By Jonathon Ludwig
It has become far too popular amongs North Americans to look cynically upon the developments occurring in Eurasia and Africa today under the guidance of China’s One Belt One Road Initiative as simply another form of imperialism which is preparing to replace the Anglo-American imperial order that has controlled the world order since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. China’s lifting of 800 million people out of poverty and emitting conditionality-free long term loans for large scale infrastructure projects abroad are brushed off by lazy minded western critiques as “cultural imperialism” under a new “Chinese imperial order”.
As popular of a critique as this might be in the west, it is the farthest thing from the truth and in this short report, the Canadian Patriot will uproot this belief in the hopes that the minds of citizens will recognize how our survival and long term happiness rests upon our embracing the new paradigm that China has offered North American countries in the form of what many are now calling the “North American Belt and Road Initiative” (NABRI) [1].
The Mushy Nothingness of Cultural Relativism
The rampant anti-Chinese bias pervasive in today’s society has a lot to do with the fact that people have been conditioned by a very messy world outlook known as “cultural relativism”. While attractive on the surface due to its promotion of “respect and toleration” for other cultures on the one hand and its condemnation of imperialism on the other hand, an ugly paradox sits below the surface of such ideology which ironically facilitates modern imperialism’s grip on the world. The paradox is most easily seen by exposing the core assumptions of reasoning that lay at the foundation of all cultural relativist theory which follows:
Assumption 1: Because every culture is unique and equally precious, no culture has a right to influence another culture since: 1) all influence could only be exerted by force of the stronger upon the weaker and 2) if such influence were to occur, it can only be to the detriment of the culture being influenced.
Conclusion: Cross pollination of cultures can never occur organically as there is nothing intrinsically universal amongst all cultures that can serve as a basis for their poetic, artistic, scientific exchanges. All culture is distinct and uniquely “true” only to the subjective personal experience of each culture and all cultural relativists “know” (or “believe strongly”?) that nothing subjectively experienced could ever be considered true beyond the perception of that culture in question. The very definition of knowledge is thus rendered totally impotent.
An embarrassing moral and political problem thus arises.
Since the “whole” of humanity objectively exists in the form of many people, cultures and nations spread along the surface of the earth in space and time, it is a fact of life that cultures will and must co-exist. The questions then follow: in what form will those cultures co-exist and how will the whole be defined? How can diverse cultures interact with each other in such a way where that each contributes the best of their own discoveries and poetic treasures with their neighbors if there is no such thing as “better or worse” (as everything is relative to personal experience and “feelings”)? How can any harmony of the parts relative to a whole exist if there is no such thing as “truth and beauty” (or inversely “lies and ugliness”)? How can one’s mind cease from turning into reason-free ooze?
Ugly Twins: Cultural Relativism and Imperial Geopolitics
It was blindly asserted by such modern “geopolitical philosophers” as Samuel Huntington and Bernard Lewis whose ideology exerts such powerful influence over western thinking today; humanity could only exist as a sum of infinitely divisible parts within a “multi-cultural mosaic”, at best ignoring each other and tolerating differences but never taking the time to understand or appreciate our sameness.
Huntington famously concluded in his influential book “Clash of Civilizations” that peace on earth is fundamentally impossible since Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are all fundamentally incapable of coexisting peacefully due to their distinct ideologies and intrinsic differences. This cynical perspective fundamentally denied each cultures’ parallel characteristics, and common discoveries clothed behind different appearances yet containing the same substance of Love, Justice, Truth, Beauty and morality shaping both the universe and human condition as a living expression of the force guiding the creative unfolding of that universe.
The Reality of Universal Progress
The annoying fact which such thinkers as Huntington and his followers choose to ignore is that the greatest renaissances and rates of progress recorded in the human experience never occurred by distinct cultural groups simply transforming themselves at random, or doing what ones’ ancestors did, but rather all periods of progress were shaped by the cross pollinating of the best ideas of various cultures, never just replacing one set of ideas FOR another, or adding one set of ideas TO another, but rather creating new wholes that are more than the sum of their parts and containing ever greater degrees of power to creatively discover and communicate truths of those universal principles guiding mankind and nature. This is the proper definition and purpose of “science” and “art” and their effects as technological progress as expressed across ALL cultures.
This was true when the Greeks Solon, Pythagoras and Plato ventured to Africa to learn the greatest philosophical and scientific discoveries of their day. It was true when greatest ideas of India and China cross pollinated during the Gupta Period. It was true when African/Greek ideas and modes of thinking were re-discovered and applied by the Jewish, Christian and Arab scholars who organized the great 8th Century Ecumenical Alliance of the Carolingian Empire under the leadership of the Caliph of Baghdad and Charlemagne. It was again a reality when the Abbasid Dynasty and the later Andalusian Renaissance when Islamic scholars such as Haroun Al-Rashid and Ibn Sina again collected the greatest poetic and scientific works of the east and west to reform of the Islamic world. It was also true when those same Greek/African/Arabic works were then transmitted to the Christian world in the form of the 15th century Florentine renaissance whose application saw the greatest rise in the potential population density humanity has ever experience (yet).
YES there IS a Human Civilization
In a 2003 letter on a Dialogue of Cultures published by Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the ultimate universality of the human condition could be understood only by first recognizing the influence of those artificial doctrines promoted by such mis-anthropes as Samuel P. Huntington:
After having tortured myself to read several such products by Samuel Huntington, Director of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University, I can definitely say that Mr. Huntington has a very ugly mind. Where more noble souls always look for the best and most beautiful in another person or culture, Huntington’s mind is divisive; he sees only conflict, violence, and difference. From his scandalous 1957 book The Soldier and the State, to his recent works on the supposed “Clash of Civilizations,” it is clear that he has a completely oligarchical mind, and the corresponding bestial image of man.”
Helga continued to elaborate on the mode of thinking established by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa which seeks always to look for the higher Oneness that transcends the Many (known as the Concordance of Opposites) which is a fact of both science, politics and culture alike [3].
Once a universally verifiable scientific principle has been discovered, it can be rediscovered and transmitted by any human being anywhere in the world. There is no such thing as an “African scientific idea,” or a “Western scientific discovery,” or “Indian scientific progress.” What one human being has discovered about the physical universe, he or she has conquered for the whole human race.”
With the universality of progress thus established, Mrs. LaRouche continued to solve the Huntington/Cultural Relativist paradox by addressing the political-economic effects of beautiful ideas which honest people of all civilizations yearn for:
This idea, that there can be peace in the world only if all nations develop their potentialities in the best possible way; this idea, which is deeply rooted in philosophy, must be the basis for a community of principle among perfectly sovereign nation states. Peace is possible, only if each nation is permitted to develop to the full its own characteristics, its own potentialities, and regards it as its fundamental self-interest that all other nations similarly develop to their maximum.”
The New Silk Road Manifests as the Basis for a New Global Renaissance
Now, 15 years after Mrs. LaRouche’s address, a new paradigm has arisen through the multi-cultural BRICS process, Shanghai Cooperation Organization and New Silk Road policies. This new paradigm is not based on a passive co-existence of parts as they are managed by a Hobbesian Leviathan, but rather on the commitment to common goals and principles of progress which all participating cultures aspire to. As Chinese President Xi Jinping stated clearly in his June 10, 2018 speech to the SCO Summit explicitly attacking the ideology of Samuel Huntington and implicitly the cultural relativists:
While we keep hearing such rhetoric as the clash of civilizations or the superiority of one civilization over another, it is the diversity of civilizations that sustains human progress. Indeed, mutual learning between different cultures is a shared aspiration of all peoples… The Shanghai Spirit is our shared asset, and the SCO is our shared home. We should, guided by the Shanghai Spirit, work closely to build an SCO community with a shared future, move toward a new type of international relations, and build an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity.”
This is not rhetoric.
This is the natural state of mankind whenever we allow our creative reason to actively shape the experience of our senses rather than allowing our blind senses to shape our reason. The collective experience of universal history and human progress testify to the fact that this outlook is the natural way human beings survive and grow within the universe whose Creator may have many names, yet whose law of moral and creative reason is the same. Whether one is Confucian, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, Hindu, or Christian, we are absolutely distinct from the other living beasts due to our capacity to discover, and change the principles of creation making our lives happier, more purposeful and ensuring ever greater peace and security for the generations to come after us.
Footnotes
[1] Most recently, Democratic Party candidate Kesha Rogers (9th District, Houston Texas) stated the following: “We should replace NAFTA with the North American Belt and Road Initiative (NABRI), as part of the global Belt and Road Initiatives, or World Land-Bridge, and the creation of a production-oriented New Bretton Woods international financial system.”
[2] While all cultures are precious, they cannot be said to be equal, as even the most adamant relativist would be hard pressed to sit in a canibal’s oven or letting his daughter’s genitals be mutilated in the pursuit of tradition.
[3] Think of a simple poem whose particular letters, words, and stanzas never contain the Idea of the poem as a whole, but rather the idea as a whole gives meaning to each stanza, word and letter.