On 17/07/2018 09:08, Michel Bauwens wrote:
what do people think of this narrative ? It seems to me a welcome re-balancing of the stories many of us grew up with. Denis
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *r kanth* <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> Date: Mon, Jul 16, 2018 at 11:39 PM Subject: Fwd: The West To: Michel Bauwens <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>>
*The West*
/A View from Without*/
*/Europeans has been , for centuries, a ruthless, aggressive Empire, leastways as viewed by many of itsNon-European subjects: Cansuch Empiresdo good? It’s possible: but virtues achieved via vicious means may not be perceived/received as such by its victims;much like slaves, who might baulk, at being asked to considerbenign aspects -if any- of Slavery. /
/More importantly,the glories of European achievements are all too well eulogizedby Europhiles, and fill libraries upon libraries, the subject matter of legend and lore;less so, criticisms of this kind, whence I feel no compulsion to be ‘balanced’ in what I say. This is,unabashedly, a Critique: buta verifiable one; neither specious, nor casuistic. /
/And why do I articulate it? As in the current, highly visible, struggles against racism and sexism, the historical iniquities of Empire and Colonialism must be kept in focus: lest we forget. Of course, as a ‘Gandhian’ ( at least , in some regards) , forgiveness for such sinsis assumed, here, as an article of faith, ipso facto: the tale being told with reason, not rancor./
**
For at least four centuries, the world has lived/struggled under the European heel/harrow.
The latter did not streak ahead of the former by virtue of its prowess in /any field/ , but one:
/War./
And /genocide/, wherever/whenever it was meet.
The primary, if not sole, motivation was - in summary abbreviation - /commerce/.
/It is so still:/ with/finance/ and /war /the only really robust, active agencies , today, within the NATO ambit.
Amongst the European tribes – yes, /tribes: /it’s not just Africans and Native Americans who were tribal –the Anglo Normans pulled head of others (notably France and Spain and the Dutch: later, Germany, Italy, /et. al.)/ , again largely by virtue of their /martial /superiority.
At least in the first instance , this/intra-Euro/ superiority of the Anglo-Normans did /not/ stem from /technology/: naval technologies were , arguably, broadly similar between France , Spain , and England.
But, rather , I venture, from sheer /valor/ , (/i.e., /readiness to die, take improbable risks, for King and Country) , irrepressible aggressiveness, anddogged, superhuman persistence against, often , impossible odds.
Unfathomable /Heroism/, even of the idiot kind (/vide/ ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’) was a sort of a /cachet./
Ataste, nay /zeal,/ for war, one might say,unequalled by any - other than a few martial tribes of North West of India, no less valiant, violent, and aggressive.
Lands , labors, minerals, and ideas/techniques were, thereby, willy-nilly, extracted/appropriated wherever/whenever possible: with resisting natives decimated without ruth, or compunction.
Pirates and plunderers, in short.
*
/Via/ such lofty means/ mechanisms, Europe, the /poorest , least endowed of the continents/ (/imp. caveat/: /Europe is NOT a continent,/ but rather a /sub-continent/ like India) amassed the enormous ‘wealth’ ( /as defined/understood withinan EM calculus, that is)/ it has now.
Now it is easy to see why the empires of India and China did not go about pillaging the rest of the world.
They had resource blessings in abundance /within their own bounds,/ so much so that in the 17^th century India and Chinaaccounted , perhaps, for about 50% of world’s GDP.
India (/i.e.,/ its various /empires,/in aggregate terms) was /fabulously/ wealthy: and China was thriving.
/Which is why Europe –with its chronic poverty/dearth of resources , specially specie - made a bee-line for it/, like Senor Columbus,buccaneer, pirate, and mass-murderer: to catastrophic effect.
In less than two centuries /of outright marauding/, the regionof India , home to amongst the oldest /continuous/ civilisations ( preceding Greece by thousands of years) on the planet, was reduced to its beggarly ‘third world status’ , when the Brits finally left , mid-century, after making their due, if quite forgettable, ‘contribution’ to the sub-continent.
/Needless to add , the enrichment of Europe was related to the imposed destitution of the Non-European world./
Arguably, ancient India, long beforethe European (so-called) ‘Enlightenment’, madecontributions to arts, scienceandphilosophy not merely comparable to pre-Enlightenment Europe , but ineffably superior, and far, far prior.
Yes, tonote, purely /en passant/, but two indices, they had something close to flushing toilets in ancient Mohen Jo Daro: and calculus was invented not by Messrs. Newton and Leibniz, but in India (Kerala), from whence it travelled , unacknowledged , as usual, to Europe (/btw I use ‘India’ to refer to the original civilization that inhabited the sub-continent, not to the modern(ist) political entity that bears that name today/), centuries later.
No , they won’t teach that bit of trivia (!) in most of the European world, even in academe, like so much else.
/It doesn’t fit the narrative /
In much the he same way, Hegel described Africa, of his time, as at the very ‘infancy’ of human history incapable of civilization: in effect denying that Egypt was a Black , Nubian , civilisation , a denial that racist Europe maintained late into the 20^th century.
At any rate, most European languages ‘derive’ from Sanskrit, and the dominant ‘Christian’ ideational prepossessionof Europe today - real or phony - also hails from India: /Christianity , arguably, is an offshoot of Classical Buddhism,/ whose mighty philosophical sweep extended from the Mediterranean to Japan, in its heyday .
Of course, Europe swiftly ‘/modernized’/ classical Christianity (after its ‘enlightenment’/) via/ the so-called ‘Reformation’ , to make it ‘fit’ its zeal for /capital accumulation/ (by repealing various restrictions placed upon it by the Catholic church, as, /e.g.,/ in Canon Law).
Interestingly, /no major (or minor) religion ever evolved within Europe/, unless a heartfelt /Mammon worship /is ascribed that status.
I happen to think that significant.
*
Once launched ,and stabilized,18^th century on, commerce and industry , within European empires, expanded (after theirown native, peasant populationswere suitably dispossessed) /via /technical and commercial innovations , even as moreconventional expropriationsfrom its colonies continued, enhanced ( as to this day)
The Anglo-Normans pulled ahead of Europe in productive and military technologies, until their German cousins( eventually to be , if only grudgingly acknowledged , world leaders, in such areas ) caught up , and surpassed them, by the end of the 19^th century, much to their chagrin.
The so-called ‘World’ Wars were no more than /European Wars of Empire/, that dragged in the ‘world’ (Japan was the only /Non/-European empire to be so involved, much like Ottoman Turkey, long prior).
This, of course, is an imminent possibility even now.
War is , and has ever been, to European rulers both an important amphetamine and aphrodisiac, aside from being the lead activity/sector for generations.
Indeed, I would venture, /if they had their will/, NATO would have branch offices in New Delhi, Beijing , Seoul, and Tokyo.
*
The origin of European /Racism -/the clear scourge of our times - lay simply in their relatively facile domination of the world for centuries ( a casual reviewof ancient Greeks - asthe great Martin Bernal notes - who had much interaction with Eastern ideas , does not betray any overtly/racist /ideology of superiority).
After all, if you have subdued the peoples of this world , at nominal cost/effort , the belief may follow,like the US, in ‘manifest destiny’: or, like Europe (and not merely amongst Nazis) ,in a ‘master race’ of ‘supermen’.
Of course, the ‘cure’ for such pretensions is the turn of history itself: by any reckoning, China, India, and Russia (perhaps in that order) are the emergent ‘super powers’ of the future(again using Western indices).
And they will indubitably tone down any and all fantasies of white supremacy - like Trump’s boast of making the US ‘great’ again -not by any direct action, but by their very (countervailing) presence.
/Thus does ambition check ambition, and diamond(s) cut diamond(s)./
So, /Euro-Racism/ will , over time, succumb, harmlessly,tothe rank of petty chauvinisms that characterize(d) most so-called ‘developed’ societies on this planet.
Genocide, also, will, as such, will/might gradually recede from history.
*
So, can we then conclude that all’s headed to the good here, despite the manifestiniquities of our times?
No.
I fear not.
In fact, far from it.
The EM legacy is now wantonly embraced by the entire world (including China, India , and Russia).,/via/ generations of overt regime change, clandestine subversion, and endless propaganda.
Whence we may wellhave the same game on, as we do at this time : /of continuing, untrammeled , societal and ecological destruction -/ albeit, with brand new players.
As a /curiosum,/ this was an outcome at least partially- if not entirely correctly - foreseen by Marx in his final years (of a ‘socialist’ Europe undermined by an emergent , ‘capitalist’ Asia).
/In effect, we are all Europeans (i.e., EuroModernists) now./
Doubtless, as the /ancient regime gradually /slips, in its economic and political reach , it will turn to a hypertrophic enhancement of its /military /capability, a fact already visible in our times.
Faltering dragons may be more aggressive than normal ones.
But it will not prevail:/save in the intent (if any) to blow up a world it can no longer rule./
Will it?
Remains to be seen.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, with unusual compunction, in a relatively more circumscribed era:
‘/when I consider there is a just god in heaven, I tremble for the fate of my country/’.
Of course: If he merely /trembled /then, might he not be /shuddering/ now?
I wonder.
REFERENCES
Kanth, R./Breaking with the Enlightenment/, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997
_______/Farewell to Modernism/, NY: Peter Lang, 2017
*[©R.Kanth 2018] *
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