The Eventual Belief in the Right of Western Ideals Over All Other Ideologies - Essay Example

The Rise of the West: Economics and Colonialism, to the Eventual Belief in the Right of Western Ideals over All other Ideologies Introduction Western civilization has grown to a point where the dominance of Western ideologies, economics, and materialism have spread to encompass the whole world. The essential excuse that supports this spread is the ideological political foundation of the Western world as it is now represented by the United States. However, the rise in power of the West has been primarily based upon the need for resources. It was not the desire to spread political ideologies that began the forces of trade as they swept across the planet. The need for resources to supplement those which were not available in the West led to the expansion of territories through trade negotiations and conquering forces. There were other advantages that the West had over many of the cultures of the world. The way in which hygiene habits were developed within the Judeo-Christian heritage created a foundation that led to longevity through the control of the spread of germs. Technologies emerged through the need to develop more efficient means to use lower levels of resources, which also was the result of the development of the devices of war in order to take what would not be willingly given. In addition, the weather had an impact on the creativity and the work that was possible in temperate zones which may not have been as easy in areas that were unendingly hot. Tropical climates slow down the worker and make it more difficult for creativity and energy to be expended towards innovation. However, one of the more central issues that have led to the rise in power of the West is the prejudice that has existed for cultures that did not meet the technological levels of the West so that it became permissible to subjugate them through slavery. Because slavery was used as a means of human capital, work became defined through the labors that most men would not have willingly accomplished. Therefore, slavery contributed to the rise of the West, the concept that some people were not as valuable as others allowing for the spread of capitalism and the emergence of industry and trade. Despite all of the reasons that the West has emerged, the way in which it has emerged is through broadening the overall knowledge that is considered common among the members of the Western cultures. Through broader overall knowledge, innovation and technological advancements can be made through different fronts so that progress becomes rapidly cumulative. As in the example of the 18th century and then again the 20th century, when knowledge spreads rapidly and becomes common, so too does the creativity that is involved with technological achievement. Through examining the number of ways in which the Western world has gained knowledge and used that knowledge to create technology through needs that were developed from economics and a lack of resources, the rise of the West can be seen as developing through the belief that knowledge is power, and power makes one right. Rise of Western Power Inequalities of Technology and Political Organization Diamond poses the question of why the rise of world power was accomplished in the way that it was attained. The first time period that he looks at is 1500 A.D., but quickly goes back further to 11,000 B.C.E. in order to level the playing field and discuss the nature of all inhabitants of humanity as hunter gatherers. At that time, all people were equal in technology and ambition, their formulation of culture based upon their basic needs and enacted through gathering what was needed and hunting the livestock without owning them. Changes began to create imbalances in power and wealth which lead to theories and beliefs of world domination. Diamond states that “While Aboriginal Australians and many Native Americans remained hunter gatherers, most of Eurasia and much of the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa gradually developed agriculture, herding, metallurgy, and complex political organizations” (16). The question remains centered on why certain cultures made advancements while other cultures remained content with their way of life. One of the answers that Diamond gives is that because of the climate of northern Europe, the cold weather that is more stimulatory, where the heat of tropical climates diminishes creativity and energy, there emerged a difference in innovation (22). Landes states that “I have noticed farmers and industrial laborers, and in fact all kinds of manual and office workers working in a slow rhythm with long and frequent pauses. But in the temperate zones I have noticed the same classes of people working in quick rhythm with great vigor and energy, and with very few pauses” (16). However, this does not explain the rise of the Egyptian empire, nor that of some of the lost civilizations that have been the result of the efforts of those in warmer climates. Most explanations that emerge from a Western point of view fall short of fully explaining why certain innovations emerged from some regions of the world while other regions never approached those innovations. Through political organization, material innovations, and opening up the borders to world trade, the West has become a dominant force in the world. The greatest downside of this is that cultures have been dominated and decimated in the name of crawling progress and for the insurgence of Northern European belief systems as they overpowered other less technologically advanced cultures. Another explanation that can be seen for its relevance to the spread of Northern European cultures over the world is that in Northern Europe there was a lack of sufficient resources to efficiently sustain agriculture and industry. In order to supplement those lacks, Pomerantz suggests that travel and trade were used to open up the availability of sustaining resources as they were imported into Europe. He states that “despite being less densely populated in absolute terms than either China or Japan, Western Europe faced comparably serious ecological problems…there was relatively little room left by the late eighteenth century for further extensive growth to occur without significant institutional change, new land saving technologies, and/or vastly expanded imports of land-intensive commodities” (212). Pomerantz goes further to explain that while there was more land to exploit for agriculture, the habits that held European agriculture to limits that it was unlikely to ever expand beyond. Thus, trade and opening up the world to exploration became a resource from which sustainability was attempted and attained. Therefore, it was through the inequalities experienced in European settlements that encouraged a more global point of view. In opening up the world through travel, in using non-indigenous resources to supplement those available within the ecology of the emerging West, the foundational ideologies of exploration and expansion began to take root. The West cultures began to form a belief that what was needed was theirs to take, thus making war one of the primary resources that were developed by Western societies. In addition, where innovation comes from war, and creates innovations that supplement social needs, a world is created that becomes more dependent upon technologies. In building a belief that expansion and gaining control of resources of other cultures was an appropriate response to a lack of resources within the regions of origin, the nature of dominance began to develop so that cultures who were contained and had the resources they required were subjected to the technologies built of desperation for finding the resources toward sustaining life. Disease and Hygiene One of the more viable answers to the way in which the Western cultures have emerged as global powers is through the Judeo-Christian heritage that has a profound connection to hygiene. In regard to longevity, “Clean water and expeditious waste removal, plus improvements in personal cleanliness, have made all the difference” (Landes xviii). Landes states that the greatest problem was in a lack of simply washing the hands before eating a meal. Through the ingestion of contaminants from the hands, people were dying at far higher rates from the time when this simple innovation of cleanliness took hold. Much of this can be attributed to the writings within the Bible that led people to live a more hygienic life. It is the development of cultural habits that can either positively or negatively affect the overall health of a region. Landes brings forward the example of AIDS in Africa which is rampant and spreading at a high rate, affecting both men and women equally, which is not the case in other regions of the world. In trying to find an answer to this problem, some of the solutions may be found in changing some of the behaviors if they can be identified. Landes states that “widespread and expected male promiscuity, recourse to anal sex as a technique of birth control, and the persistent wound of female circumcision (clitorectomy), intended as a deterrent to sexual pleasure and appetite” are some of the possible causes of the high rate of transfer between heterosexual partners in comparison to other parts of the world. In changing habits to accommodate a lower level of transmission of disease, a culture increases its position within the world through longevity and shifts in focus. However, getting people to change habits is a very difficult problem, especially when it is suggested by people from outside of a culture. Therefore, one of the ways in which the West has become more dominate in the world is through longevity that was determined through the acceptance of hygienic structures as important to health, as well as a more open acceptance of certain types of changes that would increase overall health. It is because of an underlying ideology of cleanliness that has been put forth through Judeo-Christina ideals that hygiene has been determined as an important aspect of continued elevations of modernity (Landes). This is not to suggest that cleanliness is not important to other cultures, but that the distinctive types of cleanliness that prevented the spread of disease was not a part of the underlying ideology of a culture. According to Mokr, “Access costs and tightness in the knowledge of health and the human body were and are to this day of critical importance. The diffusion of best-practice techniques may have led to better health and higher life expectancy even without rising living standards” (171). Interestingly, the costs of implementing household cleanliness habits and the desire to create a cleaner home were not proportionate in there effect on the entire household. Women were given the task to keep the home clean, their time allocation taking on the highest impact of maintaining a home that would thwart disease (Mokr 176). In defining the household through decision making and allocation of time, the dominance of the male began to emerge as his sphere of influence became more centered on the public, with the domestic sphere being allocated to the female. As the dominant and submissive positions began to emerge within the household, this dynamic was perpetuated through relationships with foreign cultures. The dynamic of the ‘white male’ dominance begins to emerge. Dominance and Subordination One possible solution to the prospect of the Egyptian rise in power and the problem of hot regions having less energy and creativity might be compared to that of the South of the United States which also has a more consistently warmer climate. Both regions developed much of their industry and innovations on the back of slavery. In both cases, slaves were used by those who designed and controlled the world in order to create achievements. Slavery may be the link between the achievements made in tropical zones in comparison to those of the North where the temperate zones made work an easier prospect. As an example, without slavery, the production of sugar in British West Indies colonies would not have been possible (Landes 120). Therefore, it must be acknowledged that much of the innovations of the 17th and 18th century were only possible because of the events of slavery. As industrialization emerged in Britain, the concepts of human capital began to become an even more important aspect of economic stabilization (Allen 356). Through the use of human capital, in believing that people were a commodity, the rise of industry was weighted on the use of human potential. The core of most advanced regions of the world, the nature of social structure that has predominated the way in which innovation has advanced technologies and political systems, is through the dynamic of dominance and subordination. Marx and Engel describe modern society as a place that has emerged from the tatters of feudal society, retaining the master/serf dynamic in order to have human capital and resources from which to gain power. Marx and Engel even note that those educated in higher pursuits, such as Doctors and Lawyers, are reduced to wage earners. The concept of working at a profession for the value that it contributes has been usurped by the relationship of production to exchange. Through the vision of Marx and Engel, one can see that there is a fragility of the foundation of modern wealth and power, the middle and lower classes seeking to rise towards the higher classes and burning away the foundation upon which capitalist society is built. Without the power dynamic of the dominant and subservience, the eventual collapse of the system is inevitable. Marx and Engel state that “every form of society has been based on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes”. Without this dynamic, in convincing the masses that they should become a part of the power that is developed from acquisition, the dynamic becomes in jeopardy. Power Centralized Colonialism In attaining world power, the two aspects of a nation that must be achieved is a state of innovation and leadership, and while this is a simplified duality of conditions, essentially they are the two most important aspects of ‘world power’ that lead to a rise in the state of a nation in the world. However, Lenin discusses the act of moving towards capitalist finance as one that will result in the partitioning of the world. Colonialism, the “scramble for colonies by all the capitalist states at the end of the nineteenth century” and was done with the intent of “to provide new markets for the goods produced in factories and mines” (Lenin). However, the result of imperialism is that monopolies are created, thus adversely affecting one set or group in favor of another set or group. Lenin discusses the nature of monopolies as they relate to the growth of power. He states “monopolies are most firmly established when all the sources of raw materials are captured by one group, and we have seen with what zeal the international capitalist associations exert every effort to deprive their rivals of all opportunity of competing” (Lenin). Monopolizing the resources of the world, as was attempted during the highest points of British domination, was the attempt to gather all the resources of differing regions, without much in the way of concern for the survival of those cultures, in order to further the interests of the British Empire. Rawat uses the case of Marx as an example for how Western views perpetuate the myths of dominance of other cultures as a good and historically profitable exercise. Marx, Rawat claims, suggests that through colonialism, Britain will eventually be seen as a liberator of India from the antiquated village system. Rawat discusses the perception that India was a stagnant nation and needed this type of subjugation in order to enter the modern world. The discussions made by theorists and philosophers such as Marx, McCauley, Jones and Hegel are centered on the advantages of colonialism influences and that the end of a village system of society had a positive impact on India. Rawat quotes Hegel who said of Africans that they were “human beings in the rough’ whose ‘consciousness had not yet even arrived at the institution of any objectivity”. From this, Hegel deduced that “The British, or rather the East India Company, are the masters of India because it is the fatal destiny of Asian empires to subject themselves to the Europeans” (Rawat). This can be seen as the pervasive belief by Western societies that it is their right and obligation to ‘save’ other culture from their lack of Western modernity in both ideology and structure. Knowledge According to Mokr, “The central phenomenon of the modern age is that as an aggregate we know more” (2). As this is simply stated, the modern human knows more about most aspects of life than that which the medieval man or woman would have known. Modern human knowledge has expanded to the point that most children have knowledge that is beyond that of the medieval mind and have a much broader world understanding as well. As periods of time have passed an knowledge has been broadened to become common within a culture, innovation and technology has taken large increases in short periods of time. The industrial revolution can be discussed in terms of knowledge. According to Mokr “the industrial revolution can be interpreted in light of the changes in the characteristics and structure of knowledge in the eighteenth century and the techniques that rested on it” (33). While this is a simplified point of view, it engages the nature of the events that turned the world from a primarily agricultural based economy towards production through industrialization. Mokr maintains that the advances that came post 1750 were the result of a broader overall knowledge that humans of the West had attained that was beyond that of the overall base of knowledge that had occurred previous to this time. United States Centrality Power appears to only be centrally located in one place during one time period. The power that the United States has held was at the expense of a dwindling British center of world power as colonialism began to fade. Arrighi states that “the rise of the US system could only be understood in relation to the demise of the British system” (ix). However, upon closer inspection, Arrighi defined the transitions in power in regard to expansions of financial capital systems, evolutions of how the world economy was focused and through changes that occurred towards new levels of capital finance structures and evolutions. The concept of the ’long century’, as discussed by Arrighi is found in terms of three events: the financial expansion at the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century were the US rose and Britain faded, the materialistic expansion of the 1950s and 1960s where the US began to dominate the world in trade and distribution of goods, and then finally, as the end of the 20th century has come the fading power of the US is signaling the rise of a new financial expansion (Arrighi x). Capitalism Capitalism is a difficult concept to define. In its purest form, it is a completely independent form of economic structure that is intended to depend on its own power of cyclical supply and demand. However, the truth of capitalism, as it is utilized, is far more complex. Capitalism becomes defined by its essence, by the spirit with which it is applied (Weber and Parsons 47). From the Western perspectives: Man is dominated by the making of money, by acquisition as the ultimate purpose of life. Economic acquisition is no longer subordinated to man as the means for satisfaction of his material needs. This reversal of what we should call the natural relationship, so irrational from a naïve point of view, is evidently as definitively a leading principle of capitalism as it is foreign to all peoples not under capitalistic influence (Weber and Parsons 53). Human acquisition has developed as the end, rather than the means to the end, thus life is devoted to earning potentials that provide for that end. This drive to acquire, this need to support materialism rather than life, is one of the core supports that drive the capitalistic system through the consumer aesthetic. According to Wallerstein, Capitalism has been the core of why the Western world has remained the center of power in the last 500 years. Wallerstein does not suggest that capitalism is the system that is often seen as the product of noninterference by political systems. He argues that “Capitalism is based on the constant of absorption of economic loss by political entities, while economic gain is distributed into ‘private’ hands” (Wallerstein). While most civilizations that have endured have either fallen apart economically or evolved into an Empire, the West has primarily been developed through the nature of capitalism as defined by its unity with government. In this case, it might be seen that the government is a tool of the capitalistic system, a resource that supports industry when it fails in order to provide stability. However, through Marx and associated philosophers, the concept of capitalism has been placed at the core of a great amount of controversy. Social theory often debates the contrast between ideology and materialism (Giddens xv). Through materialism, the West has become a power that has swept across the world, extracting elements of cultures and stripping away traditions of lives, restructuring political systems, and accomplishing within the world something that had never before been accomplished. Through a course of about 500 years, the nature of life was transformed into a life that is based on a spreading ideology, but also on an economic structure that is based upon the dehumanization of labor (Schwalbe 151). It is possible, as brought about by Wallerstein, that the reason that the West has been able to rise and sustain its existence is because capitalism has extracted human experience from sustaining life, thus created ’entities’ (in the form of corporations) that substitute for political and social structures that require human ideologies. Time and Civilization In a discussion on time by Thompson, the nature of how the day is divided is shown to be concerned with the methods from which work was considered. As an example, the day might be measured by the needs of cattle, the day divided by the relationship between how the cattle are attended to the passage of the day. The human internal clock, the nature of the needs of the cattle, the movement of the sun across the sky, all come into harmony to create the day of someone who is concerned with the needs of cattle. Through the advancement of modern society, as the needs of the modern work day, week, and year have changed, the concept of the way time is used has become very different. As an example, summer vacation from school was created to provide for the agricultural societies so that the summer could be devoted to helping on the family farm. Even now, when those needs are no longer relevant to most of those who have children going to school, the tradition remains and children judge the passing of their years by the cycling of the school years. This extends to the relevancy that it has to how the year is calculated by their parents, and becomes completely irrelevant to those who do not have children. Time is the result of how it relates to the obligations that a person develops. To someone who freelances work, as an example, time is relevant to the end deadline and what is required to get to that deadline. To someone who works a daily job from the traditional nine to five, or some other configuration of time, the work day is broken up by timed breaks and lunch periods, with the time it takes to transport to and from work calculated in how a day is designed. The importance of the concept of time as it relates to the rise of the West as a power in the world is that time has become a tool of dominance. In the industrialized world, and now even in the technological world, work is done, not when the task is complete, but when the rule of the clock has decided that a person is released from their obligations to work. A person’s day is not measured by the completion of tasks, but by their ability to give time to their employers. This has become a part of labor practices because of the nature of production. Production has replaced craft as a means to an end, the portion of the craft given to any one worker never fulfilling the completion of the whole. In this shift in satisfaction, the need for material wealth has replaced the need to find satisfaction in work. Gandhi’s beliefs in regard to the imposition of Western ‘civilization’ on his own country was that it was imposing a set of beliefs on life the stripped the humanity of human existence from the inhabitant. He described the world of England by saying “This civilization is irreligion, and it takes such a hold on people that those who are in it appear to be half mad. They lack real physical strength or courage. They keep up their energy by intoxication…Women, who should be the queens of households, wander in the streets or they slave away in factories…it is eating into the vitals of the English nation”. The importance of considering the way in which time has been restructured to be immaterial to the task and the way in which Gandhi has framed the nature of ‘civilization’ as it has been presented to India through English rule, is to understand the way in which the West has structured its beliefs to feed into the concept of conquest. Conclusion A sad consequence of the way in which the rise of the West took over much of the world is that the natural evolution of different cultures has been disturbed by the consequences of war and colonization. Traditions and belief systems have been decimated by the influences of one culture upon another. As the ideologies of the West have overwhelmed much of the modern world, great losses have occurred as entire civilizations have been restructured, put into slavery, or simply wiped out. The idea that the resources of the rest of the world, whether it be in the form of raw resources, food staples, production possibilities, or human capital, were open to the West through conquer, whether it be war or economic power overwhelming a culture, has been a foundation for a false sense of superiority for the West. The concept of ‘might makes right’ suggests that having the power to subjugate gives permission and supports the rightness of that action, has dominated Western concepts of foreign relations. The rise of the West as a global power, even as its base has shifted from European center to the United States, has evolved through a number of circumstances that have encouraged movement throughout the world. Exploration and the need to acquire resources pushed Europeans to contain the world within their monopolization of material goods. Technologies and the subjugation of cultures that were not developed, through the use of slave labor, led to the destruction of any emergent possibilities in cultures that might have moved towards an economy that was not based upon Western ideals. Because of an increased longevity, a more temperate climate, and increases in broad common knowledge that have stimulated innovation, Western technologies and industrial growth has dominated the world. Ideologies developed with this expansion that informed the European spread of domination, which was naturally taken into North America when it was developed with a European population. The United States, with vast resources and land mass in order to develop economic advantages, was the natural heir to the power that the British Empire had amassed through colonization. The West still remains the defining example of ideology, materialism and economic structure in the world. Works Cited Allen, Robert C. The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective. Cambridge Mass: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Print. Arrighi, Giovanni. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times. London: Verso, 1994. Print. Diamond, Jared M. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York, NY: Norton, 1999. Print. Gandhi. M. K. Hind Swaraj and Indian Home Rule. Gandhian Institute. 2011. Web. 2 June 2011. Giddens, Anthony. Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Max Weber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Print. Landes, David S. 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