Clash of Civilizations

Here is Samuel Huntington's Foreign Affairs article, courtesy of American Future.

Some mental notes:

In 1793, as R. R. Palmer put it, "The wars of kings were over; the wars of peoples had begun." This nineteenth- century pattern lasted until the end of World War 1. Then, as a result of the Russian Revolution and the reaction against it, the conflict of nations yielded to the conflict of ideologies, first among communism, fascism-Nazism and liberal democracy, and then between communism and liberal democracy [...]

These conflicts between princes, nation states and ideologies were primarily conflicts within Western civilization, "Western civil wars," as William Lind has labeled them [...] With the end of the Cold War, international politics moves out of its Western phase, and its center- piece becomes the interaction between the West and non-Western civilizations and among non-Western civilizations.

This is an evolutionary theory of civilizational development. At some point in the past, most likely around the Enlightenment (both English and Continental), Western civilization branched off from the rest of the world and started evolving on its own. Western evolutionary fitness jumped ahead of the rest of the world, diminishing the influence of non-Western peoples on subsequent Western evolution. The West became its own genus, and species and sub-species began to form. Selection based on fitness started in earnest.

Now think about this. Imagine a graph, with the 'y' axis being evolutionary fitness and the 'x' axis being time. As human societies went forward in time, the plot-lines multiplied as more permutations registered into the system. At some point in time (at some 'x'), the plot-line of the West branched off and over the others. The West became more fit (had a higher 'y' value).

Soon, the plot-line for the West began to diversify. Nation-states based on ethnicities were the first segmentations to select against each other. When this selection reached a climax, its artificiality was exposed and supplanted, as another segmentation value, one that was much more fundamental, emerged. This segmentation value had greater primacy, and therefore greater effect, on organizating selective interactions. This segmentation value was, of course, ideology. Selection thereafter measured the fitness of values and first principles. It was a paradigmatic battle for the soul of Western civilization.

The winner was the English Enlightenment, which draws on much of the intellectual history of Western civilization, while adding empiricism and pragmatism as support beams. Out of all the differing ideologies that competed in the West for paramountcy, this one tracked closest to reality. By claiming derivative status to the integral world, it gained a power and adaptability that other paradigms couldn't hope to match. It's fitness ranked highest, and it won. See Gaddis's The Cold War (commenting on America's pragmatism and adaptability as our greatest advantage).

If one were to make a prediction, it is this: the rest of Western history will be one of absorption and refinement, but not one of paradigmatic crisis. Troubles may spring from forgetfulness, but these troubles will simultaneously be mnemonic devices, spurring memory and solution. If we go adrift, reality will bring us back. Experience is a harsh task-master, true, but the West is the best of all students. It's our approach to the lesson that makes us great. It's our way of thinking, even more than what we think, that gives us all the advantages.

And so the West's inner selection process reached a conclusion of sorts, and by 1991 America and everything she stands for reigned supreme. The smoke barely cleared from the air when the selection process began anew. The Western branch--which had been disengaged and largely immune from non-Western influence as its various permutations played out their own selective process--was once again drawn into the broader game of civilizational evolution. A refined West was once again going to be tested, but this time to find out if fitness within the context of the West translated into fitness within the context of the entire world.

Huntington goes on:
Civilization identity will be increasingly important in the future, and the world will be shaped in large measure by the interactions among seven or eight major civilizations. These include Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, Latin American and possibly African civilization. The most important conflicts of the future will occur along the cultural fault lines separating these civilizations from one another.

Think about the evolutionary paradigm mentioned above. I believe much of the interaction between civilizations are cross-pollinations. I also think the West has considerable advantages that other civilizations do not.

Much of the viability of non-Western civilizations will depend on them incorporating the values and first principles of the West, if not the trappings. Where Western first principles irreconcilably contradict the first principles of the host society, clashes and conflicts will manifest. Huntington is right about that.

But what will these clashes look like? I think they will resemble the intramural competition of the West--an interior selection of identifiers and ideologies--rather than the inter-civilizational warfare that Huntington predicts. The ideological battles of the 20th century will replay in new forums, as cross-pollination leads to mutations that then compete within their particular civilizational arenas. The fitness of the West will create a gravity that pulls others towards it, and much like the matter that gets burned off when approaching a black-hole, the unfit paradigms of each civilization will get discarded the closer the society gets to Western norms.

Of course, if the society itself is fundamentally contradictory to Western values, thereby precluding any successful mutations from appearing within its sphere of influence, it will burn up entirely as its contact with the West increases. Islam comes to mind here, with its embrace of revelatory truth at the expense of empiricism. If Islam is to survive, its ontology will have to burn up in the atmosphere. Like Christianity, its ethics and moral lessons might be salvageable. If this is not the case, however, not even a kernel will survive.

The clash of civilizations is fundamentally a non-Western evolutionary imperative. Survival for these various spheres depends on the evolution of their first principles, not on the evolution of ours. Most will peacefully integrate, some will not. Their ability to adapt will be determinative (our imperatives have less to do with adaptation than with consolidation). If they do not allow their culture to mate with Western values, in the words of Huntington, they will "disappear...[to be] buried in the sands of time."

In the end, our responsiveness and adaptability will win out, because tied to it is a fundamentally fit cultural identifier that is able to absorb all the rest. Huntington writes:

People have levels of identity: a resident of Rome may define himself with varying degrees of intensity as a Roman, an Italian, a Catholic, a Christian, a European, a Westerner. The civilization to which he belongs is the broadest level of identification with which he intensely identifies.

He says that Western, Islamic, Asian, etc. are the highest levels of identification, so most of the clash will take place on this level. However, what is Western if not the rather simple concept that we are all human, all in it together? That uber-identification flows from the West, and specifically from the Enlightenment. It is a fundamentally inclusive identifier, capable of absorbing all others that do not directly contradict.

This is where I think we are going. When we all move forward together, it will be under the banner of Truth--empirical, not revelatory.