Well! What a surprise!
After a tad more than half a year I have overcome my procrastinating tendencies and have finally plonked myself down to scripe (scribbling typing) a little passage. A full time job and many other things going on at the same time unfortunately don't leave alot of time... Or in fact they monopolise energy and creativity that should be avvailable let your thoughts run free. Well, before I ramble off into the distance I will return to what I in fact actually wanted to write about:
"the WEST vs the EAST" or "the WEST vs the rest"
It is quite common and has been presumably always been to group certain countries, certain people, certain systems and certains ways of thinking into a casserole called the WEST. We have Western ideology, Western democracy, Western lifestyles and so on ad infinitum (I haven't used latin in a long time!).
But what does this mean?!
Having grown up mainly in Europe this question never really posed itself for me.
When Europeans, North Americans or Australians speak of the West it is often in order to distinguish "us" from "them" whether "them" be Asia, China, Japan, Africa or even South America.
In the past this may generally have been a not entirely unwaranted sense of superiority but as with any symbol it didn't just stand for the good sides and the progress but also of course for the many negative things that the American and European cultures claim for themselves.
Already in this context it is evident that the term "The West" does not distinguish between key differences of say England and Germany for instance.
My main contention is however, that for a number of years now this term has increasingly taken on the connotation of putting Europe and North America (and Australia) almost exclusively in a bad light.
A talk I recently watched on TED by Martin Jacques on the rise of China was quite revealing in many aspects. One point that Jacques made resonated strongly with me. On average, he said, Asians will know more about European countries than Europeans do about Asia...
I do not necessarily agree with this statement and will come to this in a moment, however this statement highlights an automatic way of thinking in us, that tends to group vast regions together including people and their cultures with incredibly diversity.
Europe is often perceived as the continent and not as its individual countries and very divergent cultures. Just compare Turkey and Norway.
On a similar level in Asia, Thailand and Laos, two neighbouring countries with largely shared ethnicities and languages are socially significantly different because of their very different histories. In this light, grouping people together by regions makes little sense. And identifying oneself with this socalled West makes no sense.
This leads me to my actual gripe with the term and its connotations. All too often the West and anybody living west of eastern Europe is automatically compounded into western lifestyle and all the negative aspects of it. A common theme is to decry western consumerism and the economic system as the bane of human future on this planet. The East in turn (also an unfair generalisation) is lauded for its wisdom and more wholesome and holistic thinking.
Without a doubt, there are some seeds of truth in these generalisations but it seems to me that many of the people extoling these themes either have not witnessed many Asian societies first hand or choose to ignore the evidence of what is really happening.
My personal experience of many parts of Asia has been of far stronger consumerism than in many European or American countries. I have seen rampant marketing fads, complete disregard of creative or intellectual value, societies devoid of grassroots activities or any culture apart from financial success and commerce.
Of course there are a great many things to learn from many eastern cultures but at the current rate of development, consumerism should be coined in an eastern context.
There is no space for simplistic generalisations dividing the world into exploited East and rapacious West. What we have is a global economic and social problem with a myriad of different facets and angles and accordingly many ways of finding solutions. It will take effort from each part of the globe and its intricate network to solve the problems that the world faces.
As an example, read through the history articles on Wikipedia about hundreds of empires led
by untold numbers of emperors conquering huge
swaths of land and subjucating endless millions of people in all 4 corners of the world.
Despite the huge
importance these men and their agglomorations of power held for their regions at the time and despite their probable beliefs that they ruled almost the entire Earth, their individual influence on
the current world will have been negligible in the grand scheme of
things. But put together all of these stories and they form the intricate pattern of human history. A
decently educated person would most likely not even know half the
empires and emperors that existed over the course of history.
Thus simplistic generalisations help little. Right now we are supposedly witnessing the rise of Asia and the fall of Europe. And yet Japan continues to struggle economicaly and socially, while Germany's economy long predicted to die a miserable death by Britain and the US, rampages on.
The world is interconnected by many intricate puzzle pieces. We will not be able to change whole regions and billions of people at a time, so if we want change, small scale is the way forward, as is increasingly becoming evident. It is easy to let our thinking be overrun with grand themes/terms that encompass hundreds of different ideals when its the small scale successes and little decisions that add up to make a big impact.
So, please refrain from using terms such as West and East that hold such clear connotations. Language is important. Dont throw out the baby with the bath water. Not all is bad in European and North American countries and not all is good in Asian societies. Cherish the good that you have and strive to incorporate the good you see elsewhere, whether its around the corner or far away.
