Resumption of Hostilities
I’m approaching the end of Curtis O. White’s book, The Middle Mind. Lots of good ideas in there. This bit from page 178 struck me:
“… if there is to be a global culture — and telecommunications and digital technology have made that appear inevitable (if also inevitably unequal) — that culture will be understood, rationalized, and administered in keeping with, in faith with, the ‘trust’ we have in Western institutions. We simply do not know how to ‘trust’ under other circumstances. It is a nearly imponderable dilemma; it is a religious dilemma, and a dilemma of spirit. How do we interact fairly with other people who do not share our faith in Western institutions? Unhappily, some perceive only one adequate response to it: the imposition of Western paradigms.”
White goes on to say that our current struggle with Islam is really the resumption of a 1000-year struggle that was temporarily forgotten while we were preoccupied in the 20th century with communism. But we’ve returned to the ancient feud, at once reminiscent of the Crusades, except that instead of being motivated and protected by the “divine puissance” of Christian faith and virtue, this resumption of hostilities is defined to a greater degree as an administration action — taming (and exterminating) the brutes — and our troops are protected by our technological superiority and the troops’ own “Nintendo-hardened reflexes.”
All of this is of course a lens through which to filter very broad historical trends. I’m very intrigued by the idea and impressed with White’s framing and ability to coin especially apt phrases. There’s not a lot for me to develop, as he does a pretty good job stating his case.
