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.
