Office Hours
April 16, 2016
After a performance of A.R. Gurney’s Office Hours, there was a discussion which ended up defending the preservation of a Eurocentric curriculum based on the Great Books. To which I may have said something like “Western Civilization is greatly overrated.” This no doubt annoyed one person enough to write me an email – to which I replied:
Dear —
I apologize to you, and to everyone else gathered, for my cranky response to your persistent efforts to defend Western Civilization from savages, enemies of enlightenment – or, frankly, anyone outside the Judeo-Christian realm. I especially must apologize to X. I did not intend to denigrate his characterization of the noble impulses of those who founded this nation. I meant only to observe that what they actually created turned out to be, unsurprisingly, not so noble given the models they chose.
Having begun my childhood in India right after independence, I had a front row seat to a side of Western colonialism we don’t see much, fundamentalist missionary Christianity, the subjugation of other people by militarism, eugenics, racism, and the unrestrained greed for other peoples’ resources. It was clear enough as a child that something was profoundly wrong with the Great White World, and it has become even clearer as an adult.
But all this, to paraphrase Kipling, was “justified” because “our” [Western] values were superior to theirs. All this, to paraphrase the Desert Storm general Jerry Boykin, was justified because our god was stronger than their god. All this, to paraphrase the American eugenists who preceded Hitler, was justified because we are genetically fitter than the savages.
Western Civilization is the White Man’s Burden. Some of you think of it lovingly as a curriculum. The rest of the world sees it as a sledgehammer.
Even though I grew up hearing (of the Chinese) that “life is cheap in the East,” it actually turns out that the reverse is true. “We” were the only ones to have ever dropped The Bomb on humans – but, no matter, they were just Asians. “We” in the West are not ashamed to kill – in vast numbers – for money, ideology, or simply because we just don’t like you. Total up all the victims of all our wars of choice combined – they far exceed the Nazi slaughter of the Jews. And just look at our Western legacy of slavery, racism, and exploitation of the poor. Boil down all the cultural relics we have stolen or embraced – and it is little more than justification for violence perpetrated by supermen.
These are our real values, not the glowing words on a page.
We may laugh at Nietzsche’s philosophy, which express our secret values most explicitly, but any objective evaluation of our “Western” curriculum must conclude that this is a warped, ideological education that leads, paradoxically, to violence and immorality – no less than ISIS’ twisted version of Islam.
It has always struck me as incredibly strange that a Western world that embraces such violence and hatred for the weak and the “other” would also embrace a religion of peace and egalitarianism. Even if the Romans had not killed Christ and blamed it on the Jews, I think they would have had to kill him some other way. You just can’t have a guy like that running around espousing kindness and care for the poor and the weak.
The truth that the Spanish, English, Portuguese, Belgian, and American missionaries who came hand-in-hand with their colonizing forces know is this: Christianity is for the defeated. Conquerors always come with Bible in one hand and sword in another. It is always all about power: morality has little to do with it.
Indeed, the pre-millennial post-apocalyptic Christ riding in on his horse with bloodied sword is more to the liking of many Christians today. And where did they learn this version of their religion? From university graduates of the 19th Century with their classical Eurocentric educations.
And this is why I say: Western Civilization is greatly overrated.
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