The War Against Tao

By Spencer, January 28, 2009

Subtle Power Transitions, part II: A reality check of the cultural Narcissism of the West

I have lived as an Asian in Europe for more than 30 years, long enough to become 100 percent assimilated to Western culture. I have no contact to my country of origin and only rudimentary knowledge about or experience of traditional Asian culture of any kind.

My thought processes are immersed with Western thinking, from studies of enlightenment philosophers to active participation in human rights work.

Still, it is difficult not to notice that my identity among native Europeans is often connected to the color of my skin, and my experience in life both peculiar and particular to the ethnic group I belong to.

Travelling abroad, often to places far from the path of the tourists, I have talked to people of all walks of life, from virtually homeless people in the most poverty stricken regions of the world to top politicians and officials in charge of constructing the infrastructure.

Everywhere in the East, not only in the Middle East, I have found that the concept of Westernization is a dominant expression. As kind people may be, as interested in tourism and diplomatic relations, in trade agreements and develpment aid - and the material privileges associated with Western culture - Westernization is often a concern among people who rely on belonging to a more or less paleo-conservative culture.

How emancipated are Western women?

In the essay The Stock Market of Opinion I asserted that reform in the rest of the world, outside the direct control of Western leaders and ideals of governance, is not necessarily as attractive as we would like to believe.

Not only does progress come with side-effects, such as the eradication of clan society, the intricate social structures and the collapse of the tightly knitted nuclear family. The side-effects are usually more devastating to the very fabric of a society, the less developed the national infrastructure.

The Great Disruption of the Western societies were largely post-industrial. The protests of suffragettes was only turned into the emancipation of the Western woman, when the industrialized society experienced an urgent need for workers to man the production systems. And still, equality is far from implemented in the West.

Women must still accept generally lower wages in compentition with their male counterparts. A small fraction of business leaders are women. USA, just now celebrating their first African-American president, has yet to elect a female president.

In comparison numerous other countries around the world have been governed by female leaders. In Rwanda the parliament has gender quota. It may seem like a type of affirmative action, but if you cut to the root of the issue, it could also be simply a logical way to secure a reality-adequate representation.

Relative dependency on clan structure

There are two reason I bring up women's emancipation: The first is, as I also hinted in part I of this series, that women's emancipation in deeply paleo-conservative is on the agenda of UN, human rights organizations and Western development and reform programmes.

This is a matter of conscience, not necessarily practicality. The redefinition of the role of women in Western societies have had a number of unfortunate social consequences, as well as many well documented benefits, individual and social. If, however, we choose to ignore the negative side-effects, we may attempt to export a social disaster to developing countries.

Secondly, in order to persuade or convince a non-democratic nation of the relative benefit of introducing democratic reforms, you have to address the power-brokers. In most cases the power-brokers will consist of men, simply because the "natural" state from which even modern society has risen is a male-dominated society, for good and evil.

The vast majority of people in the world not only live in paleo-conservative societies, but they are ruled by a paleo-conservative code. They not only associate themselves with this code, romantizing it - purity, good morals, courtship, marriage, fidelity, respect of elders, of authority - they also depend on it.

Any society exists in an equilibrium between formal welfare institutions and informal aid systems. With less of a social infrastructure provided by government, individuals are left with the dependency on the clan structure. The disruption of the clan structure has unavoidable and often tragic social consequences, and effects of a speedy implementation of Western ideals and principles may be as devastating to a nation as the military invasion of Iraq.

The role of clan society in the West

Progressives in the West need to remind themselves of the historical processes that has led to the degree of emancipation they currently experience. They must acknowledge it is a process interwoven with scientific breakthroughs, accelerated technological development and economic growth. And it is a process not undergone without serious social side-effects.

Also, progressives must acknowledge the unavoidable element of paleo-conservative ideals in any society, even the most advanced. No government or free market system can adequately supply all social needs, and even when it does, in many cases it is compensation for social functions which ought to be provided freely among people through natural bonds, in familiesand in local communities.

This is not to say that discrimination of women should be accepted, because it is "natural" given the woman's role in procreation. Emancipation may, to some degree, be a construct, an artificial order. But so is the concept of personal safety, which basically circumvents the natural act of selection, and so is permanent residence, citizenship, loyalty to a nation- or even freedom.

Neither is it a way to say that racist or homophobic discrimination should be applied or even accepted, because it is "natural to man". Many an order instituted by nature herself are profoundly inhuman - and the history of civilization is often a history of curbing the destructive aspects of nature, in the outside world as well as in our own biology.

The question is not whether or not an order is "natural", but whether or not it is desirable. And in order to be desirable on a social scale it must submit to two principles: Ethics and practical sustainability. No society can, in good conscience, implement laws or actively promote structures that erodes the safety and stability of the society.

Clan society is not, per se, something evil. To say so is similar to saying that any kind of government is evil, or that any kind of government intervention in the free market is evil, or that free market is evil. It implies that the paleo-conservative virtues, from keeping your word over reverance between a husband and a wife to correcting children is evil.

The paleo-conservative element of conservatism is what provides the longevity for conservative parties and for religious institutions alike. Archaic concepts like duty and honor are the non-ideological aspect that makes it virtually impossible for the opposite wing to eradicate conservatism, just as the raison d'etre for progressive movements are empathy and solidarity, without which the clan structure evolves into monstrous authoritarianism.

Biology and the relativity of Freedom

It is crucial that the West is past these observations, accepting the duality within its own structure, before it reaches out to other nations, encouraging or compelling them to address human rights deficiencies in their own structure. As much as I loathe dicatorship, and as much as I am appalled by unjustified incarceration, torture and other civil rights abuses, I have to acknowledge that government oppression is simply a mechanism to uphold a certain order.

To replace an undesirable order - for dictatorship does represent a threat outside its national borders and a challenge relevant to more than the conscience of idealists - one must possess an order that provides better conditions for the people we offer it to. We also have to keep in mind that the oppressive order is natural to the general conditions of a troubled region.

To the West, often, our system of governance appears to be better in every concievable way, simply because we are accustomed to the privileges of our way of life and to the associated problems. We willingly sacrifice other benefits for our freedom, for instance accepting the relativity of romance and the dual-core or multi-core family structures proceeding from it.

We are individualists, and as such we can more easily accept the alienation from our peers and the estrangement of local communities, even when this is a factor in the growth in street violence and sexual crimes. Because we are individualists, measuring ourselves on our accomplishments and requiring of each other to be able to stand alone, we fail in the reality check when comes to certain social developments in our own neighbourhoods.

Seen from the outside, however, the West is ridden with social problems of a both horrifying and utterly tragic kind. To others more freedom may be desirable, but it may also be an impediment to their most immediate needs. Freedom in the Western sense may even be a privilege individuals are willing to sacrifice for other values or very tangible rewards: What good is freedom, for instance, if it is freedom to be unemployed, poor, lonely and unable to support a family?

Loneliness, lifestyle diseases and social disorder

For most people I have met in the West freedom is an absolute value, a good you may possess no matter how disenfranchised or dispossessed you are in other aspects of life. It is inconceivable for Europeans how immigrants can be disgruntled no matter what conditions they are subjected to, because compared to many of their countries of origin they experience material wealth and political freedom beyond comparison.

Likewise, for Americans, it is inconceivable how people who have enjoyed the hospitality and freedom of America, can turn their back on it in bitterness.

The blind spot for Westerners is that life, to the vast majority of people - and even to themselves - is not comprised of ideals or abstractions, but concrete needs. Many of those needs are not even easily identifiable by the individual, but encoded in our DNA. To most people protracted relationships are not only an ideal, but a necessity - in pop songs we have a reflection of the agony the mind experiences, when love is denied or betrayed.

To the vast majority of people on Earth there is one need that exceeds any civil or human right: The need to form a stable family and succesfully secure the offspring, as much as it is possible during the lifetime of a parent. Being unable to engage in or complete this project is the ultimate tragedy, far harder for the mind to accept than even the untimely death of self. The death of even one loved one induces a more severe trauma than the loss of, say, individual freedom. In many situations in life, regardless of the level of political freedom we experience, we are deprived of freedom and manage tomove on.

To a certain extent collective existence, being social in the broadest scale of the word, is an inescapable element of human life. Aristotle said that only a god or a beast can live alone. The West, as I have observed it, is a society haunted more than anything by loneliness. As such more people are deeply unhappy, far more than there are people who would admit so. Addictions, depressions, council centres, eating disorders, suicides, crime waves and many other individual and social disorders testifies to the limitations of both material wealth and political freedom when it comes to provide happiness.

The revolutionary breaking point

It is my assertation that the revolutionary breaking point, the exact point when men let loose their latent aggressive nature, is when it is inconceivable for a majority to provide secure circumstances for their family. The level of political freedom does not matter, as we can see with for instance the growth of organized crime in USA and the quasi-political riots in France. The level of wealth does not matter, as we can tell by the well-educated Islamic terrorists venturing out on a suicide mission. What matters is the ability to succesfully secure your offspring, and for this purpose men will sacrifice every other privilege fighting a threat - real or merely percieved.

This is why dicatorships, from Chinese one-party hegemony to Islamic fundamentalism, can sustain relatively stable nation-states. They may be in violation of Western code, of The UN Declaration of Human Rights or even any reasonable code of ethics, religious or secular. It makes little difference, as long as the majority perceive it as a better chance to carry out their biological urge to procreate, from which nature herself grants us the reward of a sense of belonging and fulfilment. It is also why the Western Project does not sell better than it does.

Any process to reform other societies in our image, so to speak, must carefully decide its pace: Too fast and we may destabilize societies almost as fast as through military invasion and sow the seeds of new types of fundamentalism and rebellion. Too slow and we may miss our historic window of opportunity. What is even more essential is that we understand how words mean different things in different languages. When we talk about "love", it is a vastly different concept than love in other cultures. When we talk about "freedom", it may bring tears of joy to our eyes, while others - struggling with practical matters of survival - may not be particularly enthused.

The revolutionary breaking point not only lies another place than Western intellectuals assume, but it is located on a completely different axis. Relative economic depression in the former Soviet Union contributed far more to the landslide democratization of Eastern Europe and Eurasia than fierce rhetoric or diplomacy. A few years after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the general life expectancy grew with ten years in former East Germany, which indicates that simply the prospect of better living conditions invigorated the public health: That is what you can achieve by offering people hope.

The urgency of the Western Project

To be very clear about it, democratizing the world is primarily a security concern for the West. Democracies are not less prone to go to war than other regimes, but they are less likely to go to war with other democracies. There are side benefits, such as increased stability due to the lower tendency to accumulate power on a very small elite and the automatic rotation of leadership. The heuristic process in a democracy is also vastly more faceted than the logically limited exchange of ideas in a non-parliamentaric system.

With the growing threat from still more powerful weapons of mass destruction, from nihilistic ideologies or desperate religions, from national and cultural conflicts furthered by climate changes, ressource scarcity, and the disruption and dislocation of millions of lives, the call to develop a global agenda centred around universal humanistic values must be the top priority. There is simply no way to curb a global pandemic, if it is limited to a few member states in a limited club of nations. There is no way to combat global warming, if great nations like China and USA bail out. There is no security policy in the making to account for the potential of one rogue nation to inflict dysproportional damage, particularly with the development in biotech.

Democracy is also, for as much as you adhere to enlightenment values, an idealistic pursuit: It is a case for the betterment of the general living conditions of every individual.

Still, we need to relativize our own attitude to democracy. It is the primary lesson from the invasion of Iraq: Democracy does not matter very much, when every other social privilege is sacrificed. As I wrote in several articles during the operation:

"Dead men cannot vote."

I take the liberty not to mention Hobbes' thesis that anarchy is worse than oppressive government, because it is a ground rule in political science and as such a lesson the intellectuals in favour of the doctrine of destabilization ought to have taken in high school.

The Golden Mean of the Disparity Gap argument

When communicating Western ideals and "packaging" the Western Project to the rest of the world, we must understand that we are not communicating with cultures reaching for transcendence and easily swayed towards the most ideal solution to collective problems. If a safe and sustainable future for mankind is truly our agenda, and "democracy" is not simply a pretext for supremacy, we have to convince literally billions of individuals, who are each and everyone more concerned with their own life struggle and whatever options they have to improve their position in the biological contest.

This means we must convince people not that they will have more "freedom", but that freedom is useful for their purposes. We must offer hope, not of a better world in general or even a world in general, because with a limited lifespan of 50-90 years the average human simply does not have the energy to care. This does not mean that the average world citizen is apolitical. What they care about is simply policies that improve their lives from the very practical position they find themselves in.

The disparity gap matters, to a certain extent, because the wealth and success of the West is an encouragement, an incontestable selling point and a subtle promise of reward. But the disparity gap cannot be widened beyond a certain point. The revolutionary breaking point is operative, also on the international scale, and too much disparity will invoke the imagery of a contest impossible to win or even participate in by peaceful means. The revolutionary breaking point is, essentially, relative. From Cain and Abel to Qadhdafi and Idris I, gross disparity has always served as the trigger on the revolutionary gun.

The West needs to take care of its own business, keeping its edge in commerce, R&D and military power in order to be able to persuade anyone at all. The financial crisis and subsequent recession sets the main priority in short term perspective. The perception of superiority, however, cannot only be superficial or based on material values. Without the moral superiority of the West in terms of rule of law and civil rights the "democracy package" becomes hollow and essentially impossible to "market." Washington's new project to repair its standing in the world addresses this PR crisis.

Finally, the West needs to find the Golden Mean of the Disparity Gap, trading off wealth and privileges for a cultural export of governing principles. That is what Barack Obama's Quid Pro Quo Statement, "we will extend a hand, if you will unclench your fist" means. It is simply bad politics to help a hostile nation build up its defenses, because old grudges may be evened out with new weapons - bought from the surplus derived from development aid or beneficial trade agreements. It's called the problem of connected vessels, when governments allocate funds previously required for maintenance and development of infrastructure to military purposes, simply because they can.

The breaking of the Western monopoly

I initiated this essay by saying that below the War on Terror lies a deeper cultural conflict or misunderstanding, which you may call the War on Tao. The West has grown wealthy on a foundation of exploitation, neglecting its codependency with the rest of the world. In a sense it is now paying dues to this codependency, making amends for past historical abuses by way of development aid and charities. As noble as it is - not any succesful "empire" would feel obligated to this or even perceive it as a vision or a security concern - it is also required, not as much because the West must be burdened by a guilty conscience, but because acknowledging codependency is a requirement in order to restore a fundemantally disrupted balance.

The imbalance to the world was fostered in another age of globalization, one characterized by conquest, imperialism and ressourcetheft. It was an age in which slavery was commonplace, racism doctrine and wars between nations more frequent than today. Today's globalization is one of commerce - it is the age of the merchant, in many ways, with more than half of the world's top economies being multi-national corporations since the year 2000 - and of communication. Aggression between nations still exists, but it is most often expressed through economic measures, from the trade barriers of Europe to the industrial espionage of China.

Nevertheless, the breakdown of the Doha Rounds reflects the severe impact of even economic warfare. It has victims, and every life lost detracts from the Western deposit of international trust - just as every human rights violation detracts from the credit of any nation outside the band of democracies we commonly label the West. The Islamization of large parts of Africa can be directly ascribed to laggy involvement in Africa by the West - one which, to some degree is justified by the inability of African leaders to curb corruption. This, again, can largely be attributed to the total collapse of infrastructure due to post-imperialist stigma, and it is - in a historical sense - only natural that other players such as Middle Eastern religion and Chinese investment appear on the scene.

The active promotion of Western principles of governance is an investment in future security. The active promotion of democracy, development and human rights is in also a prerequisite for economic growth. In many cases we have seen Western investments lost due to political instability, just as vast sums of money allocated to charity have been lost, sucked up by corruption, African or Western. The West is accustomed to viewing itself through the lens of self-congratulation: We automatically perceive our own system and efforts and ethics as superior. The reality is that the Western monopoly is about to be broken, and with increased competition for ressources, reverse colonization and foreign cultural export, the West has to provide a relatively better option and not just a set of theoretical ideals.

The first step is to take of the blinders and realize that other cultures, without our elaborate systems of checks and balances, do produce some quality of life, some safety and stability for their citizens, some progress and hope - and some level of justice, in spite of numerous injustices. Just like at the heart of the hyper-mediated, fully industrialized, high technological information society, we are still archaic beings, shaped mostly as human beings through a long era as hunter-gatherers, dependent on more than materal goods and abstract freedoms - and deeply desiring continuity in our relations, intimacy and trust in personal matters, belongingness to a culture with credible values.

And that's coming from a progressive who is far to the left of the middle, even by European standards.

In the first article I used Islamic fundamentalism as an example to highlight the Patriarchal Equilibrium. This article explained the basic principles of revolutionary tendencies from the perspective of behavioural science and materialistic gap analysis combined, examining the Western delusion of supremacy and the subsequent tendency to project error. The next article in this series will further examine more or less specific aspects of the male psyche as they determine subconscious micro-choices in the way people choose governing structures.