Friends are Electric

I consider myself to be an animist, although not in the traditional sense.  I do not necessarily believe that the rocks, the trees, the muskrats have a spirit of sorts within them.  I would not discount the potential for this to be the case either, however, nor discredit someone else for having such a literal belief, but it is not mine.  My animism is related to the traditional.  It stems directly from how I view the world, and where I view my own and humanity’s place within it.

Allow me to explain.

I am, as much as anyone else alive today, a child of reason.  Through science especially, but more truthfully through all aspects of my education, save one exception which I shall come to later, as well as most of my thinking until rather recently has been either developing this belief in this.  To see the world in a rational, logical way.

Cogito ergo sum. I no longer hold with this, but I understand why many do.  There is certainty in it.  By the nature of perception, I can be sure of nothing, I can prove nothing, save that I myself perceive. I can be certain only of my own existence.  This certainty is satisfying, anyone who has a basic understanding of science, for example, knows that science cannot be used to prove anything.  The whole of this Cartesian reason is just like science, nothing can be conclusively proven except, of course, your own existence.

There is truth to this, for what its worth.  When you strip away all the adornment around pure reason, you arrive at Descartes’s  statement.  To be a child of reason is to define yourself, to define your being, everything that you are, based solely on your ability to think.  To reason.  To know.

This works for some people, I am not like that.  Even when I thought I was, when I tried to live through reason alone, I knew on some level that it was not so, that it was a completely unsatisfactory way to live.  While thinking, reasoning and knowing were important to me, they were not me completely.  They were, to put it mathematically, necessary but not sufficient conditions.

Then, after going on like this for years, knowing on an unconscious level that Cartesian pure reason did not work for me, came the change in my education.  That change was a single course taken during a single term.  But it was pivotal in my development.  It was existentialism.

Like Cartesian reason, existentialism can be reduced to a simple principle.  Although at present I lack a universally recognizable Latin phrase, it comes down to I act purposefully therefore I am.  In existentialism, you define yourself through your actions.  Whether or not you believe that purpose exists to them, whether you are yourself capable of knowing or understanding that purpose, or whether it only exists if you yourself invent it is irrelevant, merely shades of the colour of existentialism.

When first learning about existentialism, when I was developing my ideas of it in my head, I adopted the belief that there was no universal purpose to anything and that none of any sort existed.  This was as unsatisfying as Cartesian pure reason.  Beyond that, it was even less practical.  While not strictly an existentialist, Nietzsche’s Übermensch was supposed to take every action in a purposeful way, that is to be conscious of every action and decision.  How can one be purposeful when the actions themselves are supposed to lack purpose?

So I softened by existentialism.  I still rejected universals, especially a universal purpose behind anything, for I did believe and agree with Nietzsche when he spoke of the death of God at our hands.  But why could there not be  a more practical, personal purpose?  Not just purpose which we created to comfort ourselves, but a real, tangible purpose which was individualized.  Such a thing as a measure of our actions was satisfying to me, and I remained with this colour of existentialism for a time.

However, like Descartes’s pure reason, existentialism did not provide me with a complete world view.  Even the colour I preferred was lacking.  It was interesting to think about, enjoyable to practice for small periods of time, but in the end completely unsatisfying.  Even though I had defined purpose within it, to me it still felt as though purpose was lacking.   From the point of view of pure reason, I could only be sure of my existence through thinking, from existentialism, through my actions.

The problem is that I’ve never been concerned about whether I exist or not.  Whether I can prove it with reason or not, whether I can justify it through logic is irrelevant.  Common sense tells me I exist.  My own existence  is something I consider self evident.  Common sense tells me that the people around me exist, whether or I can prove that they think, which I cannot, or whether I can prove that their actions are taken consciously, which again I cannot.  They still exist, to pretend otherwise is foolhardy and is the seed of many wrongs.  These rational structures, Cartesian reason and existentialism, fail because by rationalizing the reality around them, trying to justify everything, they fail to grasp what is important.  They get caught up in irrelevant details, like futilely attempting to prove that a given being exists.

So I exist.  And you exist.  And the world exist.  So does the rest of the universe.  I don’t need to see it, don’t need to touch it, to know this. The existence of these things is as self evident to me as the nonexistence of other things.  Does god exist?  As a universal system of morality, perhaps.  As a flesh and blood being, or a being of some other literal composition? No.  That is, however, for another time.

Here, however, we come to the seed that is the centre of by animism:  Things exist.  But, of course, existing is not in and of itself satisfying to me, since both by Cartesian pure reason and existentialism I existed if I was careful.  Of course, now other things exist, but what of it?  Is that enough?  Is simply existing sufficient?  It is conceivable that a pill could be formed which contains all the nutrition a human needs for a single day.  Would being sustained by such a thing be as satisfying as living, sustaining yourself on real food?  Both are, from the point of view of existence alone, equal prospects.  Eating is not done just for sustenance, but also for enjoyment.  As is being not just existing but living.  What then is the seperation between existing and living?

I spoke of the death of god.  Its death applies here.  There cannot be a universal separation between existing and living.  My separation involves purpose.   Is there purpose to anything?  I would answer yes.  What of meaning, can an action have meaning?  Can a natural occurrence have meaning?  What of emotions?

Here is where I depart from the rational belief structures drastically.  My animism, like the more traditional variations of it, is spiritual in nature.  I cannot, nor shall I try, to rationalize it through any logical means.   To do so would be contrary to its nature and would render it as unsatisfactory and empty as the other systems I talked about.

My belief is that there is purpose, nothing grand, nothing specific, but purpose nonetheless.   The purpose of existence, with life an important part of it, is beauty.  Not perfection.  Not facts.  Perhaps nothing even tangible.  There is beauty in the natural as there is in the human.  Human imitation of the natural can possess beauty, as can creations of a purely human nature.  To be utilitarian is not to be beautiful, although utilitarian objects can still possess their own beauty. Again, god is dead, these are personal, not universal, in nature.

The purpose of life is therefore beauty, the enjoyment, creation and study of it.  Since the natural world possesses this beauty, the natural scientist, for example, can lead a purposeful existence.  This is important to me as, while I am not a scientist nor am I even training to be one presently, it is a position I have always respected and admired.  The artist, be their medium visual, aural, written or dramatic is therefore on par with the natural scientist, as they study and create their own brand and style of beauty. And we are all on equal footing when we take it all in and enjoy these works.

The only morally reprehensible act, therefore, is the intentional destruction of beauty.  This must, of course, be taken with common sense.  The destruction of an insect or a weed is not on the same level as the destruction of a greater beast, such as a human.  Destruction for its own sake is unforgivable, but if a greater beauty could be formed from the initial destruction then perhaps all can be forgiven.

“The cut worm forgives the plough”, as a wise man once said.

My animism substitutes the spirits found in more traditional animism for beauty, but keeps the most important aspect intact: that people, like animals, are just part of the environment in which they live.  That any action taken has consequences, and while I won’t have any sort of ceremony of prayer for what becomes my food, I will be certain to attempt to minimize the harmful or negative responses to my actions.

For now, the final word on this also belongs to William Blake,  “the fool sees not the same tree a wise man sees.”  My beauty is not the same beauty you see, and we should try our best to respect that and not force our own beliefs on each other.

To put it another way, why do we not read poetry anymore?  Most people give up on poetry the moment they finish their last English course, be that in high school, college or university.  Is it that poetry lacks the ability to convey deep and important meaning between human beings?  Is it that we have developed newer and better ways of sharing this message?

Or is it just that society has chosen a different form of writing to be the medium by which we exchange thoughts and emotions.  Poetry has its place and is still of great value, but it has been long since supplanted by the novel as the primary literary form.  The novel too will be replaced as the primary, but never shall it fully disappear for some messages are best for it.

A response to a currently circulating article from 2003.

The premise is that American’s don’t like jazz because they are a visually focused, ADD society which has lost its ability to appreciate high art.   The argument takes on the fact that much pop music is vocally driven and assigns the reason for this to the fact that American’s cannot relate to music without it.  The author extends this to the appreciation of visual arts, where he makes the claim that Americans cannot appreciate art which lacks something which they recognize.  That, for instance, Voice of Fire is less liked than Creation of Adam because the later is easier to understand due to having recognizable figures from stories well known to those viewing the work, while the earlier is much more abstract and minimalistic and thus much more challenging to understand.  Ignoring, of course, the relative fame of each work.  Take Mondrain’s Composition 11 in Red, Blue and Yellow and  Le Radeau de la Méduse by Théodore Géricault for a similar comparison.

The argument presented is tainted by an all too common nearly anti-American elitism which we of other countries often take.  The first hint of such taint is the lack of discussion of music in other English speaking countries, such as Canada, Great Briton, Australia, New Zealand or even India.   The author likely lacks personal experience of these countries and places, so he can be forgiven on this front.  It must be noted, however, that singling out the United States is a ploy often driven by the rest of the world’s subconscious loathing-envy relationship dichotomy with the Americans.  If nothing else, a quick look and presentation of sales numbers in the UK would have been in order, as such information is available.

Moving on from the subconscious, let us return the heart of the matter. American’s don’t like jazz because they cannot accept and understand abstract art. The abstract was the central feature and philosophy of the modern movement in the arts; musical, visual and performance.  It was a reaction to that which came before, the romantic.  No one considers jazz to be part of the modernity movement, however, but the generalities still stand.  Jazz was less structured than the romantic music which preceded it, while still maintaining similar instrumentation.  In the arts, the modern replaced with abstraction the vivid, photosimilar paintings of the previous period.

In architecture, modernity lead to buildings with high utility and little ornamentation.  Architects were some of the first to react to modernity itself by reintegrating aspects of ornamentation to increase the aesthetic appeal of their structures, transforming the understanding of the movement.  It was not that unadorned buildings did not function perfectly appropriately for their purpose, it was that the statement they made was insufficient to these first post-modern architects desires.  Post-modernity is the name of the age recently closed, where the artists decided that they no longer held with the idea that you can communicate everything through abstraction alone.  Abstraction has its place, but just because you can reduce something further does not make it necessarily desirable.  I say post-modernity has passed since this is the consensus that is currently forming, although considerable debate exists as to whether post-modernism existed at all.  We would likely find the author of the article in question would be one who denies the post modern and by extension its passing.

What is the meaning of all this?  In short, the experiment that jazz represented has been replaced.  We have moved on, which is not to say that jazz, like pure utility, has no place.  Its place, however, is no longer the main stage.  Jazz does not fit in what, for lack of a better term, we shall call the post-postmodern.  To pretend that jazz is no longer commonplace because we are too unintelligent to properly grasp its meaning is pure and dangerous fabrication.  If we lack the capacity to understand it, it is because it no longer resonates as it once did.  Contemporary musicians have jazz, what came before and what came after to work with.

The purpose of the artist is not to create mocking works which the common human is incapable of understanding for the sole purpose of this elitism.  The artist does their best to present the feelings, interactions and images they experience in a form which they feels best expresses it.  Separating form from purpose is a meaningless endeavor doomed to create emotionally dead works which are, quite honestly, boring.  Art in the style of Composition 11 in Red, Blue and Yellow created now might rightfully be accused of elitism, since we have moved on.  The same with traditional jazz.  It has its place, and certainly a too direct comparison of musical and visual arts leads to false results, but I feel as though the comparison stands.

In short, humans, the world and the arts have all moved on.  Criticizing any of the above from moving on is foolhardy and wrongheaded.  There is nothing wrong with not moving on, it is not necessary.  I often wonder why certain types of alternative rock from the 1990s had to cease being produced, but I do not attack those who fail to grasp the greatness of many of these works and accuse them of being intellectual light weights.  I may question their taste, however.

And a final point, the classical, and I use classical to mean premodern orchestral music, form of musical appreciation is outdated.  I believe that the popular music, popular to mean all that has come since jazz (excluding country) form of appreciation is superior.  Traditional folk music is meant to be played and enjoyed through participation and by just being in its presence.  People would be doing things, preparing foods, talking and preforming other similar tasks during the performance.  This is closer to the popular music form of presentation, which involves plenty of background noise of people enjoying more than just the auditory experience of the music itself, since music has always been about much more than just the sound.  There is nothing wrong or wrongheaded about listening to music in silence, taking it all in.  There is also nothing wrong about experiencing it as something else, as a background sound or as a participatory experience.

A revisit to my dislike of Toronto

To feel belonging to a place is necessary in order to like it.  Perhaps not a personal, direct belonging, but at least some form of it.  Not necessarily the feeling of `home’, but something like it.  A place here can be a physical place, such as a city, town or any other point on a map.  It can be a metaphorical place, such as the concept of home.  It can be part of society as a whole.  In order to belong you must be able to imagine yourself, your place, in it.  Without being able to do so you will not be enjoy a place.

Clearly by the above statement and past writings, I cannot imagine a place for myself within Toronto.  I am not alone.  I have a place elsewhere for myself.  The problem comes when both groups, and both groups are guilty, fail to recognize that not all of us can imagine ourselves in the same way as everyone else, and thus, as we all really know, there is no universal place.  No clear ideal which everyone must achieve, where everyone must be.  The pleasures of life are not the same for everyone, and we all must respect that.

While, at least in Ontario, the history curriculum is incredibly weak, I am fairly certain most of us are familiar with the Battle of the Plains of Abraham.  A truly important point in the development of the Canadian nation.

While this was not the only important event in the Seven Years War, it can be seen as a pivotal one, the turning point in the Canadian theater of the conflict.  The battle itself predicted the outcome of the war and shall be considered one in the same for the sake of argument.

In broad terms, a global perspective, the battle itself and the war by extension was a defeat of the French Empire by the British Empire on a generally worldwide scale.   The French colony of New France was merely a pawn in negotiations at the end of the war.  It is well known that had the British seen more prestige or a larger profit to be made in sugar plantations than they had in the fur trade of what would become Canada, then perhaps France would have regained their colony.  However, the French Empire ceded New France, the colony of Quebec, to the British.

From a French nationalist perspective, the battle and the war were a humiliating loss.  The English were an oppressive, occupying power, not liberators.  While little attempt was made to assimilate the French Canadians, this perspective is not unreasonable.

From a British nationalist perspective, it was a victory.  The allowances made for the French Canadian people were seen as unreasonable, especially in the 13 American colonies.

Neither of these perspectives, however, represents what is needed from a Canadian perspective.  The forbearers of one segment of Canadians were defeated by the forbearers of another part of the population.  Since Canada is a multicultural experiment this poses some difficulties.  How, for example, does someone celebrate our shared history while some see it as a triumph and others as a defeat?

I am myself largely of British ancestry, while possessing some French as well.  I grew up in a French Canadian town outside of Quebec.  The battle and the war were treated as a victory.  I do not think this is the way to deal with the event.  It is too simplistic and I feel as though it places too much emphasis on our historical inclusion in the British Empire.  Certainly, we are members of the British commonwealth and have much shared history and culture, but we are an independent nation with our own complex and interesting history and culture separate from our partners in the commonwealth and it is time we embraced this.

The question is how do we interpret this battle, this war.  Canada was founded largely through an alliance between both French and English Canadians.  Their work together lead to confederation.  Without the other party, neither the French nor the English could have been successful.  Certainly other word events, such as the British actions towards the Confederate States of America, helped found the nation of Canada.  Without the work of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation, however, Canada as we know it would not have worked out.

There were a great many years between the 1763 end of the war and the formation of the provinces of Upper and Lower Canada in  1791, their unification in 1841 and the final creation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867.  One cannot discount the numerous important events that took place in these intervening years.  However, these years, as well as all the years since 1867,  do lend something to our shared understanding of the battle and thus the war.

Since 1791, perhaps earlier, Canada and that which preceded it has had two European cultural groups living to a large degree peacefully side by side in the same place, and since 1841 under the same government.  For no less than 169 years this has gone on.  Aside from a brief American incursion during their War of Independence and during the War of 1812 and a few scattered and minor rebellions, Canada has been largely peaceful since the Seven Years War.

So how then do we interpret the Seven Years War and the pivotal Battle of the Plains of Abraham?  As a victory or a defeat?  As a victory and a defeat?

We interpret it as the event which put together, in the same place, two different but similar cultural groups and allowed them to act constructively together in the future to build the nation we now call Canada.   The result of the battle may have been a defeat for the French Empire, but French Canadians have been able to practice their culture and speak their language ever since.  The result may have been a victory for the British Empire, but that empire is no more.

The result for Canada was that the right people were able to work together to found a truly interesting experiment.   Not a perfect entity.  Not a static entity.  Not anything that had been tried yet.  An experiment.  The Canadian Experiment.  And while not all aspects of this grand experiment have been successful, overall the experiment has been successful and warrants further study.

Or, how students really buggered up with Radio Waterloo

No one would pretend that the ethical life was the easy life, nor the productive or efficient life.  The ethical life is simply the good life.  It puts unimportant things like economics in their proper place, subservient to the needs of society as a whole.  The ethical life serves the greater good.

The greater good.  Not personal desires.  Not self-interested behaviour.  The ethical life has not to do with these.  Nietzsche called such people nihilists, those who desire only warmth.  Warmth in his words is the physical comforts of an easy life.  The meaning of nihilist has changed somewhat since Nietzsche first wrote of them, but his point stands.  To truly live the good life is to live the ethical life.

We as students of the University of Waterloo are guilty of such nihilism.  Twice we had the chance to do the right thing and twice we failed.

How can I call support for Radio Waterloo the right thing, you may ask?  Never is the silencing of an independent media outlet the greater good.  Only through plentiful voices does society function in a sustainable manner.  The silencing of any voice, no matter how  small, is not something to celebrate.  It requires mourning and a serious look at how it was allowed to happen.

We allowed it to happen twice.  We caused it to happen.  All are guilty.  Those who supported the station failed to demonstrate how important any media is to society’s proper function.  Those against are guilty of using largely false reason and common sense  through economic arguments of personal good to directly cause the destruction of an organ of society’s function.  The vast majority are guilty of indifference.  These are perhaps the most guilty.  Certainly, they did not fall for the arguments of self-interest.  They ignored the debate entirely.  They are guilty of sacrificing something akin to citizenship for the bliss of ignorance, indifferent to the arguments of both sides and unaware of what was at stake.

As students we failed to live the ethical life.   I as much as any other failed.  We all share in the guilt of conspiracy to destroy the functional organs of society.

The nihilists march forward.

I can think of three main reasons why someone would care passionatly about spelling, and none are flattering.

The first relates to bitterness.  I can imagine someone caring passionatly about spelling if they were forced to learn to spell perfectly from a very young age.  These people would be bitter about all this wasted time, and take out the angstiness they feel on the world at large by always taking the time to point out every spelling mistake they see.

The second is a serious lack in pattern matching ability.  If you are so handy capped, you may be unable to understand the meaning of a word if it is not exactly spelled out.  In some cases, this is a legitimate worry, for instance form and from.  The difference in stratigraphy and stratgiraphy, however, is slight.  Anyone being a stickler in the later case is probably just an asshole.

The third and final reason I can think of why anyone would care passionately about spelling is a superiority complex.  You correct spelling because it gives you something by which you feel you can legitimately place yourself above other people.  In this case you are an asshole.

Now, before anyone tells me that correcting spelling comes from a legitimate desire to protect the english language, or even from love of it, I’ll point out that if you truly cared you would cease preventing its natural progression.  I would also inquire about your slang usage, and whether you use the original spellings as layed out by the original dictionaries.   The dictionary spellings reflect common usage today, which has often changed over the years.  The original was written out before the majority were literate, and thus reflects closer how whoever wrote it down felt it should be spelled.  I understand that those who care will continue to care and force their ridiculous nitpick on the word as a whole, and feel as though any transgression is the greatest crime imaginable (except of course suggesting that they are misguided), but for all of us who don’t care or who feel hostile towards their tyrannical behaviour, I’m with you.  I’ve got your back.

I’ve written previously about my distaste for Toronto.  I’ve also claimed that this is not a mentality unique to myself, for truly it is not.  I explained one theory which I think provides the why to the action.

Now I shall refine that thought further.

I find Toronto as a physical place to be greatly unpleasant.  This is, however, just an opinion.  Many of us who grew up outside of the world’s largest cities would share such feelings owing to the total lack of anything natural within the city.  Certianly trees are planted all about, but never do they appear natural.  Even when a forested area is left, it is ruined by the excessive noise pollution of the roads which inevitably follow along near it.

This is not to say that the physical city lacks any attraction, since the ample opportunity for one to exercise boundless consumerism would be a desirable quality to many.  Any with an interest in urban architecture would also find their interests addressed within the city.  My argument is that these aspects of the physical city are insufficient to derive any enjoyment from, at least in my case.

There is the cultural city of Toronto as well.  One would be hard pressed to negatively write about this, and I shall not.  Pure cultural diversity is not the only thing that matters by a long shot, however, it can be a very positive thing.  I would say that Toronto as a cultural entity is somewhat positive in nature, if not wholly positive in nature.

The problem is neither the physical city nor the people who live in it.  The city itself is rather ugly and oppressive to me.  The people are friendly enough so long as you never utter the greatest blasphemy known to them, that Toronto is not the greatest place to live.  No, neither of these are the true nature of my distaste for this city.

The real problem is the idea of Toronto.  That, by virtue of living in Ontario at least, and perhaps Canada as a whole, one should be familiar with the street geography of Toronto enough to recognize a caricature of a map is the centre of the issue.  Toronto expects and demands awareness and seems unable or unwilling to cope with the idea that perhaps it is not the ideal form of life, eve for one person.  That, by living in the same province as the city, we should be informed of who the mayor is and what his daily actions are is an example of this.  (This last point is weakened by the fact that recent mayors of Toronto are eccentric enough to often warrant such coverage regardless of their city’s relative importance.)

I understand that Toronto is an important location and a very populous one.  I just find it impossible to care about where street x crosses street y and what shops can be found in such a local.  So please, a little understanding.

If their purpose was only to provide a snapshot reference of a language at a given time, one could successfully argue that dictionaries have a purpose which sufficiently justifies their existence.  This is not the current state of affairs, and the usefulness of dictionaries should be questioned.  Perhaps we should even go as far as to question the very existence of them.

Language is an organic thing.  It grows and develops naturally through continued use.  Words and phrases obviously fall into disuse with time, but the structure of language itself is also subject to change. The way we spell and pronounce words today is very different than the way they were done in the past.  Its the natural evolution of language.

Dictionaries function as repositories of `truth’.  They are used as the truth on the subject of language.  If common usage differs from what is contained between their covers, then common usage has deviated from the greater truth and must be corrected. This acts to prevent the natural growth and development of language as a whole.

Language is one of the most important aspects of culture. Dictionaries and their truths act to restrain the natural development of language, and thus of our culture as a whole.

The next time someone quotes a dictionary to prove a point, you would do well to question their motives and arguments. Agents of regressive forces should be resisted.

Westernism, for the sake of this discussion, is thinking like a Westerner.  This may include a belief in spreading civilisation, ethnic superiority, looking down on those who are not western in lifestyle or thinking, the pursuit of the `American Dream,’ strong belief in democracy and liberalism, personal certainty of the necessity of capitalism, love of globalisation, consumerism and, most importantly, belief that we in the West have the most ideal lifestyle imaginable.

The important question I wish to address is the source of Westernism, more specifically: is Westernism something you are born with, or is it something you learn.  Thus, can someone not born in the west truly become western, and can someone born in the west ever really escape it.

This stems from a discussion I had with a friend who’s family are not from the western world.  My parents, and their parents, and some of their parents, etc., were born in Canada.  Clearly, if Westernism is to any extent inherited then I am fully in line with this ideology.  And clearly my friend is entirely separate from this way of thinking.  Both of which are entirely false.

To hold with Westernism is a stereotype of what a person from the West might be like.  True, there are those who follow all of the stereotypes to perfection, and there are those who do not.  For instance,  I know a great many people who believe in democracy and liberalism but who reject many aspects of capitalism in its pure from: these people are generally called social democrats.  Are social democrats therefore not western?  I also know people who would consider social democrats to be antiwestern or antiAmerican.

I also know environmentalists who hold with few of the traits I described as being part of Westernism.  To them, Westernism is a tool of those who push for globalisation and further pure capitalism.  Some even go so far as to reject governments, although this is a very small minority.  Are these people Western?  Not by the above imperfect definition.  Could this ideology exist outside the west?  No.  Then they are Western and my definition is imperfect.  Let us craft a new one.

Westernism: any thought of belief that can only come into being in the west.  That is, conditions only exist for the development of this ideology in the land area we consider to be `The West.’

Included in this new definition are still all of the original definition, but it now includes any other ideology unique to the west.  Environmentalism, general equality, human rights.  Not that these are currently unique to the west, but that they were developed through the liberalism which defined the west.

Now all the example people I have talked about are thoroughly western.  My friend is as well, since they wish to use the capitalist system and Westerners’ love of luxury to her advantage.  By their own definition, they were not of the west.  But they are now, by the very structure of the argument they used to prove the converse.

Now, can someone born in the west ever become something else.  Well, I know that we can reject many aspects of Westernism, as I personally have done.  For example, consumerism and the `American Dream’ are not desirable for me, neither is capitalism to a large degree owing to my Social Democratic roots.  But can I reject liberalism, democracy and all other aspects of Westernism?  No.  If all Westernism is defined by the controversial, Globalisation, Environmentalism, cultural imperialism, etc., then yes.  We can reject Westernism.  However, westernism is much more defined by several core beliefs, mainly democracy, liberalism and capitalism.  Can anyone in the west truly reject all of these beliefs?  Not if they wish to live here.

The rejection of any of these aspects of our life would change the West in tremendous ways.  But change is not always good.  Removing any of these aspects to our lives would ruin life in the west, even capitalism, an ideology which I have never been comfortable with.

Here is the crime of westernism, then.  It is like a virus.  Yes, Westernism is imperialistic and relentless in its goals.  Its goals are to make everyone else like us.  Not in every way, of course.  We, however, are so sure of liberal democracy that we demand others use it, regardless of cultural tradition.  I am as guilty as anyone of this.  But I know that I am guilty of it, and I do not feel in the least bit mournful of this knowledge.

Then perhaps the most important aspect of Westernism is not  liberal democracy, but instead that we have the best systems and that failure to adopt these systems might mean forced adoption against your will, since it is for your own benefit.  I can think no of no other alternative ideologies which do not share this fundamental belief, even if they will not admit it to themselves.  We are all convinced of our moral superiority.

The sad fact is that by this final, and perhaps most accurate description of the motivations of Westernism, we are all westerners.  Even those who do not hold with the central tenants of Westernism.  Therefore, westernism, a more pleasant way of saying moral superiority, is something we are born with.  And the liberal democracy we are born within demands being spread everywhere, except where it is we who have the power.  And therefore it is inescapable for those who are born with it, and since I cannot escape from it, I cannot say how those from outside will behave.