unacceptable.

Why do we have a Middle East & not a Middle West? I say it because the Eurocentric worldview is the default way of looking at the world. At least among Diplomacy players and English speakers.

Parallel,
And Americans are renowned for thinking the entire world operates like America.

There seems to be some misapprehension. In real life I'm a crust old Colonel with a walrus moustache and an elephant foot umbrella stand writing from a decaying country pile in Leicestershire.

Parrallel,
Ok, my mistake. Then crusty old Englishmen apparently believe that their opinion is the right one, and that they speak for an entire country when the expound that Englishmen find 'Oriental' to be insulting.

Of course we do. We speak for the entire country on all subjects. I think, however, that if you read the words typed you'll see that I said that it was rather unPC rather than claiming that all Englishmen trueborn considered it insulting.

It would be nice to see/hear the term "Occidental" thrown around as much as "Oriental" since the two terms are really just from the Latin words for "setting" and "rising" as applied to the sun. However, one could argue that the reference point for determining east or west is kind of eurocentric. The Earth has a natural definition for the Equator as defined by the axis of rotation but the Prime Meridian is totally manmade.

Far East and Near East seem like ridiculous terms to me as we don't have a Near West and Far West to correspond. Are Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, South Asia, Southwest Asia, just too complicated compared to "Middle East"?

I live in the UK. I would consider the term 'Oriental' slightly old-fashioned, but not pejorative or insulting in any way.

If something is 'unPC', as you state, does that mean by definition it is insulting? What makes something unPC?

Stateside, it's acceptable as an adjective for objects but not as a noun. Those of us in the PC set have oriental rugs, but not neighbors who are oriental.

@Dingleberry Yes; something unPC is something you wouldn't say in polite company.

Parallel...

I'm supposed to be the crusty old colonel with the walrus moustache writing from a pile in Leicestershire (I assume you are familiar with the Flashman books?).

And a great nod to that bastion of universal truth:

"Wikipedia is, of course, renowned for its accuracy and is considered, in academic circles, to be the final arbiter of all things true and right."

That made my day.

I live in the Far East and people here are rather more used to considering themselves as being at the centre of the world - hence the Middle Kingdom.

"Why do we have a Middle East & not a Middle West? I say it because the Eurocentric worldview is the default way of looking at the world."

Actually, it's NOT Eurocentric. Europe is the West. No one in Europe (or America) calls itself the Middle Civilization. We're Western Civilization. The Holy Land and the Birthplace of Jesus was considered the center. Having to constantly go east to get there, though, sort of eroded that conception after a few centuries, though, and now the European worldview doesn't really have a Middle.

As for why there's no middle west, I would guess it's because while you're going east, it's civilization, civilization, civilization, but going west from Europe, it's just fishes. They could have subdivided Europe into the Middle West and Far West and such, but since the distinction tends to be at least partly related to progenitors, i.e., Middle East are descended from the Arabic civilizations, East from Indian, Far East from Chinese, &c., Europe just sort of generally considers itself the kid of the Roman Empire, which covered all Europe along the East-West axis, and even those countries that were left out tend to consider themselves its descendants, e.g. The Holy Roman Empire, and Moscow being the Third Rome.

"Wikipedia is, of course, renowned for its accuracy and is considered, in academic circles, to be the final arbiter of all things true and right."

Actually, according to a study done five years ago, on average Wikipedia stacks up well against the Encyclopedia Britannica:
http://news.cnet.com/Study-Wikipedia-as-accurate-as-Britannica/2100-1038_3-5997332.html
I would guess that Wikipedia would do even better now as it is a work in progress.
...not that you can expect professors to accept Wikipedia as a reference in a paper anytime soon... (always better anyway to go to the original source after skimming either Wikipedia or Britannica)

The terms 1st world, 2nd world, 3rd world don't get used so much any more; but the 2nd world used to be referred to the communist block especially the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

To steal from George Carlin, why do we park on a driveway, and drive on a parkway?

Wikipedia is the fount of all human knowledge. If it is in Wikipedia, it is true. If it is not in Wikipedia, it is not true. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Wikipedia and the Word was Wikipedia. All things were known through Wikipedia; and without Wikipedia was not any thing known that was known.

What? I live in the mid-west.

But not the Middle West, which is where this thread started. So where is the Middle West?

I LIVE IN WISCONSIN AND IT'S TOTALLY THE MIDWEST YOU GUYS.

From an American standpoint, the Mississippi used to be the furthest west you could go and still be in the US. So the Great Lakes states, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Deep South used to be The West.

Then Jefferson bought Louisiana, so you could go further west. So Louisiana became the Far West. Then we took The West from Mexico and negotiated it away from Britain. So the West became the Far West, the Midwest became the Middle West, and the East stayed the East. But then it became "The West" and "The West Coast; the Middle West was shortened to "The Midwest." So the Middle West is there.

Nowadays Missouri's considered the midwest, too.

Oh, and Iowa.

@dextor morgan Britannica naturaly contested said study and pointed out the errors counted against it were not errors unless you use Wiki as your source.

naturally. but the study used experts... same as any normal encyclopedia (including Britannica) does... so to simply categorically discount errors on such a basis is circular reasoning. All such publications have errors (e.g. textbooks)... it is the nature of the beast. One does better by going to the original source and only using encyclopedias and other compendiums as one's first stop... but not the last.

@dextor Sure all publications have some errors. I'm sure Britannica used experts when they contested the study. It becomes your study verses my study situation.

Erm, the reason there isn't a middle west is that where it should be is the pond...

But Figle, that answer makes Blighty the Near West...

Well to the people who started all those things I expect we were?