The East-West dichotomy/Chapter 12
The great scientists Thomas S. Kuhn (1922-1996), Karl Popper (1902-1994), the venerable Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), and the great historian Joseph Needham (1900-1995) all concluded that the evolution of science is non-relativistic, which tells us that the deduction-based West was predestined to pick up the scientific way. No matter what those few smart individuals invented - in China ‘few’ meant a lot –, be it the compass in 1100 BC – really a mechanical one, the so called ‘South-pointing carriage’ of the Duke of Zhou of the Zhou Dynasty (c. 1100 BC) and a forerunner of the magnetic compass which was also invented in China around 10 BC, the so called ‘South-Pointing Ladles’ - the magnet, the kite, the astronomical clock, the pizza, the noodle, or even gunpowder, it all does not elevate to greatness if one’s society is a victim of its own inward-looking traditions. Once these Asian technologies ‘popped up’ in the West, the European nations took their chances, developed the sciences, increased industrial output, perfected weaponry, boiled the noodle, and set out to conquer and divide the globe among themselves. Only then the West invented patents, copy rights and laws to ensure it would forever stay in power, cunningly assuming that – as I explained before - evolution, even the evolution of sciences, is a gradual, progressive development, and whoever ‘patents’ its beginnings legally owns its progress.
For obvious reasons, the Western ‘scientific accomplishments’ of the past still confuses many Asians, who did, as I said elsewhere, excel in so many arts, crafts, and the humanities, but – more importantly - outnumber the Europeans today by roughly 6 to 1. In a ‘democratic’ world order, Asian opinions would outweigh European ones by 6 to 1. China in particular would win any poll against angry Germany , France and Britain by 16:1, 21:1 and 21:1 respectively: “Hey, you Europeans, you want ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’, well, here you are! Where do we sign!?”
Would it be wrong, in a democratic world order, to drastically reduce the influence of Europe’s ‘Great Three’ in the world - in terms of political, economic, and voting power – to 1,26%, 0,84%, and 0,81% respectively, according to their share of world’s population? I think so, because I grew up in a democratic system. Yet, this is not going to happen. The European mind got itself absolutely accustomed to the idea that it constitutes the world’s ‘bourgeoisie’ or ‘global elite’ while the developing world is human soup. They have no Tact, thus no respect for the rest, and they will never know their place. Their seemingly universal ideas of ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’ stop at their own garden’s fences. Beyond that lies a vast and loveless Darwinian desert.
As someone once wisely said (Laozi if you must know): “small countries have few people”. Germany , with its 82 millions people, is not a small country in any European sense. On the world-scale however, it ranks only 14th after Philippines (93 millions) and Vietnam (86 millions). Over 30% of Germany’s population is foreign-born. The German language, although being the majority language (with regards to native speakers) in Europe, will not be able to achieve clear supremacy of place in European, letting alone any Asian belief structure, nor does the German culture it promotes. The German-Jewish connection before 1938 was a winning-formula for Nobel Prizes, but it slipped away forever.
Today, China and India want German cars, technology, and knowledge… they certainly do not want German culture. When the Schroeder government in 2000 over-confidently announced to tap the vast market of 2,000,000 Indian soft-were programmers - “We want 20,000 of them by the end of the year!” -, only a tiny fraction of that, 1,200 Indians applied to Berlin (Markt und Chance, 2001). That must have been just about everybody who applied got green.
To sum up, it is highly unlikely, for the time being, that Germany, or ever smaller European states like France, Britain or Italy could ever be the role model for India , Japan , Korea , or China . In fact, they would be foolish to adapt the German ways, or the French ways, or the British ways, and consequently, to force Asia and say that any single European country should be the role model for India , Japan , Korea or China is a racist stance that we must never ever take again.