by Jayant Bhandari, Acting Man:

A Failure to Integrate Values

The only region in the world that has proactively tried to incorporate western culture in its societies is East Asia — Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, which was a grotesquely oppressed, poor, Third World country not too far in the past, notwithstanding its many struggles today, has furiously tried to copy the West.

Western culture, which developed organically over at least the two and half millennia, starting from Greco-Roman philosophers, is not easy to duplicate. This culture requires thrift, honesty, hard work, liberty, individuality, dispassionate reason, objective justice, loyalty, honor, stoicism, a desire to rise above oneself, and many other factors that perhaps cannot be seen or isolated but must be absorbed subliminally in all their complex interactions. These are reflected in social, religious, and political structures of the West — the three independent branches of government, the rule of law, compassion for others, charity, family system, etc.

The West and East Asia, including China, comprise a mere 2.5 billion people.

“The Rest,” the Third World, comprises 5 billion out of 7.5 billion people on the planet. The cultural factors underpinning the West sound like clichés until one who gives up political correctness for the truth starts to see that the Third World, despite its several centuries of interactions with the West, simply fails to understand them.

The Third World is blind to what makes the West a civilization. It is as if the Third World cannot rise above animal instincts — craving for food, power over others, sex, and for the material.

Over several centuries of western colonization and missionary activities, an attempt was made to infuse Western cultural factors into the Third World. It was only a marginal success. Since the third world countries achieved political independence, without constant Western involvement, all has been lost. Christianity became voodoo, and the political system became a tool for tribalism and tyranny.

Focus on Materialism

The Third World is tempted by only the physical products of Western society. They are pleasure-centric. When they look at the West, all they see is entertainment, an easy-going lifestyle, freedom from responsibility, liberal governments, free health-care, consumerism, social welfare, and good salaries. They either want to be economic migrants to the West or copy the Western lifestyle, without an iota of an understanding that they must have wealth-generating capabilities first and that there is something at the foundations of Western culture.

The lure of materialism [PT]

There is a virtual absence of reading habits in the Third World. If they end up reading Ayn Rand, all they see in it is a drama. They fail to see a non-collectivist philosophy embedded in it. If they watch movies like the Matrix, all they see is a sci-fi movie. They fail to see any suggestion that they might be getting indoctrinated by their leaders.

What they see as the culture of the West from their narrow worldview is primarily the culture of its lower-class and the entertainment industry.

European colonization and technology were a massive relief for the Third World, but merely temporary, for they never learned or even saw the principles that made such prosperity possible. All the advantages, given the mindset of expediency, have been frittered away, through wars, excessive consumption, malinvestment, an increase in population, etc. The Third World’s craving for the material, unconnected with morality or reason, means that it forever wallows in poverty, oppression, and at the edge of a Malthusian crisis.

Nothing it has is sustainable, neither capital nor institutions. All surplus gets consumed or frittered away — it takes a higher calling to invest and preserve the surplus. Everything has a pull towards decay, disintegration, and degradation.

European colonization provided a rational system for the Third World to operate in. Christian Missionaries tried to infuse reason among the inhabitants. In desperation, they sometimes even removed children from their families. All these attempts made only a marginal difference.

Departing European colonizers transferred Western tools — technology, institutions, etc. — to the democratically elected bodies of the Third World. The tools were subverted and used for tribalistic purposes. And democracy enabled the most irrational, base elements to rise to power.

Ease of travel made the situation worse by enabling the emigration of the best people from the Third World.

Post-Colonial Regression

Since the departure of European colonizers, the Third World has been culturally and institutionally regressing to its pre-European dark ages. None of these societies are sane, stable, or sustainable by themselves. It is the fear of America that keeps their tyrants behaving better than they otherwise would and their nations from falling into forever wars between their tribal units.

Read More @ Acting-Man.com