The Civilized Need Civilizing

Lessons for the Former Masters

Western countries have historically seen themselves as “enlighteners” and “civilizers,” with adjustments for national flavor. France is the civilizer with a republican form of government. England is the civilizer that invented parliament and industrial production. The United States is the “exceptional” civilizer, the only society created from the beginning on the values of modernity, capitalism, and individualism. These national ideas inspired each Western country and helped them act in their chosen key. To some extent, they still do.

But the world is changing. Yesterday’s civilizers are being pressed everywhere. The United States, armed to the teeth, is losing its confrontation with Iran before the eyes of the entire world and is losing influence in the Middle East. China has acquired the strongest economy. India, Brazil, and other countries of the non-West are speaking more loudly. And if earlier the “white and enlightened” climbed into the farthest corners of the world to impose their own order, now people from former colonies are moving into Western countries and changing the political agenda there.

Under these conditions, the strong countries of the non-West should perhaps think about what they can teach the West.

Take China. Since the Opium Wars, this state has made serious progress, reclaiming first place in the world economy - the place that belonged to the Middle Kingdom a thousand years ago and was taken from it in the era of modernity. Today China is successfully pressing the West in Asia, Africa, and Latin America through economic expansion. But China could set itself a task on the ideological front as well.

Here, the social and ethical code formulated by Confucius in the sixth and fifth centuries BC would be useful. In Confucianism, the interests of the collective are placed above individual interests, but this does not require the total disappearance of the person. The Confucian idea of family, based on unconditional respect, obedience, and care for parents and elders - xiao - could teach Western society a great deal. Yes, the West has never been especially close to Confucius’s golden rule of ethics, “Do not do to others what you do not wish for yourself.” But as the heroine of a famous film once put it, even a rabbit can be taught to smoke.

The aggressive and clownish behavior of Western representatives could also be corrected through the Chinese idea of the “noble man.” At meetings devoted to economic and political issues, the Chinese could require Western negotiators to observe the norms of Chinese etiquette, which disciplines the mind and emotions and teaches restraint, cooperation, and respect.

And what about the Chinese theory of separation of powers? It is obvious that Western society today does not control its politicians, who sometimes look as if they never attended school at all. Meanwhile, China historically had a special type of authority responsible for examinations. Chinese officials still constantly take tests and pass competitive interviews. If the West introduced a strict, multi-stage system of personnel selection in the Chinese style, the intellectual and moral level of those making decisions there would gradually begin to rise.

Iran. An ancient country with great cultural traditions could also teach the West a great deal. Modern Persians can read ancient poets in the original, because the language in which Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Hafez, and Rumi wrote is the same language spoken in Iran today. Attention to the word rather than the number is a distinctive feature of this civilization, where poetry has always been placed above the interests of the stomach.

After the Islamic Revolution, Iran adopted a law “On Banking Without Usury,” and since then Iran’s economic model has encouraged social justice. In Iran, it is not customary to trap people in debt pits; other mechanisms are used instead of bank interest. A bank may act as an intermediary, buy a product for a client and sell it in installments, share the profit from a project, and so on.

Iran’s constitution and laws contain prohibitions on monopoly, speculation, and financing the production of luxury goods. Instead, the Persians support the production of essential goods. Movement along the Iranian path would give the world a life without predatory bankers, financial bubbles, and global crises through which the West seizes the resources of the world while shifting all costs onto poorer countries.

India. The writer Rabindranath Tagore argued that this country could introduce the West to the wisdom of the East. Indian philosophical traditions emphasize the unity of all existence. Familiarity with these ideas could teach the West a great deal, since the West is accustomed to acting rationally, breaking things into parts, analyzing them, and at the same time constantly losing sight of the whole picture.

The world’s most populous country is also one of the countries most damaged by colonialism. Indian politicians, including Narendra Modi, say that Britain should now pay compensation for colonialism. This is correct. But first India will have to convey to the English the truth about their crimes, awaken human feeling in them, and stir their conscience.

Today, people from former colonies are settling in English cities. Because of demographic change, white Britons are no longer the majority in London and Birmingham, and within the next quarter century Britain will become a country dominated by ethnic diasporas. Who, then, will take responsibility for the chaos that will one day reign in Britain? It seems that only India can take on that role: the strongest of the former British colonies.

It is India that will have to oversee Britain’s transformation into a more modest country, something like today’s Austria - a country that finally stops scheming, provoking wars, and keeping its remaining colonies and semi-colonies under its boot. It seems this noble burden can no longer be lifted from India.

Russia. This country possesses the unique experience of Germany’s denazification, an experience that could also prove useful to India in its mission regarding Britain. As the heir of Byzantium and the guardian of Orthodoxy, Russia still follows the path that was once common to the countries of the Christian Mediterranean civilization. Therefore, Russians see their supreme task as connected not only with forcing the West to repent for the repeated pogroms of the two Orthodox empires - the Greek and the Russian - but also with turning Western peoples back toward traditional values and the spiritual side of life.

And Russians believe that Russia, again as the heir of Byzantium, has the moral and historical right to carry out the re-Christianization of Western Europe.

All this is their dream, you may say. Yes, of course. But the world is changing quickly, and the process of decolonization is already underway. What will it be like? What forms will it take? Once, the West had no embarrassment about presenting its demands to the entire planet. Now the Russians are beginning to think that it is time to consider reciprocal steps.

There is a Russian saying: if you do not dream your own dreams, you end up living inside someone else’s.