The Sources of the West's Vitality and Vigor: What can the Non West Learn from this?

It is now fashionable and faddish to pronounce the imminence of the West’s decline. This accrues from multifarious reasons-the most salient of which is the economic growth enjoyed by the non west over the past few decades. It is then inferred that the non west or the erstwhile colonized, on account of this economic growth, is‘re-discovering’ itself and posing a challenge to what has been called western ‘hegemony’. This non west is coming out of the torpor and lassitude induced by the injuries on its collective self by colonialism and presenting a frontal assault on the edifice that constitutes the west.

 By and large, it is the rise of China and India, or broadly speaking ‘Asia’ that is leading the pack and the‘re-emergence’ of the duo, it is held, will change the rules of the game-political, economic and cultural. This remarkable and extraordinary assertion and assessment raises a set of questions:  is it true? Is the non west really about to pose an insurmountable challenge to the west? Is the non western collective self viewing itself in a light informed by its very own principles and philosophies? Is this just another fad informed by ethereal and transient feeling of euphoria induced by stellar economic growth? Or is the west’s influence and legacy so deep and profound that its imprimatur on the world is indelible? If so, what accounts for this influence?

The answers to this question necessarily warrant a detour into the nature of the west. The west is not a geographical zone or a material entity with fixed demarcation lines and boundaries. Like Islam, it is very much a set of ideas and philosophies about the individual, society, economics and government. This set of ideas owes its genesis and provenance to that great intellectual ferment called the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. This ferment that underpinned the Renaissance set the tone for the primacy of reason over tradition and convention. This, in turn, led to the emergence of the scientific temper, the critical method and the attendant reorganization of society, state and the economy. The power of these ideas has been so compelling that these enveloped the entire globe over a time span that is very brief from a historian’s perspective.  This attests to the universalism inherent in these ideas. That these ideas emerged in a region of the world conventionally denoted as the ‘west,’ they are rather fallaciously held to the western ideas. The hegemony enjoyed by these ideas pioneered in the ‘west’ was later termed as western hegemony- an unfortunate legacy of imperialism and colonialism. The west is then not a geographical zone or a cluster of countries but an idea or a set of ideas. And it is this set of ideas that the world has been gyrating to since the past few centuries.  

The question of a challenge then does not arise. The region of the world designated and denoted as the non west is rising or emerging in the idiom and narrative framed by the west. Be it economic growth accruing from capitalism, the widespread acceptance of democracy as a legitimate form of political organization and government, the spread of the human rights , it is all ‘western’ in provenance. Further, the institutional setting in which the non west is framing the alleged challenge has been framed and established by the western idea. The rise of the non west is a tribute to the western idea. The ‘awakening’, in contradistinction to the west, attributed to the non west is then chimerical.  The non western collective self is not rediscovering itself. It is , to the contrary,  getting transformed. This transformation, at the risk of sounding tautological, is informed by the western idea. This attests to the strength, resilience and vitality of the western idea. The question is: what accounts for this?

The west’s resilience and the creative impulse underpinning it accrue from its philosophy. This philosophy is iconoclastic. It challenges. Innovation and the critical method are inherent to it. Seeking to transcend nature and its limitations, it goes beyond the obvious.  Doubt, a childlike curiosity about the world and how it works and an aversion to certainty are central to it.  Reason and logic are its arms and tour de force. And given the spread and success of this philosophy, it is eminently pragmatic.  The issue then is not of a challenge to the west and its alleged decline but its continued resilience, vigor and vitality. And the question is what can the non west glean and learn from this?

The ideas that inform the west are pragmatic and workable. The choice before the non west is how best to incorporate these into their systems not mimetically but in a creative synthesis and fusion. The diversity that defines the world is amazing and it would be a travesty if it were to dissolve under the ideational onslaught of the west. The trick is to arrive at a synthesis that maintains this diversity and at the same time is receptive to the ideas of the west. Success , ‘progress’ and efflorescence of the world may depend on this. Resistance to the ideas of the west is futile and counterproductive. It behooves on all to expend intellectual energy and arrive at a synthesis where both the west and the non west meet at a terrain informed by fusion. The alternatives are too bleak to countenance.