Right, left - the terms are useless nowadays anyway. There are statists, and there are individualists. There are pessimists, and optimists. There are people who look backwards and trust in the West, and those who look forward and trust in The World. Those are the continuums that seem to matter the most right now
I agree with most of what's up there, pulled from Today's Bleat from James Lileks.
But there's a part that's exactly backwards. Those that look forward are the ones who trust "the West", and the ones looking backwards are the One World types.
Just look at the upcoming 7.7.07 concert for example. That's a 'One World" event if there ever was one. But is that really a forward looking event? Hell, no. It's just another goddamn smelly hippie jam they hope to kick in full gear. My inner Cartman would love to plow through the crowds, but instead I'll just ignore the whole sad event. Any event organized by Al Gore is automatically, and by definition, a product of retrograde thinking. The globalist of the world are just a new flavor of Marxism, and these new Marxist have collectively decided (MARXIST DO IT COLLECTIVELY would make a great bumper sticker) to replace red with green as their new favorite color. Same crap, different shade of stain it leaves on the wall. One World types are against individualism, innovation, and choice. Those concerts will be all about indoctrination, and heartfelt pleas getting 'youth' more 'involved' to 'take action' and 'be the change you seek'.
Nope, it's "The West" that's looking forward, if you define "The West" as those that still cling to a Burkean notion of liberalism. Free trade, freedom to fail, freedom of religion, freedom from religion, freedom from tyranny, freedom of choice, are all part of the bargain in "The West", and those will now and forever be the most forward thinking and cutting edge ideas out there. It was true a couple of centuries ago, and it will be true centuries hence. All the different outposts that make up "The West", and the places that aspire to join the club are successful and free at different levels and in different dimensions. No place is perfect, that's why Utopia means literally, "no place". But the countries that maintain an allegiance to the concepts of Burkean Liberalism are the places that will bring about the future.
China with all its size and potential will be hamstrung as long as it continues to look backward and avoid acceptance of the whole package of liberalizing freedoms. India, even with its corruption, religious and regional strife, will surpass China within a few decades so long as they stay on a more liberalized path.
It would be nice if we could just let the backward thinking backwaters of the world stew in their own primitivism, but unfortunately even a primitive can press a button on a very big and devastating bomb. It would also be nice if we could ignore the globalist and the gaiaist and let them shriek about the falling sky, except those folks want put an end to many of the freedoms crucial to liberalism just as much as the primitives.
It may seem counter intuitive that the 'globalist' are the primitives, but a unifying theme amongst global movements is that difference and freedom are dangerous and whether the controlling impulse is to submit all to one faith, or submit all to a shrunken economy to save the planet, the goal is the same, control. Another seemingly strange ally for the primitivist would be academia. Yet, postmodern and post colonial theory helped laid the groundwork for primitivism to flourish. The first notion was that everything is subjective. From that came the notion that nobody can judge another (due to subjectivity). From the inability to judge 'the other' came the strong determination to judge only those like ourselves most harshly. From there it doesn't take long till you have prominent academics, newspapers and NGOs who see no evil when committed by Hamas, but see every evil imaginable (even all sorts of imagined evils) when discussing the U.S. government. So we live in a strange state where the biggest advocates for the new primitivism, the biggest critics of classical liberalism, and those most resistant to progress are those who've made education, news reporting, and 'protecting the weak' their careers.
I'd much rather throw my lot in with those who look to Burke, Hayek and Popper than those that look to Marx, Chomsky, and Lennon. With all its problems, even a country as screwed up as France has more in common with Burke than Marx as the election of Sarkozy shows. Likewise, despite some attempts to paint a happier face on their primitivism, the Chinese government is still hostile towards accepting all the fruits of classical liberalism, and still insists that a vast number of their populace remain in a primitive state.
But I'm still optimistic, progress is too addictive, and technological innovation has reached a self-perpetuating critical mass (hopefully) where the primitives won't be able to do irreparable damage to the non-primitives. But that doesn't meant they won't throw a wooden shoe (sabot) into the machinery from time to time, and it doesn't mean that neo-primitives like the Gaiaist won't be able to do some damage too.
I'm not purely a materialist, either. "The West" is also morally superior to the various primitive tribes. Faith is not a primitive concept, but coercive faith is. National pride is not a primitive concept, but blind hatred against those under a different flag is. Protecting the environment isn't a primitive concept, but using the environment as a tool for exerting collective control is. Longing for a world where more people live under better governments is not a primitive concept, but thinking that can be accomplished by a stern scolding is exceedingly primitive.
There will be steps backwards along the forward march to the point where speaking of "The West" is synonymous with speaking about "The World", but that day will come. It won't mean every place will look like the United States, it won't mean everybody will be secularized. But it will mean that every place will be basically at peace with each other, and it will mean that every one will tolerate each others differences. In the mean time, there will be some asses that need kicking, and some bad guys that need killing. From time to time, those bad guys will get lucky and do horrible things to innocent people, but I think "The World" is going to be a remarkably better place in 2100 than it was in 2000, shame I probably won't see it.
In the end, we in "The West" will win, we have the better toys.
1 comment:
Exellent piece. And I hope you're right -- but I'm afraid that fear, envy and hatred are more easily appealed to than effort, self-reliance and pride.
And the political challenge is that there's an ongoing battle in every nation and culture between the primitive-collectivists and the liberal-individualists. Whoever wins gets control of the nation's resources. The primitives cause all kinds of problems and drag others down when they win (see East, Middle), and we can't just ignore them because we're all interconnected.
So we have to figure out a way to help others move forward by appealing to common human aspirations for freedom and prosperity (which is what I think Bush et al. were trying to do with Iraq). The frustrating part is that it's much easier to destroy progress and civilization than to build it.
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