A
Failure to Integrate Values
Famous Greek philosophers:
their thoughts are a cornerstone of Western culture. [PT]
Western
culture, which developed organically over at least the two and half millennia,
starting from Greco-Roman philosophers, is not easy to duplicate. This culture
requires thrift, honesty, hard work, liberty, individuality, dispassionate
reason, objective justice, loyalty, honor, stoicism, a desire to rise above
oneself, and many other factors that perhaps cannot be seen or isolated but
must be absorbed subliminally in all their complex interactions. These are
reflected in social, religious, and political structures of the West — the
three independent branches of government, the rule of law, compassion for
others, charity, family system, etc.
The West and East Asia,
including China, comprise a mere 2.5 billion people.
“The Rest,” the Third World, comprises 5 billion out of 7.5 billion
people on the planet. The cultural factors underpinning the West sound like
clichés until one who gives up political correctness for the truth starts to
see that the Third World, despite its several centuries of interactions with
the West, simply fails to understand them.
The Third World is blind to what makes the West a civilization. It is as
if the Third World cannot rise above animal instincts — craving for food, power
over others, sex, and for the material.
Over several centuries of western
colonization and missionary activities, an attempt was made to infuse Western
cultural factors into the Third World. It was only a marginal success. Since
the third world countries achieved political independence, without constant
Western involvement, all has been lost. Christianity became voodoo, and the
political system became a tool for tribalism and tyranny.
Focus
on Materialism
The Third World is tempted by
only the physical products of Western society. They are pleasure-centric. When
they look at the West, all they see is entertainment, an easy-going lifestyle,
freedom from responsibility, liberal governments, free health-care,
consumerism, social welfare, and good salaries. They either want to be economic
migrants to the West or copy the Western lifestyle, without an iota of an
understanding that they must have wealth-generating capabilities first and that
there is something at the foundations of Western culture.
There is a virtual absence of
reading habits in the Third World. If they end up reading Ayn Rand, all they
see in it is a drama. They fail to see a non-collectivist philosophy embedded
in it. If they watch movies like the Matrix, all they see is a sci-fi movie.
They fail to see any suggestion that they might be getting indoctrinated by
their leaders.
What
they see as the culture of the West from their narrow worldview is primarily
the culture of its lower-class and the entertainment industry.
European colonization and technology were a massive relief for
the Third World, but merely temporary, for they never learned or even saw the
principles that made such prosperity possible. All the advantages, given the
mindset of expediency, have been frittered away, through wars, excessive
consumption, malinvestment, an increase in population, etc. The Third World’s
craving for the material, unconnected with morality or reason, means that it
forever wallows in poverty, oppression, and at the edge of a Malthusian crisis.
Nothing it has is
sustainable, neither capital nor institutions. All surplus gets consumed or
frittered away — it takes a higher calling to invest and preserve the surplus.
Everything has a pull towards decay, disintegration, and degradation.
European colonization
provided a rational system for the Third World to operate in. Christian
Missionaries tried to infuse reason among the inhabitants. In desperation, they
sometimes even removed children from their families. All these attempts made
only a marginal difference.
Departing European colonizers
transferred Western tools — technology, institutions, etc. — to the
democratically elected bodies of the Third World. The tools were subverted and
used for tribalistic purposes. And democracy enabled the most irrational, base
elements to rise to power.
Ease of travel made the
situation worse by enabling the emigration of the best people from the Third
World.
Post-Colonial
Regression
Since the departure of
European colonizers, the Third World has been culturally and institutionally
regressing to its pre-European dark ages. None of these societies are sane,
stable, or sustainable by themselves. It is the fear of America that keeps
their tyrants behaving better than they otherwise would and their nations from
falling into forever wars between their tribal units.
Despite this cultural and
institutional regression, the free-gift of Western technology and the green
revolution, and peace imparted by America still enabled economic growth, which
alas has allowed more cultural problems to accumulate before Malthusian
equilibrium kicks in again.
Thomas Malthus: his concerns
over unsustainable population growth were misguided when applied to a Western
capitalist market economy – he failed to take human ingenuity, problem-solving
capabilities and capital accumulation into account. However, his concerns will
become valid in a stagnating or regressing economy. [PT]
Marxist and Keynesian
economics has a toehold in the Third World not because those works corrupted
them, but because these pseudo-economics match their expectations for free
stuff. Every single major leader of the Third World who studied in the UK
during the British colonization became a socialist — socialism is all that they
saw during their life in the UK.
The contribution the West has
made to Africa — which for all practical purposes did not have a written
language, technology of farming, or tools before the arrival of Europeans — is
immense. Unfortunately, these gifts have mostly gone unused.
In the Third World, girls in
school-uniforms carry water buckets on their heads. Despite the concept of the
wheel having been offered on a platter, they haven’t figured out its use. They
have been taught English for centuries by now, but what they have is pidgin, a
simple, non-nuanced, lacking-in-grammar language. This predicament had to
happen for complex language can only be retained if the society has an interest
in ideas, planning, and issues outside immediate needs.
For
most in the Third World, “tomorrow” is too far in the future. Their
communication needs are limited to teasing each other, consumption needs,
activism, and discussing celebrities.
Christianity was spread in the Third World, but it ended up
becoming voodoo, heavily mixed with superstitions. Formal education, seen as a
magic wand that enables a good life, has turned into at best rote-learning, and
its purpose is only to get a certificate at the end. Education without core
western values sits unassimilated in superstitious minds. It merely increases
stress levels, leading to the spread of ritualistic, superstitious, and
materialistic religion.
The tools of Western
technology have been corrupted for tribal purposes — steel instead of being
used for constructing bridges and factories has been more commonly used for
making machetes in Africa. The internet was expected to rapidly spread truth,
knowledge, and awakening to the poorest in the Third World. Instead, if they
are not watching pornography, they circulate superstitions, rumors and
political activism.
Absence
of Rationality
Tools for development and
growth in the West have failed in the Third World, and often had the opposite
effects. The question is, why is it that the Third World has failed to absorb
and even notice the cultural qualities of the West? What went wrong? Why did
the Third World fail to maintain the benefits offered?
The fundamental problem
of the Third World is that the concept of reason is conspicuous by its absence.
Without “reason,” intellectual and financial capital is not accumulated. The
operating system in their minds is tribalism, superstition, magical thinking,
and irrationality. This operating system makes them impervious to absorbing
Western intellectual capital.
Without the rationality,
civilization is not possible. Irrational societies must vacillate between
dogma, hedonism, and savagery, never stumbling on another dimension,
rationality.
A society of irrational
people, particularly in a democratic system, where the most tribal,
least-competent 50% people decide on who rules, eventually has to disintegrate
into tribal units, who will then enter into never-ending wars. This is what
will happen to 5 billion people living in the Third World, a humanitarian
catastrophe never seen before. 100s of millions, perhaps billions will perish,
once their problems have become too large for the West to contain.
Reprinted
with permission from Acting Man.
Copyright
© Acting Man