Friday 18 June 2021

Asia and the West

Consider this, in 1911 China became a republic, then in the 1930's and 40's Chinese Nationalists and Communists fought a civil war. China's history is thousands of years old and until the mid-1800's Republicanism, Nationalism and Communism were no where to be seen. Because they are foreign ideas, not Chinese ideas and that is the theme of this post. Asia is today filled with ideas that aren't theirs and it is leading them to ruin.

This has taken a long time to come about, Asia was very resistant to Western efforts to trade with them. In the 1800's the Western powers forced Asia to open up to trade through military force and threats of force. But once the doors were open it became like a flood, Western ideas and material goods came to dominate and while there was resistance a new elite came to power by using those ideas and materials. Japan even tried to reject it's own history and culture and to become a European power. That only failed because the European powers rejected Japan's efforts as absurd.  

WWII brought about two contradictory outcomes, the Japanese conquest of Singapore meant the end of the European empires. It had broken the idea that Europeans were invincible, something that may seem stupid today, but wasn't when they had won victory after victory which had brought Asia under their control, either directly or indirectly. The second outcome was to reinforce that the West was superior. It's way of thinking, it technology, it's military force. The Allied victory in the Pacific was primarily American, which lessened the blow because while they were also White they weren't Europeans. They were a different power and the Korean War would push this outcome. By the end of the Cold War the American way had joined hands with the European way and had become the Western way. Victory in the Cold War again helped.   

But all of this had a cost, Asia willingly surrendered it's initiative to follow the West. It made Western technology, it reconfigured it's economy to fit into the West's economy, it followed Western culture. That's not to say that it didn't keep any of it's own, it did, but it followed the West to a high degree. To give but one example, traditionally brides in China wore red, in the West brides wore white. Today brides nearly everywhere wear white, because in the West it means purity, but traditionally in China white was the colour of ghosts and bones, in other words the colour of death. That is quite a big shift, but a shift that matches with the idea that the West does things better. 

Today Asia is confused, it policies have lead to the same social and demographic problems that the West suffer from. A low birth rate and a culture of sterility. In South Korea the birth rate is the lowest in the world at 0.9 births per women. I do not think that bigger is better, but it is a symptom of the Western disease. It has accepted the Western way of doing things, even when that is disastrous. It looks to the West for the next move, but we don't have a next move. We are also confused, the confidence that once was our hallmark is rapidly diminishing. Is Asia going to follow us down the transgender fiasco? It has followed us down the feminism one. The one saving grace is that Asia has not followed us down the mass immigration and multicultural path. 

However there is no evidence that Asia is capable of following it's own path. Ironically the lower IQ of other regions will protect them from our worst follies. But Asia has gained so much by following our lead and that will be their downfall, as it will be ours!


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1 comment:

  1. An excellent post.

    It's an awful thing to have to admit but the West has had a catastrophic influence on the rest of the world. And it has to be said that most of the really malign influences are coming from the United States - the US is aggressively pushing its cultural values on the rest of the globe. That wouldn't be quite so bad if the US was pushing the American cultural vales of a hundred years ago (those cultural values had a lot going for them), but the US has lost its way and American cultural values today are insane and highly destructive.

    I know that I often come across as reflexively anti-American but I'm not really. I have a great admiration for the US of the past. Seeing what has happened to the US saddens me deeply.

    And of course it also has to be said that even imposing good cultural values onto other nations is a dangerous thing. Asian nations would have been better off finding their own path forward. Cultural values that are positive don't necessarily work for all cultures.

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