Encounter

 The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and the unbelievably polarized and nuance-less debates about it not only in the Middle East, but even in the Northern world is shocking. It is a good illustration of my recent posts about polarization. It shows that a polarized thinking which overrides even intelligence, is spreading from the Third World to the developed countries. Here I will look at the conflict from the viewpoint of differences between civilizations.

 

As often described, civilizations run in parallel, just displaced in time. They go through the same overall phases in eg. religion, philosophy, arts and political organization of society. With respect to the latter we may in chronological order call them

1 Feudal/religious societies 

which are ruled by a rural aristocracy and the higher echelons of the clergy.

 

2 States of estates. 

The single states are internally united under centralized rule. Cities and their third estate become important.

 

3 Absolute state. 

Motto “L’etat c’est moi” i.e. The King.

 

4 Modernity 

with internal turmoil and external conflicts.

 

5 Universal state 

with imperial rule over one United world (or two).

 

Before this sequence there is a phase of about five centuries of preparation, a

0 Pre-civilization.

 

Between the start of the Feudal/religious phase to the start of the Universal state there typically are roughly 1100 years, in our case from AD 1000 to 2100.

 

What happens then?

Old civilizations have very different destinies. The Universal Empires typically experience about 200 years of strength with expansion, eg.

• Rome from Augustus to Marc Aurel.

• China I during the Early Han Dynasty.

• The First Mesopotamian Civilization from Hammurabi to the Hittite invasion.

 

Possible destinies thereafter include:

1 After these two centuries they are very vulnerable and easily conquered by both civilized and barbaric peoples. If the invaders can not be assimilated the civilization can be terminated. This probably happened for the Indus Valley Civilization. 

 

2 The civilization gradually develops into another, eg. China I into China II, the Second Mesopotamian Civilization and the Eastern part of the Roman Empire into the Oriental Civilization.

 

3 There is also the possibility that the old civilization lingers on for centuries. This was the case for the Egyptian, the Oriental and the Second Chinese and the Second Indian Civilizations. 

 

Encounter between civilizations

This is a complicated topic with an infinite number of aspects and possibilities. Here I will only go into a few which can elucidate the present world.

 

First of all the cultural compatibility or difference in character or mindset of the meeting civilizations is extremely important.

 

Second, the result of a such encounter is dependent on the phases in which the two civilizations are.

 

Possibilities

1 The civilizations run in parallel like the First Mesopotamian and the Indus Valley civilizations. These were also culturally quite compatible. The encounter was mutually respectful and beneficial.

 

2 Another possibility is that one civilization is in its beginning while the other is in its modernity. In this case we not only have a potential difference in character. We also have an incompatibility in developmental phase. An example could be the meeting between feudal Southern Europe and the invading Oriental Arab forces which came from countries in a modernity. 

 

Another important example of this is especially relevant in our present situation: the encounter between the dominant Greco-Roman civilization in its modernity and the beginning Oriental Civilization. Such encounters entail extreme resistance from the young civilization because of incompatibility in phase. And this is even more extreme if as in this case the civilizations are culturally different. Here is not the place to go into details of the resistance 2000 years ago from Pontus, Parthia and the Jews and Christians, peoples which at this time were part of the Oriental world.

 

Presently we are witnessing a comparable situation where the young East European Civilization is fighting dominance from our civilization.

 

3 A further possibility is if a strong civilization in its modernity meets an old civilization in a very late phase. If they are not too culturally incompatible the old civilization will after an initial strong resistance fuse with the new in a selective assimilation while at the same time keeping significant parts of its cultural heritage. Examples are China and India where the resistance against our civilization was fierce one and a half century ago. But since then they have taken over important parts of our world from Marxism or democracy to technology.

 

The meeting between our and the now old Oriental Civilization is a somewhat deviant example of this. The differences in both phase and culture are bigger. As described in earlier posts the situation is somewhat similar to the one 2000 years ago. Just as then the Oriental now primary Moslem civilization is faced with a strong European Civilization (including America). It is as if the Roman Empire has been reborn in the shape of the United States. The crucial difference is that the Orient two millennia ago was ascending while it now is very old. As in the other old civilizations India and China there was from the start a strong resistance against our civilization. But unlike the two other cases the Orient still resists assimilation. There are probably at least four reasons for this:

1 The large difference in developmental phase.

 

2 A large cultural difference. This is also visible in the racist populist political parties in the Northern world.

It also means that the global religious syncretism predicted by Toynbee will be more difficult.

 

3 A further contributor is the special trait of Oriental nations which means that they often prefer to live dispersed between each other in locally segregated enclaves or parallel societies. This means that peoples in or from the Orient often do not intermingle with people from our civilization.

 

4 The policy and actions of Israel (now obviously a part of our civilization) and perceived American support for it can also perpetuate the Oriental resistance and thus hinder the reconciliation and fusing of the Oriental with our civilization. It can help China in its competition for influence as this power with its long term strategic thinking is more predictable and also in the Orient is seen as a less culturally antagonistic part of our civilization. The alienation of the Oriental populations from America can destabilize the whole Middle East: peoples from North Africa to Pakistan and beyond could turn against Israel and the West and against local regimes who cooperate with them. In the long term an Oriental civilization continuing to resist assimilation is not useful for a future unification of the world into a Universal State. We would then have two opposing worlds instead of only East Europe.

 

 

Suffering of Children

 imagine that you are charged with building the edifice of human destiny, whose ultimate aim is to bring people happiness, to give them peace and contentment at last, but that in order to achieve this it is essential and unavoidable to torture just one little speck of creation, that same little child beating her breast with her little fists, and imagine that this edifice has to be erected on her unexpiated tears. Would you agree to be the architect under those conditions? Tell me honestly!”

“No, I wouldn’t agree,” said Alyosha quietly.

Models and controls

 INTRODUCTION

 

I am often using phenomena and developments in other earlier civilizations to elucidate and understand what is happening and will happen in our civilization. Generalized, civilizations can serve as models for each other. This can be the case for the civilization as a whole or only for certain phases in their overall development or certain aspects within a phase.

 

To recapitulate, human history has seen more than ten great civilizations, each with a duration of at least 1500 years. 

Examples

The First Mesopotamian Civilization ca. 3000 - 1500 BC

The Greco-Roman Civilization or First European Civilization ca. 1300 BC to AD 500.

 

The First Chinese Civilization ca. 1500 BC to AD 200, and the Second ca. year 0 to 1900.

 

On the large scale the civilizations run in parallel with comparable phases and developments, just displaced in time. Thus the Greco-Roman Civilization goes through the same developments 2100 years before we do. The First Chinese Civilization 2300 years before, the Second 900, the Oriental Civilization 1000 years and so on.

 

But crucially, they are not copies of each other. Each civilization has what we may call its own unique soul or mind-set. Besides, they have different experiences which also shape them individually. Civilizations must not be understood and defined in an Aristotelean manner as all containing the same fixed set of necessary and sufficient characteristics. A prototypical definition is more suited. This entails a not clearly delimited number of characteristics. Not all are shared by all civilizations. This means that they can resemble each other in different degrees, both as wholes and in certain phases and in certain aspects. Two civilizations can look quite dissimilar, but they both have similarities with the prototype which is the average of them all. It is also important that a word which for some historians denotes a phenomenon is often better seen as name for a phase within a civilization. An example is “feudalism”. For some this is a phenomenon with an exact definition corresponding precisely to the European condition in medieval times. We instead see it as a phase, a phase which does entail large landowners, but can vary in shape between civilizations. Importantly it lies at a specified time in their histories 800 years before modernity. It is accompanied by certain developments in other spheres, for example religious theorizing. Thus to be identified as a certain phenomenon and a phase in a civilization it must contain certain characteristics AND coexist with certain other phenomena AND come at a certain time compared to certain other phases. Such considerations also mean that absolute kingdom when seen as a phase cannot be equated with all examples of hereditary autocratic rule.

 

Modernities are like other periods characterized by conflicts within and between countries, but they must also lie at a specific time-span in each civilization. And they must be accompanied by rationalism, political ideas and progress in science and technology.

 

Despite the differences the similarities between civilizations are so big that by looking at them we can gain understanding of our own Western or Second European Civilization which is now global. Previous ones can serve as models depending on their relatedness. In some cases a specific civilization does not deliver a good model for us. This can be caused by:

1) our lack of knowledge.

2) the civilization is not closely mentally related.

3) nomadic invasions.

4) disasters.

 

 In understanding our case as a whole the Greco-Roman Civilization and the First and Second Chinese Civilizations are good models. These are closely related to our own. Others like the Oriental Civilization seem less related. The Indus Valley Civilization is also a bad model, but only because of the lack of knowledge about it.

 

Looking more narrowly at our absolute kings from roughly 1600 to 1800 the Mayan city-states in the Meso-American Civilization is a good model. But in understanding the break-down of this system the Mayans are a bad model because of their agricultural disaster.

 

Even more specifically, in understanding the scientific developments in our modernity, both the modernities in the Greco-Roman Civilization, the Oriental Civilization and the two Chinese Civilizations are good models.

 

It is fascinating that in most cases the two European and the two Chinese civilizations, i.e. those at the two ends of Eurasia are those which most closely resemble each other.

 

 

CHECKS AND BALANCES MONOPOLIZED

 

To elucidate present internal political conditions in the United States the modernities in the Greco-Roman Civilization, especially the Roman Republic, and the Second Chinese Civilization, especially the Song Dynasty can serve as good models. In this case the models not only help us understand our own development. They can also help us avoid mistakes and change the course and thus affect our future.

 

In these three cases, Rome, Song and United States, we have an elaborated system of checks and balances in admirable attempts to hinder monopolies of power and to achieve a balance between societal groups and opinions. Here it must be noted that China in the Song-dynasty most of the time was a constitutional monarchy with limited power to the emperor.

 

But in all three cases these power-sharing constitutions came /comes under pressure. In our case we see attacks on the partitioning into three powers proposed by Montesquieu. A magical word today is“overreach”. Institutions which are part of the checks an balances are accused of overreach if they limit the power of a party or group. Such controlling institutions are seen as not controls, but as competitors for power. This can indeed become the case as political parties try to monopolize these institutions. This is evident in the present United States as it was in the Roman Republic and in Song. Another bad word is “deep state”, i.e. an administrative apparatus of a certain size with experience, experts and written and unwritten procedures and traditions. This is seen as an enemy and opponent because it can hinder the worst effects of irresponsible political attempts to alter society in a radical way.

 

In Rome the fight for control of institutions ultimately overstressed the constitution and led to the end of the Republic in a crescendo of violence. The developments in the United States are correspondingly getting out of hand and can move the same way unless especially the Republican Party is reformed.

 

In the following I reuse parts of an earlier post which sketched developments in the Roman Republic and America.

 

The Roman constitution was a complicated mixture of different positions of power like Senate, Peoples Assembly, Consuls and  Peoples Tribune, some having been added at new situations in history demanding a share of power to new societal forces. Together such institutions secured an intricate system of checks and balances like the American Constitution. 

 

In the Song constitution power was balanced between the Prime minister(s), other ministers often from political oppositions, Secretariate, endless controls and rewritings of law-proposals, emperor, Censors (= Ombudsmen), Remonstrance Office, public opinion and even protests from university students just to mention some.

 

Obviously such systems risk causing  instability and inaction and inability to handle internal and foreign threats. For such situations the Roman constitution allowed the employment of a time-limited and accountable dictator. In Song China a time-limited de facto dictator often emerged in times of crises. It could typically be the prime minister.

 

All three systems of balance and mutual control were admirable and the constitutions functioned reasonably well for a long time. But at a certain point the tensions in society and the polarization between people from the two major political parties a) Peoples Party / Democrats / Reformists and b) Senate Party / Republicans / Conservatives became too big. The tension and polarity could not any longer be channeled through and within the means of the Constitution. This happened in Rome around 130 BC, in China around 1100 and in America around 2000. At this point different institutions of the state risk to be monopolized by one party while others try to remain neutral controls, and again others are used by the other party. They make opposing decisions and try to obstruct each other. This increases societal and political tensions further. As said this process began in Rome from around 130 BC and is now increasingly clear in the United States. The Democrat left and the Republican right have their opposing extreme agendas, the neutral FBI tries to carry on its duties, the two chambers of Congress are often overtaken by opposite parties unwilling to compromise, Supreme Court is taken over by conservatives. We even see a tendency for the courts in different states and on different levels to become political. Such developments can be expected to continue and worsen and create much bitterness on the street and between the parties. Politicians will use drastic means to get and keep control of institutions and positions and to seize them from other politicians. One of the reasons why things went so utterly bad in Rome was that this republic was not very deep and thus lacked an important stabilizing factor. Therefore it is dangerous that US politicians work to undermine the hated deep state.

 

Once more we must ask whether a such development is necessary? And once more the Second Chinese modernity during the Song Dynasty sticks out. In the decades around 1100 there also here was an extreme and dangerous polarization between left-wing Reformists and right-wing Conservatives. The parties monopolized the power-sharing institutions and launched countless impeachment procedures against opponents.

 

But then came the catastrophic military defeat to Jin around 1130 resulting in a major territorial loss. After this the internal political turmoils continued in new forms. But gradually the political polarizations eased a little. Certainly not to zero. The“Roman”and “American” malpractices continued and at times made some institutional controls ineffective and untrustworthy. But the internal tensions did not lead to the Roman end in the form of a hereditary universal dictatorship under emperors. There can be more reasons for this. One was the very deep Song state. Another was that the political landscape was gradually transformed. The two parties were now what we may call the Pragmatists and the Constitutional Neo-Confucian Daoxue- party. The first of these bent the power-sharing principles to meet real needs and circumstances while the latter put the ideal power-sharing above all.

 

The Song example shows that America does not have to follow the Roman way, where the Republic ended in civil wars and ultimately led to Augustus seizing all power.

 

 

 

 

The Yellow Peril

The global campaign against TikTok and the resurgence of the lab-leak theory on the origin of Covid are splendid illustrations of the points in my last post.

 

Demonizing TikTok once more attributes a phenomenon to a pole on the dimension or rather dichotomy of us the absolute good vs them the utterly bad. It thus imposes these poles on the dimension American high-tech and social media vs Chinese high-tech and social media.

 

An app which constitutes a bridge between the two sides of the world is to be choked. From the existence and origin of TikTok people could get the impression that the Chinese are not that different, that they have and use things like social media just like us. This will not do. The young generation must learn to hate the Chinese, learn to see them as weird and alien. And as such they are of course also guilty of the Corona pandemic. Words like China-virus and China-app have clear racist connotations.

 

Economic interests are never absent in God’s own country. Indeed, killing TikTok will also liberate American social media from competition. But presently the anti-Chinese mood in America looks like a generalized fear disorder.

 

In Europe and elsewhere many governments and even local administrations follow the American line and ban TikTok on public hardware. Increasingly the premises postulated by US politicians are believed. And from 1) Seen through the polarizing world view China is wholly bad and 2) Spying by countries through social media is possible, it follows logically 3) that the Chinese Communist Party does spy on us through TikTok. As pointed out by several IT experts such activity by TikTok has never been proven and is only a theoretical possibility. It is often claimed that TikTok collects more data than other apps despite the fact that this has been disproven by neutral experts. Now the Chinese company is even accused of brainwashing Westerners, making them support Chinese and Russian views. This despite the widespread use of TikTok against Russia by Ukrainians. The app (rather than contagion from certain of its influencers) can even cause tics. Soon we may again hear that IT hardware produced in China, including products from US companies contain invisible rice-grain sized micro-chips which transmit intelligence to the Chinese Communist Party. Even such claims will probably be believed by some Europeans.

 

Politicians and the public have once more forgotten or repressed the lessons from Snowden. These lessons showed that American espionage through US-based social media is not only theoretically possible, but is a fact. And what’s more serious, the US intelligence agencies are not limited to this. They have direct trunks into the cables through which both TikTok, America-based social media and most global and local, private and public communications run. In addition the United States and its vassals spy directly on leading allied politicians.

 

Lobbying from US politicians is very successful in convincing Europeans and others that the world only has one global dimension and only two poles, the good democratic peaceful nations and the evil authoritarian expansionist nations. This implies that America and Europe are equated, and that we are told that also Russia and China are one united pole and that China therefore has plans to deliver weapons to Putin. That Russia is coupled with China also adds evilness to the latter in the view of the European political and public opinion which rightly is preoccupied with the indeed condemnable invasion in Ukraine.

 

And do the opponents of the West act in ways which could disprove the Western world view? No, on the contrary. Instead they seem to work to confirm the relevance and the poles of the dichotomous dimension. Meeting Lukashenko instead of Zelenskyy does not look very neutral. Sending balloons over enemy territory looks as a clumsy way to illustrate the will to spy. Calling even WWF foreign agents or a unanimous vote by the NPC strengthening autocratic rule supports the picture of an alien block consisting of China and Russia, a block united by the common trait of an almost North Korean type rule. If there should exist acts or intentions which could nuance these impressions, then they will not be noticed.

 

Merkel said: “Ausspähen unter Freunden, das geht gar nicht”. But in a world of ultimate good and evil it is perhaps okay for the Europeans that the American friends spy on them? If the Chinese are evil spies, then the Americans must be benevolent spies. After all, Uncle Joe Biden is a nice elderly gentleman. But the idea of a world with two poles, a good and an evil, is and will be challenged by facts. US subsidies for domestic production are already now harming the EU. And because of the polarization and competition of the American parties US politicians will increasingly demand more protectionist measures also against America’s weak friends. The growing ruthlessness in US politics will cause an arrogant, exploitative and coercive treatment of allied countries. And what about a second or third Trump no matter what he is actually called and no matter if he has a brain or not? The present phase of Europe and America united by mutual friendship could be a short anomaly. In Washington East Europe may soon be viewed as an appendix which in comparison with the Pacific front is of limited interest and not worth defending for billions of dollars. Then if not earlier the Europeans must finally realize that the World may have more than two poles and more than one dichotomy.

 

Polaroid Politics

  

If you look at the World through Polaroid glasses you only see light which is polarized vertically. In declining politics the dimensions I talked about in the last post distort the view of the political world in a similar way. But in this case not only the direction, but also the size of the polarization is affected.

 

The described dimensions also apply to the way the world is perceived. Mathematically spoken we may call them vectors. You can use a dimension or a vector to measure the size or the position of something. This functions well as long as the measured phenomenon is of the same sort as the dimension used to measure it with. Or put another way, the measuring rod or dimension must apply to what we measure.  To take an example, if your own political thinking is dominated by the dimension of proletarians vs capitalists then this measuring devise functioned well in the beginning of the previous century which was filled with conflicts between workers and employers. But today where many employed people have become wealthy themselves and via pension funds own parts of big business the dimension of proletarians vs capitalists has become a bad measuring tool. Technically spoken this is because the dimensions or antagonisms in present rich societies are not parallel with the old dimension used to measure them with. If you insist in using a such dimension or vector not parallel to the measured phenomenon the vector of the latter becomes projected onto the measuring vector. A geographical example would be trying to measure the distance between NY and LA using a ruler which only measures distances along the north-south scale, the longitude. This obviously leads to a wrong result, a misperception. In the political example above it is like a communist who views all present conflicts as having to do with the working class being exploited by the rich. In this  way other dimensions like environment protection vs pollution is measured with the dimension proletarians vs capitalists, i.e. projected onto the latter even though the two are not about the same, i.e. are not parallel.

 

Of course such distorted perceptions are nothing new in politics. But with the simplifications and polarizations described in my last post, their occurrence increases, and their effects get more extreme. The described collapsing of dimensions means exactly this: different vectors are projected onto each other, i.e. are forced into parallel alignment even though they are about attitudes which do not inherently depend on each other. Being pro-life and being pro-gun are two independent dimensions being projected on each other. That only few political dimensions matter and that opinions are located at the poles of the dimensions makes it all worse. Then an attitude or a person can only be at two points. We have this or that opinion. Anyone who disagrees with us in any topic must be at the opposite extreme in all questions. In the geographical example we would not just see only the north-south component of the distance between NY and LA. We would also locate LA at the South pole and NY at the North pole. In such a political atmosphere projection of vectors is much simpler than in mathematics. Every dimension has only to possible values. They are dichotomies, and measuring something else only consists in attributing it to a pole. Thus science is liberal and climate denial is conservative. It is this kind of reasoning which can lead some people to believe that leading Democrats are paedophiles.

 

We have not yet reached the zenith of this development. And even when we do, this level of political thinking will never affect every person, every political group or every nation to the same degree. But the effects on politics will be significant even if only some influential groups of politicians and their voters see the world in such ways.

 

Also foreign politics is characterized by thinking in dimensions. Even without political decline relations to perceived enemies have often been characterized by simplifications. In fact the simplifications and polarization of internal politics can be viewed as the application of classical images of foreign enemies in internal politics.  The newer internal developments makes matters even worse in foreign affairs, and they lower the threshold for strong political and military reactions. This is the simple result of obvious interactions between the internal and the external dimensions.

 

In both cases the dimensions or vectors collapse and become aligned and dichotomous as described. But the two sets of dimensions, the internal and the external, remain independent of each other and do not mutually collapse: both opposite extremes of the internal political spectrum participate in hating the external enemy. This was often also the case before the decline of modernity. But with the accelerating simplifications in both internal and external politics the negative picture of the enemy is almost impossible to modify. This even more in late modern Rome and America which were / are prone to conspiracy theories. The relation between us, the good, and the foreign enemy, the devil, becomes the dominant dimension. With it is aligned the other dimensions distinguishing the two nations. These differences are blown out of proportion and nuances are lost. Prejudices and expectations replace correct perception. 

 

These developments can be seen in several countries today. In Europe the polarization toward Russia has exploded since the invasion in Ukraine. This polarization also affects the United States, but here the antagonism with China dominates. In both cases the alignment of the foreign dimensions is clear. Secure respected borders vs revanchist expansion, peaceful coexistence vs war, democracy vs dictatorship, rule of law vs abuse of power. Only the poles exist in these dimensions and they are equated; all the good poles necessarily belong together as do the bad. Even history is reinterpreted: a path towards democracy vs a century-long path of expansionism and authoritarianism. In the worst case this development can extend to the dimension of ethnicity. 

 

Of course polarizations, misperceptions and reinterpretations characterize both sides in the conflicts. But it is especially depressing that also in the well-educated West with all its proud academic traditions attempts to gain a deeper  understanding of the historical causes behind the acts of the enemy are almost seen as treason. If the enemies behave badly the only reason is that their leaders are bad. If there earlier were some who suggested that the eastward expansion of NATO onto formerly Soviet territory in Russia would be perceived as a provocation and a threat, then they are silenced now. Kein Platz für Russland-Versteher. We even see that attempts at achieving detente before the fall of the USSR are now seen as appeasement. The thinking is as follows:

Putin is evil, and he is the man behind all the evil things Russia does, and by the way, Russia has always been evil.

This political climate has enabled the United States to use the deep felt solidarity with Ukraine in it’s proxy war to degrade Russia. 

 

 More nuanced thinking could be expected from the West, the product of centuries of enlightenment. Please stop the constant bullying of the German chancellor. In contrast to certain others he does reflect.

 

Obviously none of the big parties located at the poles in internal politics in America can live with being seen as hating the enemy less than the other party. As soon as the Roman political party-leader Antony allied himself with Cleopatra in Egypt his case was lost. Thus as the US Republicans use and increase a fear of China which approaches hysteria, the Democrats have no other choice than to follow. Biden had to shoot down the Chinese balloon. Even the Wall Street Journal for whom money could be expected to be the dominant dimension criticized him for not doing it earlier. They thereby demonstrated that the antagonism with the enemy overrides even the fear of economic consequences which could result in case of an int’l conflict. Today it would take more than a Zhao Ziyang to convince the US right-wing that China is not an incarnation of evil.

 

The enemies of America behave similarly with the only difference being that the poles are switched. They ignore PR and act in ways which confirm the misperceptions of their opponents. In this way they also confirm that the dimensions applied by the West are relevant and that they themselves are at the opposite extreme. This makes it even more likely that also other important dimensions or differences are misperceived as an expression of the friend vs enemy dichotomy. Try once to not fulfil the expectations.

 

Between civilizations

The misinterpretations which can result from applying wrong measuring rods on phenomena which are within one’s own civilization are microscopic in comparison with what can result if we use dimensions from one civilization to measure things in another. Civilizations develop along parallel tracks, but they each have their own distinct character. We wouldn’t condemn Ramses because he had no elected parliament or criticize a lack of independent judges in the Persian Empire of Cyrus. These high cultures had their own mind-set and their own political standards.

 

If Russia and other East European countries indeed are a part of an emerging civilization, then this represents a complicated version of this problem. The complexity arises because this part of the world like the Orient 2000 years ago is heavily westernised and at the same time represents something fundamentally different. This means that Western dimensions do apply in some aspects and at the same time are extremely misleading in other aspects. Thus we can correctly criticize Poland and Hungary for undermining the division of power. But if we condemn them for not accepting LGBT it misses the point. As described in an earlier post the resistance against sexual minorities in this case is not on a Western dimension of conservative vs liberal. It is a deep cultural and religious dimension outside the western civilization.

 

Similar considerations about LGBT and other cultural matters are relevant for Russia. In this case the invasion of Ukraine and the internal oppression can also be judged in two ways. The first of these is the exclusive application of western standards and the resulting condemnation practised by almost everybody in the West. As Russia in many ways is a part of the Western civilization this view is correct. And indeed, condemnation of the Russian behaviour against Ukraine is also correct from a general humanitarian viewpoint which is valid regardless of politics and specific civilizations.

 

But this is not the whole story. From the viewpoint of an emerging civilization trying to preserve its distinct soul the invasion is best interpreted as a desperate defence against being overwhelmed and swallowed by an alien world. A bit like our crusades against a dominating Muslim Orient nine centuries ago or like the Jewish uprisings against Western dominance from Rome nineteen centuries ago. In all three cases we see young civilizations fighting to survive against alien old dominating ones. To interpret Russian behaviour only in light of the Western dichotomy of expansionist dictatorship vs peaceful democracy seriously distorts a correct understanding.

 

It is not all about Putin as an autocrat. Don’t underestimate the feelings of large parts of the Russian people. These feelings are not only a result of propaganda. This inter-civilization perspective should be taken into consideration before new weapon-systems are delivered to Ukraine. Extreme reactions could be provoked.