From Western domination to a dialogue of civilizations

There have been times when a dialogue among civilizations was seen as imperative. At the end of the First and Second World Wars, it appeared that the world was coming out of a long dark tunnel and the League of Nations and the United Nations were set up to facilitate such dialogue.

But the cycle of wars has continued until now and the threat of nuclear war, this time over Taiwan, still clouds the horizon. Are we approaching another such time when a dialogue of civilizations seems imperative?

It’s not just the wars in Ukraine and Gaza; we also face ecological disruption, increasing inequality, loss of community, declining physical and mental health, and the absence of credible sources of meaning.

Technology has connected us so that we are effectively one world. But how do we develop the mindsets and institutions that enable us to address our common challenges in a coordinated manner fed by diverse inputs?

The West: Enlightened or Barbaric?

Western leadership is being challenged. So are Western values. Yet, many Western people see their liberal civilization as the world’s best hope in the face of Chinese and Russian authoritarianism, religious fundamentalism and terrorism.

But for people of darker skin who have experienced Western imperialism and its aftermath, such claims have a hollow ring.

After World War I, the victorious Allies ignored the grievous hurt inflicted upon non-white peoples by racism and imperialism, refusing to support self-determination for subject peoples and racial equality. And when Asian intellectuals saw the fratricidal slaughter of two world wars, the credibility of Western civilization’s ability to tame violence and ensure civility eroded.

Added to the horrors of slavery, the genocide of indigenous people and the indignities of imperialism, there have been merciless bombings of civilian populations by the United States during World War II, the Holocaust in Germany and mass deaths in Vietnam and Gaza at the hands of American military technology. The West lacks the moral capital needed for world leadership, as Gandhi recognized over a century ago.

But would non-Western leadership and a world order based on different civilizational values be more humane? Not necessarily, in light of recent history. Japanese and Chinese peoples, humiliated and looked down on by Western imperial powers, once they become militarily powerful, support nationalist governments that have their own imperial designs.

Japan, after suffering unequal treaties and racism at the hands of the West, became an imperialist power in Asia. Its purported aim to drive the Western imperial powers out of Asia served as a cover for naked aggression. The Chinese government today takes a bellicose approach toward its weaker neighbors in Southeast Asia.

Under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative, it is trying to set up its own sphere of influence, justified, as in prewar Japan, by appeals to “co-prosperity.”

It was inevitable that non-Western peoples would catch up in terms of wealth and power once they mastered the technical mentality and its associated skills and established modern institutions. But such “development” has come at a high cost.

Rising nations like China and India have embraced rather than questioned the modern nation-state system whose motor is the ideology of nationalism. Just as in the West, moral considerations do not restrain the national pursuit of wealth and power.

Nevertheless, competition among nation-states for supremacy may be coming to a close. The stakes are too high, given the crises we face. Our present difficulties cannot be attributed mainly to Western leadership. Rather, they point to the limits of global modernity. Ecological breakdown, the threat of nuclear war and the absence of a moral and spiritual compass affect all modern nations.

Globalization, promoted by the liberal West, promises material abundance evenly distributed as the basis for lasting peace. But in a world of finite resources where humans must adjust to environmental limits, this promise can’t be kept. What’s more, the West, and the United States, in particular, expect China and India to make the greatest sacrifices for the sake of the environment.

The West has also denied Chinese, Indian and Islamic civilizations a larger political voice and greater cultural influence. This is a recipe for increased conflict since these civilizations together have large populations, seek a place in the sun, and are often motivated by resentment at the West.

Paths to inner awakening have been highly developed within Eastern civilizations, although never central to the lives of the majority. Their influence, though, evaporated in modern times as Westernization and the nation-state took hold.

Then, as admiration of the West wore thin and ethnic nationalism exploded, warrior virtues and a cult of masculinity took over. The demand for swift and decisive action made inner development and contemplation seem like unaffordable luxuries.

The code of the samurai was idealized in prewar Japan, while in contemporary India, Modi has supplanted Gandhi’s nonviolent and Nehru’s cosmopolitan outlooks with a muscular Hindu nationalism.

In modern times, politicized versions of Islam have pushed Sufism aside; at the same time, the nation-state has neutralized the influence of Muslim jurists and scholars.

Even in China, long ruled in accordance with communist ideology, Xi Jinping has introduced Confucian nationalism. This politicized Confucianism, justifying Xi’s authoritarian rule and top-down orientation, is a far cry from Confucian reliance on the building of moral character and appeals to benevolence.

Is it too harsh or too simple to say that economic development and political power have come at the expense of the moral and spiritual values that are an important part of Eastern culture’s excellence? After all, economic development can be achieved without rampant consumerism and ecological breakdown, and international politics doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game since cultural differences can be accommodated.

Time for intercivilizational dialogue

The alternative modernities to the Western model created by Japan, China and now India have succeeded in achieving economic development.

As Tu Weiming suggests, the Enlightenment values of instrumental rationality, freedom, rights, the rule of law and individualism are universal modern values, and so are the Confucian values of sympathy, equality, duty, ritual and group orientation. It seems that yang and yin, reason and emotion, left and right hemispheres of the brain are complementary.

If Western and Confucian civilizations compensate for each other’s weaknesses, they both would benefit from intercivilizational dialogue. The leaders and peoples in China and the United States don’t agree because they lack a key insight that is at the spiritual core of Eastern philosophies: real power is the ability to be aware of and to detach ourselves from our social and cultural conditioning. Then we no longer unconsciously react to the prompts of media, advertising and political propaganda, like puppets on a string.

By choosing our own destiny, we take the next step in human development. The wisdom traditions, still prominent in the East but also present in the West, prepare us to take this huge leap into the future.

Modern science, which has taught us much about human nature and its psychological and social dimensions, is now being integrated with ancient wisdom, greatly improving our chances of effectively dealing with the global crisis of modernity. But opinion leaders and their followers whose modern identities are built on gaining power in a zero-sum game must recognize that no nation can win the global struggle for power since, under present conditions, we all lose by its very occurrence.

Civilizations are interconnected and do not develop independently of each other. This was the radical conclusion of the American historian Marshall Hodgson, whose work in the 1950s and 1960s revolutionized the Western study of the Islamic world.

Equally important, Hodgson realized that in the wake of World War II, the world outlook of the West had to become cosmopolitan. As the rest of the world began asserting itself, scholars could no longer view these regions in Western terms. They had their distinctive cultures, religions and history which a narrowly Western perspective could not encompass.

Iran, in 1998, proposed the idea of a UN Year of Intercivilizational Dialogue, which was adopted in 2001. Muhammad Khatami, the President of Iran, stressed the need for a global culture, while also emphasizing the importance of being anchored in local culture.

Without dialogue among thinkers, scholars and artists from different civilizations, we would be vulnerable to “cultural homelessness.” He also asserted that basing international relations on the discourse of power could not continue. From an ethical standpoint, the will to power had to give way to empathy and compassion, without which a stable world order was not possible.

Discussions at UN headquarters in New York in 2001 were taking place at the same time that the attacks on the Twin Towers occurred. Nadine Gordimer, the South African writer who participated in the discussions, made the point that even superior weaponry did not make a country safe.

The question is whether we will engage in earnest intercivilizational dialogue before new catastrophes occur. Or will we hold onto the political and cultural status quo and ignore signs of the grave risks lying ahead?