Westernisation
Translated from Russian. All deliberations primarily touch on Russia and Russian society.
Westernisation “[…] thoughtless adoption of the American (USA) or Western European way of life in the domain of economy, politics, culture, or even language.” Dictionary of Foreign Terms— Komlev N.G., 2006
What kind of creature is that—Westernisation?
Some consider it a mirage, created by those in power for the purpose of further accretion of the said power. Let the name of these be “Type A”.
Some consider it an actual entity but of exclusively good character. Let the name of those be “Type B”.
Some consider it an entity of opposite character, and many, or even all, consequences of its coming an exceptional evil. Let the name of yonder be “Type C”.
Type A and Type B, in sum and substance, are united in one main common proposition that, paradoxically, nullifies the meaning of the word.
That is, “There is no West.” There is no “other”; what exists instead is just a fraction of nations on Earth that has obtained something of great value—a developed culture, a progressive social order, democratic institutions and, of course, eminent material wealth, of which we all can only dream.
For Type A the establishment and organisation of our country according to the “best practices” is merely a technological question. It is already clear that “all of humanity” is “moving forward”, “advancing”, and “building cities and developing technologies”. So for what are we waiting, instead of just delving into this flow of “global and general development” and building ever more satellites, rockets, PCs, AI and all the rest of the buzzwords? What is the point of stopping “evolution of global productive forces” with obscure and outdated abstractions like “culture”, “values”, “historical background” or even “language”? It must be only for the money or power that one would do it, and for nothing else.
Type B is worse and meaner. Type B shares all the same with Type A but encounters a more practical problem—many “best” and “enlightened” practices and institutions simply do not take hold on different soil. However much Type B may try, not every complex sentient human being would suddenly like to join the Bright Future™ as a simple and uncomplicated Homo Economicus. This fact causes Type B anger and resentment. After all, the course to the bright future is crystal clear! Why is it that we cannot receive bright words from an overseas lord as our main purpose of existence in the boundless sea of global consumption? Must be, something is wrong with us! Must be, we are behind those lords in some way, and we, slaves, need to make an effort to “squeeze out steadily” from ourselves everything that makes us our foul “we” and absorb wholeheartedly everything that makes us “civilised”. There grows and accumulates irritation and grievance for all the peoples that become “different”—not fair-faced enough, not progressive enough, not civilised enough.
Types A and B therefore can be seen even as degrees of the same thing.
Yet, what makes them different from Type C? The most important difference is the binary and linear worldview they hold. All human history habitually collapses into the linear “Antiquity-Middle Ages-Renaissance-New Age-Modernity”. The whole of the spectrum of values and goals is folded into the binary “Advancing towards the global progress <-> Being obstinate due to ignorance and obscurantism.”
Type C does not have such a worldview. His world perception seems odd to people of other types, but it is in essence much closer to reality. He perceives history as multiple civilisational cycles of different peoples. He perceives the values and goals as results of self-direction pertaining to each particular people that exist for the complete and comprehensive realisation of its culture.
Type C quite reasonably asks, “But why should China—having existed for millennia, separate and independent of Rome, having invented paper money centuries before Western European economic thought—trace its history from Ancient Romans and Greeks?” What did even Westerners, awkwardly appropriating the achievements of the Republic, share in common with them? Were they the very same people, to whom the Eastern empire—having maintained its rule for a millennium after the fall of Rome—seemed a place of ubiquitous Caesarian tyranny and religious obscurantism; the same people who tried to steal even its name with swords and convenient lies thus letting the true heirs of Rome become known only as “Byzantium” or “Empire of Greeks”?
Due to such a difference in the worldview, Type C sees the West as merely one of many “civilisations” or “cultural-historical types”. Every event drastically changes its meaning from this viewpoint—all claims of “universality” and “globality” of a certain set of values, institutions, and social technologies turn out to be just a covert premise for Western political expansion and conquest. From the “centre of human history,” Western Europe and the USA (and the USA is the centre of Western civilisation currently) suddenly turn into simply another version of their usual way of being—a belligerent coloniser and civiliser.
Seldom can Type C be seen in a public discourse, and almost never can his adversaries give an intelligible answer—why has their worldview centred on a set of specific countries that are not the most talented, not the most feeling, and not the most honest nor virtuous? What sort of mystical knowledge would imitating the West give them? Maybe money and vast material wealth? But it hasn’t been through free-market reforms that the West has enriched itself, but through centuries of war, subjection, destruction, brigandage and redistributing property into its own treasury. The cause and the consequence here… are quite inverse. Free self-sufficiency did not create capitals; it was colonial money that provided “free” and sheltered conditions for the “white man”.