East and West: will the twain ever meet?

Posted on 2013/07/04 by tetsukoizumi

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

East is East, West is West: “Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,” goes the first line of The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). Written in 1892, this poem, along with The White Man’s Burden (1899), is often cited as representing Kipling’s patronizing, if nor derogatory, attitude towards East. Although well recognized as the author of such popular works as The Jungle Book (1894) and Kim (1901), who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907, Kipling was also a defender of British imperialism, which is understandable as someone who was born in Bombay at the time when India was known as British India.

If India represented East to the British, countries such as China, Korea and Japan belonged to the region at the far end of East, namely, “Far East”. Given that similar terms to denote “extreme east” exist in other European languages such as Dutch, French, German, and Italian, it is clear that China, Korea and Japan, despite their proud history as the developers of Eastern civilization, did not exist as familiar lands in the consciousness of Europeans, except as uncivilized people to be converted to the ways and means of Western civilization, until well into the twentieth century.

China, Korea and Japan are now very much in the consciousness not only of Europeans but also of people in other parts of the world, thanks to their remarkable success stories in the economic arena. Starting with Japan which accomplished miraculous economic growth in the 1950s and 60s, one country after another showed remarkable advances in the economic arena, with mini-dragons of Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Singapore in the 1970s and 80s, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam in the 1990s, and, of course, China in the past two decades. As these Asian countries have become competitors whose products flood their markets, people in Europe and elsewhere have developed a new consciousness about China, Korea and Japan, which happen to be geographically located in the eastern end of the Eurasian continent. Does the “success” of these and other countries in Asia mean that West is now ready to accept East on its own terms? Will the twain finally be ready to meet?

Challenges and responses: While East and West do meet in the economic arena, albeit as competitors in the global marketplace, the contact between East and West has a long history going back many centuries, involving interactions between Eastern and Western civilization. Of the countries in Asia, India and China have played major roles in the formation and development of Eastern civilization. In particular, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism that came out of India and China have had widespread influence in the evolution of national civilizations in other Asian countries as well. However, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that when it comes to the interactions with Western civilization, both India and China had been subjected to the colonial rule by countries from the West.

Modernization, which would lead to the rise of Asian countries in the economic arena since the latter half of the twentieth century, began as Toynbeean responses to the challenges posed by their colonial masters or superior military powers from the West in the latter half of the nineteenth century.¹ This explains why modernization for Asian countries has mostly been the process of catching up with the West, or “Westernization”. Japan was the first to embark on, and succeed in, the task of Westernization. For Japan, modernization meant the transition, politically, from the feudal regime of Tokugawa Shogunate to the constitutional monarchy under the tutelage of the Meiji Emperor and, culturally, from Buddhist and Confucian ideas to Enlightenment ideas imported from the West.

While it was a response to the potential military threat in the form of Black Ships that triggered Japan’s modernization, it was the real military conflict in the form of Opium War that triggered China’s modernization as a response to the challenges of Western civilization. However, China, while experiencing a brief interlude of republicanism after the fall of the Ch’ing dynasty, reverted to the centralized command society that had been their hallmark ever since the unification of the country by the First Emperor in 221 BCE. As for Korea, modernization had to wait until the end of Korean War (1950-53) because of the colonization of the land by Japan, their neighbor to the east, and the invasion of communism from China, their neighbor to the west.

The first stage of the challenges from Western civilization—colonization and subjugation by powerful nations from Europe—thus triggered modernization in the form of the rise of nationalism in Asian countries. The second stage of the challenges from Western civilization involved the influence coming from the United States as the victor nation at the end of World War II. Asian countries actually did a good job of responding to the challenges from the United States, especially in the economic arena with their remarkable accomplishment in economic development, which some scholars ascribe to the application of Confucian ideas.² The third—and latest—stage of the challenges of Western civilization is the social change triggered by globalization as all countries have been subjected to the challenges of global capitalism in the economic arena.

It is difficult to predict what form the responses of Asian countries will take, for the third stage of responses to the challenges of Western civilization is an ongoing process that is enfolding daily around us. Talks about the formation of an East Asian Community can be considered as one form of responses jointly pursued by Asian countries to the current challenges from Western civilization.

Varieties of social systems in the East: To say that Asian countries have succeeded in modernization in the sense of Westernization means, when interpreted from the perspectives of comparative civilization that views civilization as the product of a social system defined in the space of interaction among polity, economy and culture, that these countries have transformed their social systems into the kind of social system that prevails in Western countries. However, the degree of success in Westernization differs from one country to another. So does the character of the social system, reflecting the character of the traditional culture in each country.

The social system that prevails in the West is built around the three organizing principles: the principle of democracy in polity, that of capitalism in economy, and that of liberalism in culture. There is, however, no such uniformity when it comes to the organizing principles of Asian social systems.

While one adopts republicanism and the other constitutional monarchy, democracy is the organizing principle of polity in Korea and Japan. The same cannot be said of China, however, whose polity is based on the centralized state controlled by one ruling party. When it comes to North Korea, the very use of the adjective “democratic” in its official country name of Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for what is in effect a dictatorial state ruled by one person is an affront to the idea of democracy.

Capitalism may be said to be the organizing principle of economic life in the East as well, to the extent that all countries now operate in the space of global capitalism. We may also include China and Vietnam here, for, despite the official status as socialist states, the two countries have been embracing the practices of market capitalism with their recent policy reforms—the open door policy in China and doi moi, or restructuring, in Vietnam. However, even in such capitalist countries as Korea and Japan, the degree to which the government gets involved in the conduct of economy goes beyond mere administrative guidance and regulation from time to time, ranging from investment projects to trade policies.

As for culture, Japan may be the sole exception among Asian countries in that it adheres to the principle of free speech, one essential component of liberalism, another being separation of church and state. However, even Japan sometimes appeals to the voluntary restraint of freedom of speech when it comes to reporting about the Imperial Household. Confucianism still plays an important role in regulating social behavior in countries such as China, Korea, Japan, and Singapore. While it is the idea of an autonomous individual that is cherished in countries in the West, what is cherished in the Confucian East is the idea of an individual whose identity is defined in the context of his/her social role in the family, the organization, and the society at large.³

Cultural conflicts in the East: Seen in the context of social systems, there is no uniform system that strikes out as a common model in the East. This is in contrast to countries in the West today where national differences are mostly subsumed under the common acceptance of democracy, capitalism and liberalism as the organizing principles of their social systems. What we see in the East, instead, is a social system with unique characteristics in each country, reflecting its unique history as a country. Thus, China, with its need to maintain the cohesion of the country that stretches over vast territories, employs one party command system, which is the modern version of the imperial rule by the Son of Heaven. Japan, on the other hand, operates as a constitutional monarchy, based on its homage to the Imperial Household as a symbol for the unity of its people.

Needless to say, countries in the East do possess common cultural heritages such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Islam and Christianity may also be added to the list, as they, too, play significant roles in some countries. However, how each of these religions or systems of thought is employed in organizing social life differs from one country to another, reflecting the differences among national cultures, formed during the process of evolution of these countries as modern nation-states.

It is one thing for Asian countries to form an economic community, a la the European Union, in order to promote free trade in the region for the economic benefits it promises. It is quite another, however, for these countries to form a cultural community, with the same sense of identity and belonging for all peoples in the region. The difficulty here lies with the enmity that exists among these countries because of their historical conflicts such as the Japanese invasion of the region during World War II, which is still resented and protested by its neighbors, and the increasing influence China now exerts to its neighbors as an economic and military superpower in the region.

Globalization as the stage for meeting of East and West: Globalization is the latest stage where East meets West, not only in the economic arena but also in the cultural arena. “Global culture” of a sort is being formed and spread across national borders with the expansion of global capitalism. The new global culture is, in a way, American culture, to the extent that the United States is still the single most important player in the world of global capitalism. Represented by McDonald’s, it is the culture that promotes standardized products and services, the culture that builds human relations by manuals, and the culture that stresses the idea of rationalization even in such acts as eating.⁴ The question is whether Asian countries are ready to accept the encroachment—and destruction—of their national cultures by such global standard in cultural life.

Another factor to be taken into account is the spread of Fundamentalism and the so-called clashes of civilizations.⁵ Terrorist acts have already taken place in Asian countries, partly as responses to the threat of global capitalism. And there is no guarantee that such acts of violence will disappear with the formation of an Asian Community, even with the expanded network of policing and law enforcement across national borders.

In a world characterized by global interdependence, we can no longer afford to treat East and West as separate and incompatible civilizations, as was perhaps the case at the end of the nineteenth century as Rudyard Kipling suggests. The fact of the matter is that the two have already met in their histories and now meet regularly in the common space of global transactions in all areas of social life. If there is something that East can offer to West, it would be the idea of peaceful coexistence among humans as incorporated in such Eastern ideas as ahimsa, pratityasamutpada, and wu wei, which have universal relevance in the world today where East and West overlap and merge in a complicated web of global interdependence.

Toynbee, Arnold, A Study of History, London: Oxford University Press, 1954.
See, for example, Rozman, Gilbert (ed.), The East Asian Region: Confucian Heritage and Its Modern Adaptation, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991, and Tai, Hung-Chao (ed.), Confucianism and Economic Development: An Oriental Alternative? Washington: Washington Institute Press, 1989.
See, for example, Bell, Daniel, East Meets West: Human Rights and Democracy in East Asia, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
See, for example, Watson, James L. (ed.), Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1997.
Huntington, Samuel P., The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.

The Greek economic crisis out of Dionysian intoxication

Posted on 2012/09/06 by tetsukoizumi

Tetsunori Koizumi, Director

The Birth of Tragedy: The Birth of Tragedy is the first book by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), published in 1872 when he was still at the young age of 28*. It was a controversial book from the very beginning and, with the exception of Richard Wagner to whom it was dedicated, was received with hostility, especially from the academic community for whom it was mainly intended. In fact, Nietzsche was so disturbed by the hostile treatment it received from the academic community that he published the new edition in 1886 with the revised title of The Birth of Tragedy, Or: Hellenism and Pessimism. He also added a short preface titled “An Attempt at a Self-Criticism.” In this “belated preface,” Nietzsche acknowledged that The Birth of Tragedy was indeed “the strange and inaccessible book … badly written, clumsy and embarrassing.”

Many things were controversial about The Birth of Tragedy. First, Nietzsche brought in two gods—Apollo and Dionysus—in his discussion of Greek art, with Apollo symbolizing the orderly world of sculpture, and Dionysus the disorderly world of music. While bringing in mythological gods in a discussion of art was already controversial, Nietzsche made it more controversial by associating “dream” with Apollo and “intoxication” with Dionysus as representing two contrasting modes of expression behind the two contrasting worlds of Greek art. Furthermore, Nietzsche asserted that Greek tragedy owes its birth to the merging of the Apollonian mode of expression, which is orderly and individual, and the Dionysian mode of expression, which is disorderly and communal. Thus, the non-verbal and ecstatic world of music was asserted to be essential for representing—and understanding—human tragedy, or suffering, which is the basic condition of life. In fact, the Dionysian world of music and intoxication, according to Nietzsche, is the world of true reality, as opposed to the Apollonian world of sculpture and dream, which is the world of appearances, or an illusionary world of representation.

Though controversial, The Birth of Tragedy has had an important influence on the evolution of Western culture. Associating Apollo with reason and the principle of individuation, the Apollonian mode of expression has been transformed into the rational and individualistic orientation in Western culture, while associating Dionysus with madness and the principle of collective experience has transformed the Dionysian mode of expression into the irrational and communal orientation in Western culture. As Nietzsche himself noted in the latter half of the book, Western civilization, especially since the rise of the Enlightenment, has been the story of the dominance of Apollonian culture over Dionysian, marked by an increasing reliance on science as the primary mode of perceiving the world and an increasing tendency towards separation of the individual from other individuals and the world.

Apollonian versus Dionysian culture: It was Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) who, as one of the pioneering figures in the growing field of anthropology in the first half of the twentieth century, took hints from Nietzsche’s two opposing modes of expression in Greek art and translated them into two contrasting types of cultures. Based on her direct observation of “primitive peoples” of the world, as was typical of the early works of anthropology, Benedict, in her Patterns of Culture (1934), developed the concepts of Apollonian and Dionysian cultures based on two contrasting personality types of “modesty and restraint” and “excess and frenzy”. Needless to say, “modesty and restraint” and “excess and frenzy” are the two contrasting sets of values which individuals exhibit in their activities, including economic. Interpreting Apollonian and Dionysian cultures as embodying the two contrasting sets of values of “modesty and restraint” and “excess and frenzy” actually gives us a clue to analyze and understand the nature of the current episode of Greek tragedy: the Greek economic crisis, which includes the Greeks’ strained relationship with other nations in the euro zone and beyond.

In the context of economics, Hellenism versus Pessimism, or Apollonian versus Dionysian cultures, can be interpreted as two opposing orientations in our motives behind economic activities and manners of executing economic transactions. Of Hellenism and Pessimism, Adam Smith (1723-1790), the founder of economic science, definitely sided with Hellenism when he characterized the progressive economy as the happiest and the most comfortable state for the laboring poor. Smith’s optimism about the future of capitalism was also based on his belief in progress for humankind, which he shared with other Enlightenment thinkers. And there is little doubt that the “dream” of the laboring poor has been realized, at least in the developed nations of the world, in the form of higher standards of living since the Industrial Revolution.

Generations of economists since Adam Smith have shown their inclination towards Hellenism, with the exception of a few economists—Robert Malthus (1766-1834), David Ricardo (1772-1823), and Karl Marx (1818-1883), among others—who were keenly aware of the elements of Pessimism inherent in the economic system, such as the disparity between population growth and food supply, the limitation on the availability of land and other natural resources, and the exploitation of the majority by a privileged minority. In addition to these systemic elements, there are also other Dionysian elements associated with value orientations and personality types such as excess, greed, manipulation, ostentation, and speculation. As for excess, Adam Smith was actually aware of the tendency of rich people to become “intoxicated” with their riches, the tendency which Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) would later call “conspicuous consumption”: “With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eyes is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves” (Wealth of Nations, I, xi, c 31). If Smith did not pursue the potential danger of the Dionysian elements in capitalist development, it was because he believed in the “invisible hand” in the form of either moral sentiments or market mechanism as a restraining force.

Dionysian excess and frenzy behind the crisis of global capitalism: The neglect of the Dionysian elements such as excess, greed, manipulation, ostentation, and speculation—or the “intoxication” of supposedly rational economic men—was at the root of the Great Recession of 2008. Whether it was the breakdown of the housing market due to the spread of subprime loans or the excessive leveraging of securities traded and owned by banks and financial houses that triggered the greatest crisis of capitalism since the Great Depression, it is clear that the Great Recession was a manifestation of the Dionysian tendency towards “excess and frenzy” by bankers, currency traders, and financial speculators, helped by the inaction on the part of government regulators who failed to enforce “modesty and restraint” on these shakers and movers of global capitalism.

As a small nation interconnected with nations in the euro zone and beyond, Greece has not been immune to the Dionysian waves of “excess and frenzy” of global capitalism coming onto their shores. But part of the blame behind the current economic crisis must go to the Greeks themselves as they, too, have been caught up in the Dionysian “excess and frenzy.” For example, the size of the government budget deficit that far exceeds the EU guidelines has come about because of the disparity between spending, which has kept on increasing to meet the demand for higher wages and retirement benefits from public sector workers, and revenue, which has not kept up with increasing spending due to tax evasion, among other factors, on the part of private sector workers. This is simply a case of the government living beyond its means. While it is not necessary to keep the budget in balance at all times if fiscal policy is to perform its stabilizing role in the performance of the economy, the Greek government has lost its autonomy in conducting its fiscal policy for twin reasons: first, that its fiscal policy needs to adhere to the EU guidelines, and second, that its bonds have little appeal to investors in the highly competitive global marketplace. It is a clear case of a small nation such as Greece being caught in a dilemma between the desire for autonomy in the conduct of its economic affairs and the reality of global capitalism that prevents it from exercising that autonomy.

The situation facing Greece is quite serious, as exemplified by youth unemployment exceeding 30% and government spending on social benefits exceeding 40%. It comes as no surprise, then, that the Greeks are now seriously debating the possibility of exiting the euro zone, hoping to regain some degree of autonomy in the conduct of monetary as well as fiscal policies. EU and the international community have, of course, committed themselves to keeping Greece in the euro zone because they are afraid of the potential repercussions of the Greek exit, not only on other vulnerable euro zone economies, but also on the global economy caused by an EU-wide banking crisis. While it has potential global repercussions, the decision to exit or not to exit the euro zone is up to the Greeks. But should the decision be made solely on economic considerations? What if the current economic crisis is a symptom of the rebirth of Greek tragedy, namely, the Dionysian tendency towards “excess and frenzy” far outpacing the Apollonian tendency towards “modesty and restraint”?

The origin of the Greek economic crisis: It was in the nineteenth century that Greece became a European nation, as it won its independence from the Ottoman rule, with the help of European nations such as England, France, and Bavaria. The words in the opening sentence of the Greek Declaration of Independence in 1822, “We, the descendants of the wise and noble peoples of Hellas, we who are the contemporaries of the enlightened and civilized nations of Europe …”, attest to the self-consciousness on the part of the Greeks that they are the descendants of the originators of Western civilization and, as such, their nation should be a member of the enlightened and civilized community of nations called Europe. But what if the Greeks are not the descendants of the wise and noble peoples of Hellas?

Raising this question brings us to another controversial book on the Greeks, Black Athena, published in 1987. This book by Martin Bernal, like The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, was immediately met with a hostile reaction from the academic community. What was controversial about Black Athena is Bernal’s claim that the widely accepted view of the rise of Greek civilization as the result of the conquest by Indo-European speaking northerners over non-Indo-European speaking natives in the Aegean was the fabrication of European intellectuals in the nineteenth century. Up until the nineteenth century, the accepted view was that Greek civilization arose as the result of foreigners having arrived in the Aegean from the south and east, Egyptians and Phoenicians in particular, and having introduced the arts of civilization to native inhabitants, including the alphabet, religion, and irrigation and other technologies. Hence, the subtitle of Bernal’s book: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization.

If Greek civilization did indeed have its roots in Africa and Asia, could it be that the idea which prompted the Greeks to join the European Union, namely, the idea that they are “the contemporaries of the enlightened and civilized nations of Europe” was a mistaken one? If that were the case, would it make the decision to leave the euro zone a little easier for the Greeks? Needless to say, exiting the euro zone does not mean that the Greeks will be exempt from the Dionysian “excess and frenzy” of global capitalism that engulfs all nations of the world today. It would perhaps give the Greeks some solace if that Dionysian “excess and frenzy” were something they had inherited from the ancient Egyptians. Though they are neither philosophers like Nietzsche nor scholars like Bernal, Elton John and Tim Rice suggest as much in “Elaborate Lives”, one of the songs in their popular musical Aida. In the interconnected world of global capitalism today, it is too painfully clear—whether in Greece or anywhere else for that matter—that, as the song says, “we all lead such elaborate lives, with wild ambitions in our sights” and “we all live in extravagant times, playing games we can’t all win.”

* The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music (Die Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geist der Musik), translated by Shaun Whiteside, Penguin Books, 1993.