Thorsten Pattberg

“ Today, virtually every piece of scientific and economical history has been tried on the Eastern people to demonstrate the - seemingly irrefutable - fact that the West was and (still) is the single most important and the only leading creative force of humankind. In fact, the only way for a person of Hindu, Arab or Chinese background to get some personal integrity in this world was to become westernized, study in Western universities, or work for a Western international cooperation. The East it seemed was never in the position to ask for anything, except for trouble. ”

“ But for the sake of dignity and cultural diversity, they should be properly educated that the chief end of Asian man is not to glorify the Anglo-Saxon way of life, or any other Western model. A global language, exchange and economy is a good thing, but ‘globalization’ as the mediator between East & West will not make East into West, nor West into East. Buddhism has not made China an India, and capitalism has not made Japan an America. ”

“ I will not ditch on each and every leave or twig and say that any particular culture should be preserved, nor will I give myself into the illusion that everything can be preserved. Having said this, however, the smallest leaves and twigs will bend and break when the weather becomes harsh, and wither when the tree is not well nurtured. If our criteria was ‘longlivity’, we would be safest to bet on the two great branches of world history: the East and the West. ”

“ In my understanding, the two global hemispheres experienced a different history, and this made them who they are today. What did the existentialists teach us about identity? Isn’t it the case that the beginning of human history determined what we are, but our historical experience determines who we are? Shouldn’t we all agree that what we are is a – more or less identical – human people. However, thousands of years of unique history made us who we are: Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Germans, French, British etc., and, eventually, we shaped the East and the West. ”

“ Land of religions, cradle of human race, birthplace of human speech, grandmother of legend, great grandmother of tradition. The land that all men desire to see and having seen once even by a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows of the rest of the globe combined. ”

“ Accordingly, Western nations act as if they ‘own’ the globe, history, and all material objects. As soon as Asian nationals lay hands on any matters material or any theories about matters material, that very action is deemed a service to ‘westernization, as if there was a Western patent on matter and modernity. There are Western tourists in Singapore, Shanghai, Yokohama, who genuinely believe that every house, bank, pair of high-heels, traffic lights, newspapers, computers, trains or cars are a genuine extension of Western civilization. ”

“ Post-colonial theory essentially says that Orientalism, the study of Eastern cultures, religions and languages, is the creation (‘brain-child’ is the term of fashion, I believe) of Western scholars. Western scholars had written Asia’s history from a perspective of European-centred norms, just like the Greeks fashioned the Persians in their way, thereby only intensifying the exotic ‘otherness’ of the Eastern hemisphere. Said and Hutcheon both argue, that first ‘post-colonial’ and then ‘post-modernist’ theories both are Western concepts. ”

“ Western nations seek a global civilization, which they believe is an extension of their own; while the Eastern nations, still cherishing their traditional cultures, will feel the ‘rage of the Western destabilizers’, if they do not comply to this aggression:
“Chinese society bears a function of ‘interior self-stability’, while the European society possesses an ‘interiorly-installed unstable factor’” (Needham, 1964) . ”

“ Perhaps the most striking phenomenon in Cultural Studies today is the revival of Max Weber’s ‘ideal types of cultures’ that do facilitate progress and those that do not. Toynbee loved those cultural league tables, too. A new blame-game set in to find the latest ‘sick-men-of-Europe’, the next ‘youth bulge’ (Goldstone, 1991; Fuller, 1995; Heinsohn, 2003) , ‘another failed (Arab) state’, a ‘left behind’, an ‘axis’s of evil’, an ‘empire in decline’, the Chinese Century (Shenkar, 2004) , the New Asian Hemisphere (Mahbubani, 2008) , the ‘yellow peril’, or just another victim for the ‘War on Terror’. ”

“ Mendel today the new mathematical discoveries which tell us that in the realm of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character.”
Einstein: “The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say good-bye to causality.” Tagore: “Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organized universe.” [...]
Einstein: “I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good however, that we cannot see through it.” ”

“ Young Anglo-saxon visitors are especially quick to remind the Asians that every English-language billboard marks Anglo-Saxon cultural territory. The fact that their own language is a 500+ AD descendant of the Germanic language family, with German tribes, the Angles and the Saxons, being their immediate ancestor - few of them learn in school anymore. ”

“ Weber a fictional race, lets say the ‘smurfs’, undoubtedly he would have woven a perfect and sound argument, why the ‘smurfs’ did not build a financial empire and got rich, as the protestants in Europe so splendidly did, based on the sole and simple reason that ‘smurfs’ are no protestants. ”

“ When civilization reaches that goal, it turns toward corruption and starts being senile, as happens in the natural life of living beings. (Ibn Khaldun, 1377)
Treating cultures as living beings has been the scientific trend ever since Khaldun. Reading Western sociology today, we now have plenty of exciting – if not incredible - choices of a culture’s ‘rise and fall’:
“youth, growth, maturation and decline” (Spengler, 1917) ; ivilizations taking turns or going in circles (Ji, 2006) ; a masculine West vs. a feminine East (Garrison, 2000) ”