The West and its Trends
the taste for domination
The supremacy of Western trends
The tendency is a natural act of self-determination, which is based on limited feelings and has a limited purpose beyond which it does not go. Hegel.
We are above all a species in evolution. One of the goals of this evolution is to learn to master our abusive trends *. To gradually destroy forces pushing man to assert himself at the expense of his fellow men.
* trends arising from nature such as the need to dominate, the need to hoard privileges, etc. These trends are still strongly entrenched in the human mind.
Responsibility
The mere enumeration of daily transgressions shows that we are far from account. The consciousness of man has not yet reached a height sufficient to control his impulses properly. The latter still have control over a large part of the human actions. It can therefore be deduced from this fact that no human being abuses another in full consciousness. He simply undergoes the authority of his tendencies over his will. The educational deficiencies of which he was a victim prevent him from properly assimilating the notion of respect for others. The offender is also a victim of the values issued by the company. Victim also of its ignorance of the meaning of the humanity. To reach Sartre (and Plato before him), we can say this: Every man with a real choice, chooses necessarily the good. Every man whose conscience dominates tendencies, abandons evil.
The Responsibilities of the West
A guide sometimes unworthy
The narcissistic blindness
Nothing resembles mythic thought more than political ideology. Claude Lévi-Strauss
For several centuries, the West has offered its values as an ideal to attain. It influences humanity and proposes its choices to the whole planet. Mimicry, we know, is one of the engines of human evolution. The world spontaneously adopts the example of the leading civilization (its best as its worst). The Egyptians, the Persians, the Incas, the Greeks, the Romans, were in turn poles of attraction. At present, the radiation comes from the United States (and more widely, from the West). The one who sets himself up as a lesson-taker, of course, more responsibility than the one he influences. The West today holds the maximum responsibility. It is therefore on him that we must first look.
* At the individual level, the law is clear in this sense. It would not come to the thought of criticizing students for attitudes that they copied at their teacher. Yet this is what the media do when they talk about corruption, violence, genocide in Africa or elsewhere, without analyzing the responsibilities of the West.
Anti-democratic democracies
Today, the West claims to be a bearer of republican and democratic notions. It affirms its desire to offer these values to all oppressed peoples. But he does not set an example. In its own system, the people in fact are absent from the only current democratic showcase; TV. Absent from any real democratic debate. Since the 1980s, the various elites have been ignorant of the views of citizens on the essential decisions of evolution.
* choice of systems, choice of values, commitment to conflicts, protection of the environment, reform of spiritualities, media, relationship with other cultures etc.
Symbolically, the Western elite seems to regard the people as an immature and irresponsible bloc. It is at least the image it gives when it keeps citizens away from major television debates. It considers it thus in defiance of the democratic principle and of reality. We will therefore look particularly at the state of mind and the credibility of this elite, which hoards choices and responsibilities.
Values of the West
The trends of liberalism
Primary disguised instincts
The Republic is the deployment of liberal and representative democracy within and through the authority of the State. Marcel Gauchet
To return to the West, it is he who today seems to be at the helm of the world. That is why it exports its values to other civilizations. Of these values, some are beneficial to the greatest number. This is the case of freedom of expression, voting, the emancipation of women, the democratic principle, and so on. But others are simply the reflection of the lowest human instincts. Thus of certain primary trends that the market spreads in the world via the media and without discernment. We can say so of:
The tendency to taste power for power. It is opposed to the superior tendency to symbiosis.
The tendency to domination by force (whether military, economic, etc.). It opposes the desire for peace, for loyal exchange.
The tendency towards elitism discriminating (the valuation of the VIP). It is opposed to human equality.
The tendency towards egocentrism, narcissism (the over valorization of the cult of the star). It opposes humility, the desire for equality.
The tendency to deafness to others (total absence in the media from the point of view of heavily spiritualized civilizations). It is opposed to fraternity and friendship.
The tendency to hoard privileges (the growing gap between rich and poor). It opposes equality and sharing.
The tendency towards discriminating clanicity (the recrudescence and the rise of the mafias, the clans, the egoistic and racist communities). It is opposed to fraternity, to universality.
The tendency to predation (the systematic plundering of the world's wealth by the West: Africa, Latin America, etc.). It opposes the higher tendency to honesty and sharing.
Needless to say; to give these kinds of tendencies as values to follow, is pure unconsciousness. All of the world's problems arise from the identification with these impulses by the vulnerable spirits.
written in 2001
