For 200 years, the West has been so dominant in the world that it's not really needed to understand other cultures, other civilizations. Because, at the end of the day, it could, if necessary by force, get its own way.
Interpretation
The West's dominance has led to a disregard for understanding other cultures, relying instead on its power.
Martin Jacques reflects on how Western dominance for two centuries has fostered a mindset where understanding other cultures is deemed unnecessary. This arrogance stems from the belief that military and economic power can impose one’s will without the need for comprehension or respect of different civilizations.
In practice
In a discussion about cultural awareness, one might quote Martin Jacques to highlight the consequences of Western hegemony.
The era when the United States was the dominant global power is steadily coming to an end, and it must find a way of acknowledging this and framing its ambitions and interests accordingly. Instead of claiming the right to continuing primacy in east Asia, for example, it should seek to share that primacy with China.
If you are white, racism is too easily ignored and forgiven, regarded as of burning concern only to the ethnic minorities, and therefore of relatively marginal significance.
We still insist, by and large, in thinking that we can understand China by simply drawing on Western experience, looking at it through Western eyes, using Western concepts. If you want to know why we unerringly seem to get China wrong... this is the reason.
Just six years into the 21st century, one can say this is not shaping up to be anything like an American century. Rather, the U.S. seems much more likely to be faced with a very different kind of future: how to manage its own imperial decline.
While the West has enjoyed overwhelming global power, its moral preachings have been legitimised, and in effect enforced, by that power. But as that power begins to ebb, then the morality of its actions will be the subject of growing scrutiny and challenge.
For 200 years, the dominant powers have also been the colonial powers: the European countries, the U.S. and Japan. They have never been required to pay their dues for what they did to those whom they possessed and treated with contempt.
All the stories are fictions. What matters is which fiction you believe.
Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
If in a country, most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, then this country can hardly witness harmony and stability.
Fare forward, travellers! not escaping from the past_x000D_ _x000D_ Into different lives, or into any future;_x000D_ _x000D_ You are not the same people who left that station_x000D_ _x000D_ Or who will arrive at any terminus,_x000D_ _x000D_ While the narrowing rails slide together behind you.
Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.
The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.
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