{"id":27344,"date":"2013-04-01T12:00:21","date_gmt":"2013-04-01T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=27344"},"modified":"2018-10-13T11:39:39","modified_gmt":"2018-10-13T10:39:39","slug":"why-does-the-west-fail-to-understand-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/04\/why-does-the-west-fail-to-understand-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Does the West Fail to Understand Reality?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Economic power: the West being overtaken by the Rest, with growth rates for the USA, Euro zone and Japan being respectively 0.1, -0.9, -0.2 (Italy -2.8), against Brazil 1.4, Russia 2.9, India 4.5, China 7.9.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn1\">[i]<\/a> BRIC.<\/p>\n<ul style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li>Military power: the West being defeated by the Rest, now paying dearly for the missing peace treaty and normalization with North Korea; with the Vi\u00eat Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq anti-terror wars lost, and Libya and Mali, Syria and Iran immune to &#8220;military solutions&#8221;;<\/li>\n<li>Political power: the West as minority, the UN General Assembly rejecting 138 to 9 with 41 abstentions the US veto approach to Israel;<\/li>\n<li>Cultural power: non-Western models of development. like Buddhist and Muslim, Japanese and Chinese add to &#8220;Western universalism&#8221;;<\/li>\n<li>Social power, focused on domestic power and increasing social inequalities expressed as indignation, Occupy and Arab Spring, now focused on the ratio between CEO and average worker income: getting it down to at most 10, from 500.\u00a0 See the Swiss referenda.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We are already far into a world economically dominated by BRIC, with S added for South Africa to make the message clear: South-South-South against not even a billion living in the world Northwest+Japan; militarily with only a question of time before the first drones hit the USA, as follow-up to 9\/11, and whoever engages in extrajudicial executions; key decisions are taken by BRICS (CELAC for Latin America), one day possibly making a counter-UN without veto; culturally seeing their diversity as a major asset, drawing on all cultures.\u00a0 They may also draw on the two major economic systems, not like Pope John Paul II being anti-communist and anti-capitalist, but in favor of both, an antidote, down there, an antipode to the Pope: China&#8217;s capi-communism.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">From the Age of the Merchant, with bankocracy rampant, to the Age of the People, democracy?\u00a0 Much good for the world in this, but not for a West clinging to everything they had and maybe losing it all.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">We live accelerated history these years, with slow beginnings gaining momentum, and then quantum jumps.\u00a0 And yet all of the above was easily foreseen; also such events as economic crashes, the 1989 fall of the Soviet Empire from the Berlin Wall on, 9\/11 2001; before that the 1973 oil crisis, the 1978 Iran revolution, Tiananmen 1989.\u00a0 Predicting, not to prevent, these were too strong forces; to prepare for the inevitable, not to be overtaken by surprise?\u00a0 How come?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Victim of its own success?\u00a0 Ostrich burying the head in the sand? Incapable of taking bad news? Addicted to economic growth and military superiority, and to quasi-intellectuals addicted to power and money? Letting economists and others survive despite their flagrant mistakes?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">All of the above.\u00a0 However, there is a factor in the deep culture missing in Western science based on Aristotle and Descartes <i>Discours de la M\u00e9thode<\/i> from 1637.\u00a0 That method has four rules: nothing is true unless proven to be, divide problems into many parts, move from the simple to the complex, ensure that nothing has been omitted. Aristotle adds theories, reproducing the propositions by deduction from axioms, freezing reality between data from below and theories from above.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">What emerge are detailed descriptions connected by theories. What is missing is an understanding of the totality that has been subdivided, and dynamism, time.<a title=\"\" href=\"#_edn2\">[ii]<\/a>\u00a0 These are rules for understanding a static world.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Daoism, holism and dialectics, is age-old.\u00a0 The Western defenses:\u00a0 holism smacks of New Age, dialectics of Marxism, both of China. Holism means rich description, many variables like global economic, military, political, cultural <i>and<\/i> social, not only one of them.\u00a0 Dialectics means force and counter-force within each holon.\u00a0 A push generates a counter-push, they may find an (often uneasy) balance, but typically the counter-push generates a counter-counterpush, and so on.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">The holon changes, not linearly, but in waves, or better, spirals.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take the economy: low real economy growth may cause high growth in the finance economy upsetting any balance between the two: <i>crash<\/i>.\u00a0 Look at Dow Jones growth relative to GDP growth for a prediction.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">MDCs relate to LDCs, not just &#8220;more developed&#8221;; a holon. If one pushes into the other, do not be surprised if there is a counter-push.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take the military: an attack generates counter-force, resistance, guerrilla, terrorism, nonviolence; there could be a balance or a turn- around with the first attacker resisting.\u00a0 We are not there, yet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take the political: deciding over others leads to forces deciding over themselves, freedom, autonomy, independence, communities; one day deciding over the former &#8220;deciders&#8221;, to quote Bush.\u00a0 Not there, yet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take the cultural: imprinting on others, even cloning self in others, generates strong counter-forces, the search for identity in old or new cultures, balance; or turn-around. We are not there, yet.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Take the social: &#8220;turn-around&#8221; is revolution, the <i>Knecht is Herr<\/i>.\u00a0 There is a balance point closer to equality. Like maximum ratio 5:1.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><i>Push on one, and the counterpush may also be in the others.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">From this perspective the West is programmed for three mistakes:<\/p>\n<ol style=\"text-align: left;\">\n<li>Failure to understand a relation, not just a difference.<\/li>\n<li>Failure to predict counter-forces, seeing pushing as blessing the attacked with Western=universal values; without asking.<\/li>\n<li>When the counter-forces grow stronger trying to beat them for a <i>status quo ante<\/i>, not searching for acceptable balance points.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Solutions?\u00a0 Surprisingly simple: search for the balance points.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Economically: by controlling finance economy speculation, and by meeting emerging economies with exchange for mutual <i>and equal<\/i> benefit.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Militarily: by solving economic-political-cultural conflicts.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Politically: by meeting as equals, co-deciding, co-creating.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Socially: by reaping the benefits of more egalitarian societies.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Leave the static world with the West as cause and the Rest as effect. Others tried that in history. They are no longer with us.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><b>NOTES:<\/b><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref1\">[i]<\/a>. <i>IHT<\/i>, 25-03-2013.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a title=\"\" href=\"#_ednref2\">[ii]<\/a>.\u00a0 Change came in physics, Leibniz, Newton.\u00a0 But in human-social affairs West lives by Newton&#8217;s First and Second laws&#8211; things stay as they are or change with the push&#8211;not the Third law about a <i>reactio<\/i> to any <i>actio<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">_____________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><i>\u00a0Johan Galtung, a professor of peace studies, dr hc mult, is rector of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tpu\/\" >TRANSCEND Peace University-TPU<\/a>. He is author of over 150 books on peace and related issues, including \u2018<\/i>50 Years-100 Peace and Conflict Perspectives,\u2019<i> published by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tup\/\" >TRANSCEND University Press-TUP<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><em>Editorials and articles originated on TMS may be freely reprinted, disseminated, translated and used as background material, provided an acknowledgment and link to the source, TRANSCEND Media Service-TMS, is included. Thank you.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are already far into a world economically dominated by BRIC, with S added for South Africa to make the message clear: South-South-South against not even a billion living in the world Northwest+Japan; militarily with only a question of time before the first drones hit the USA, as follow-up to 9\/11, and whoever engages in extrajudicial executions; key decisions are taken by BRICS (CELAC for Latin America), one day possibly making a counter-UN without veto; culturally seeing their diversity as a major asset, drawing on all cultures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,195,65,51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial","category-conflict-resolution-mediation","category-anglo-america","category-europe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}