| We are witnessing the rise of the Orient and the relative
decline of the West, according to many experts. Some have even called the next
hundred years the "Pacific Century" (which includes the Middle East in "East").
Is this just a cyclical pattern of around 500 years where East and West
exchange leadership roles? Or is
something else at work here?
If the age of superstition was followed by the age of
monarchy, then the age of religion and now the age of science, it may be that
Asia's rise is the natural result of a maturing scientific era.
In the West,
Plato's competing ideals of the good, the true and the beautiful became a
cultural battle between religion, science and art. For much of Western
Civilization, an uneasy alliance of art and religion faced off against an embryonic,
youthful and later rebellious scientific world.
In this environment, technology
evolved in a place mostly free from, and even angry at, the philosophical
values of religion and art.
As some Manhattan Project scientists lamented, they
were so focused on how to make an atomic
bomb that they never seriously considered how it would be used.
Asia took a different path. Science made friends with
religion, especially Taoism and Confucianism, and it also made an ally of art.
Indeed, through art Buddhism and Shinto were brought into the fold.
The two
results of this were that science grew very slowly, befitting a society where
the experts were simultaneously monks and artists and scientists, and it
developed in a space where morality, strength and symmetry were all considered.
When imperialism and more recently communism and capitalism gained ascendancy
in the Orient, these new "ideals" took the place of the older religions. They
were not enemies of science and technology, but its natural allies.
Science
became the tool and passion of the state, and technology is seen and pursued as
an extension of cultural values.
In short, in a world where science is all grown up and in
its prime, the West is uncomfortable with it while the East has fully embraced
its values and methods.
As Jillayne Thomas pointed out in the late 2000s, for
example, every member of the Chinese politburu was an engineer by trade. The
West, in contrast, is run by professional politicians, attorneys and some
businesspeople.
Once in a while a medical doctor gets elected, but as engineers
and physicists are fond of pointing out, medicine is a practice rather than a
hard science.
What this means to the future remains to be seen. Science
has become so specialized that in our day that elected officials need full-time
experts just to interpret what the experts are saying, and the regular citizens
are left dependent on politicians, media and other specialists just to tell us
what the experts are telling the President that the experts are saying the specialists
have said.
In such a model, top-down political systems like those that
predominate in the East are more efficient in dealing with and overcoming
challenges and in envisioning, planning and implementing grand visions.
If America is to compete in such a world and also maintain
its freedom, the regular citizens need to take our education a lot more
seriously.
A simple read of the great books of civilization,
including but not
limited to the scientific works, will make all the difference (this is
not too simplistic--these readings are deep). Otherwise, the Eastern
model of top-down
government will continue to gain power and ascendancy.
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