A Superior Civilisation

Westerners are not supposed to recognise that they are living in a civilisation that is superior to other civilisations. But the smarter ones have trouble not seeing it, and in their more honest moments they admit the superiority of western civilisation, at least to themselves.

The great ideas of the West—rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law and equality under the law, freedom of thought and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy—are superior to any others devised by humankind. It was the West that took steps to abolish slavery; the calls for abolition did not resonate even in Africa, where rival tribes sold black prisoners into slavery. The West has secured freedoms for women and racial and other minorities to an extent unimaginable 60 years ago. The West recognizes and defends the rights of the individual: we are free to think what we want, to read what we want, to practice our religion, to live lives of our choosing.___CityJournal

One could characterize the difference between the West and the Rest as a difference in epistemological principles. The desire for knowledge, no matter where it leads, inherited from the Greeks, has led to an institution unequaled—or very rarely equaled—outside the West: the university. Along with research institutes and libraries, universities are, at least ideally, independent academies that enshrine these epistemological norms, where we can pursue truth in a spirit of disinterested inquiry, free from political pressures. In other words, behind the success of modern Western societies, with their science and technology and open institutions, lies a distinct way of looking at the world, interpreting it, and recognizing and rectifying problems.

...A culture that gave the world the novel; the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert; and the paintings of Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt does not need lessons from societies whose idea of heaven, peopled with female virgins, resembles a cosmic brothel. Nor does the West need lectures on the superior virtue of societies in which women are kept in subjection under sharia, endure genital mutilation, are stoned to death for alleged adultery, and are married off against their will at the age of nine; societies that deny the rights of supposedly lower castes; societies that execute homosexuals and apostates. The West has no use for sanctimonious homilies from societies that cannot provide clean drinking water or sewage systems, that make no provisions for the handicapped, and that leave 40 to 50 percent of their citizens illiterate.

Western civilisation has worked its way through periods of monarchy, world colonialism, battles of totalitarian ideologies that took themselves too seriously--and has mostly come out on the side of facilitating the healing of the world's sick, feeding of the world's hungry, and helping to enable the impoverished of the world to acquire a measure of comfort. All of that, and much more typifies the prevailing spirit of the achieving west.

The suicidal west is another matter, but I suspect we can deal with them. All the doomseekers, holy warmers, lefty dieoff.orgies, and the like. But we cannot allow the suicidal insiders to sabotage us in our resistance to the bloody outsiders who would take our freedom and our lives.