0.6 The end of the west  (Page 19/19)

The problem is not limited to Islam. Huntington noted that “China’s Confucian heritage … [places] emphasis on authority, order, hierarchy and the supremacy of the collectivity over the individual…” African traditions of ubuntu locate the individual squarely in the context of society. Secularism is not a given. Fundamentalism has been on the rise in most religious traditions. Evangelical Christianity is gaining ground in Latin America, accounting for ten percent of churchgoers in Chile in 2005, and 25 per cent in Guatemala, and advancing in China, where there are about two million Evangelical converts a year. Established churches in Africa are losing members to the charismatic sects. Fundamentalist Buddhist and Hindu strains are said to be growing. The rise of religious radicalism seems to be linked to uncertainty. Belief in an omnipotent deity serves fearful men better than reason and personal responsibility. Reversion to religious literalism may be an understandable response to rapid change, incomprehensible complexity and socio-economic uncertainty.

There is, however, no reason for a conflict between civilisations if mutual respect can be restored. Islam is an Abrahamic faith with Hellenistic roots, and was the prime source of the European renaissance. For centuries, Muslims demonstrated greater tolerance of Jews and Christians, than Christians did of the other two faiths. Modern Arab scholars and political reformers have called for a renaissance embodying human rights as the cornerstone of governance, the empowerment of women and the development of knowledge societies. Coexistence and cooperation are quite possible.

But, as Hedley Bull reminds us, a global society must consist of:

“…a group of states, conscious of…common interests and common values…conceiv[ing] themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations to one another.”

We will only achieve this if we abandon our desire to impose our values by force, and cease to cloak the pursuit of our interests in moral garb. No ethical singularity is evident, or readily to hand. No people, no state, no civilization will always be right, morally or scientifically. We need to re-examine some of own premises and then work to craft the balance and the normative framework – the doctrine of limits to which Kissinger refers – without compromising our deeply held values, or requiring others to do so. Coexistence demands compromise, as every married couple knows. A willingness to craft a détente does not imply surrender, only recognition that the sustained application of force in a particular situation is likely to be economically, socially and morally debilitating. With the benefit of hindsight, imperial overreach is never seen to have been prudent or moral.

The title of this essay does not imply that the West will cease to exist, or that the values of the Enlightenment will not play an important role in shaping the future. It does suggest that we have passed the peak of the Western, post-Cartesian paradigm that has shaped the world since the end of the 18th century. The next hundred years will not be made solely in the Western image. We are reverting, as often in the past, to a search for new reference points that will allow us to share the earth. Three strands are emerging: a revival of faith, challenging, but not displacing, the post-Enlightenment paradigm of scientific modernity; the need to accommodate a set of different – and sometimes divergent – cultural claims and societal forms in a more comprehensive weltanschauung; and a syncretistic search for that which is common across cultures. Its roots may lie in the two core Abrahamic principles (love thy God, and thy neighbor as thyself), Aristotle’s Golden Mean, the Buddha’s Middle Way and Confucius’ imperative of Propriety, all of which address the need to balance individual rights and responsibility to the community, to enable societal harmony.

On the way to that point, competing belief systems are clashing, and will continue to clash, in the struggle to define the new synthesis. These will impact directly on many challenges, four of which are already evident: Energy security in the context of sustainable resource usage; containment of proliferation of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons’ technologies and revision of the nuclear non-proliferation bargain; the conflation of economic marginalization and cultural disaffection in parts of the world, leading to state failure and the strengthening of non-state actors; and the ethics of bio-technology, which also has the potential to divide secularists from religionists in all developed societies. All these issues pose strategic and normative challenges and will be hotly contested. A conscious decision to tackle them openly in an inclusive global debate, showing respect for the diverse perspectives such discussions will elicit, may help reduce tension and enhance understanding.