How the West Was Won
This is not about a book or a movie, but about the rise of Western Civilization, over more advanced Eastern ones.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2022-07-01 |
| Left | Right |
|---|---|
| To the left, the West beat the East since they were stronger militarily, more oppressive (imperialistic), or it was pure coincidence of environment/natural resources. There's never merit, people are always victims. | To the rational, the East often had more resources, had bigger empires, were more brutal/oppressive (to their own and others), and the West won because it was more capitalistic (less isolationist and more willing to borrow/innovate). The merit of the culture was that individuals shouldn't have to cave to the collective and could improve/adapt/innovate (and make money off of that). |
Why did the west "win"?[edit | edit source]
Islamdom, India, China, Japan, most of the world was more advanced than the west for thousands of years. Even Rome and Greece were nobodies compared to the Persian or Mongol Empires. What we know is that Western Civilization started out-performing the rest of the world starting around the 1500's. We won. Why?
There are loosely 3 competing theories about how the west has won.
- Oppression theory is that the west was more aggressive and came in and conquered and oppressed the other cultures.
- Environmental theory is that we just had more resources, location and opportunity, or we were better humans (racial superiority) and it was all destined because of inherent advantages.
- Cultural theory is that we were a better culture.
West-haters will claim that it had to be oppression, or environmental. If you assume we aren't exceptional (as they do), then it has to be because of oppression and situation (environment). We were just more brutal and won through oppression/conquest, and we had the luck of being born in a better place with more resources and opportunity. Only none of that is true.
It only works if you're more advanced and outnumber them: we had neither.
- If oppression was how you succeeded then the Muslim world, Native Americans and Asian were usually far more brutal, valued life far less than even we did. And the west had a pretty shoddy record back then.
- If the environment/resources mattered, then Africa had more riches and people, the same with Asia or the Americas. Though the Americas had stopped advancing somewhere around the stone or bronze age. Muslims were as populous and had a stronger civilization and more science. So while we did use force/oppression (as did all the others), if conquest and brutality alone, or your environment alone defined what culture would win, the Europeans would have been a footnote in history.
So that leaves cultural superiority. Which begs the question, if that's true, what was superior about the West and America in particular?
| 🗒️ Note: |
|---|
| When I'm talking superiority, I'm not talking morally/ethically better. I'm talking why did it outperform. Superiority of outcome. You can debate on the other aspects of superiority -- but this isn't about "Go us!" -- this is about the honest question, "Why us?" and a willingness to consider the answer, even if it isn't flattering to the 'losers'. |
Why did America "win"?[edit | edit source]
It turns out that's pretty easy to answer and observe, as many have. Which proves the hypothesis that we were exceptional:
- Cultural Appropriation - Because America was made up of people from other places, we didn't value any one tradition as much. We borrowed freely from other cultures. While others were more tribalistic, and isolationist, they couldn't adapt as quickly. Since we could borrow/learn from a larger swath of the globe (or from many more within that reach), we could advance faster in more dimensions at the same time. Isolationist cultures in the middle east, or Asia, only gained a little at the trading ports, but took forever to adopt things that were foreign, as they resisted outside influence. We adopted and adapted and advanced faster.
- Democracy / Individualism (instead of collectivism) -- while others saw it as a weakness to be decentralized and not have a central authority, they were wrong. Authoritarianism or an autocracy seems like it will win, since a leader can mandate adoption and those things they focus on can move faster... in that one area. But historically an individual has blind-spots and a focus. A million individuals can innovate in a million different directions at once, not just the one area that the king/leader mandates... if you take the shackles off and trust individuals (and the economy to adapt). Frederick Hayek spelled it out with his Nobel Prize winning ideas about Dispersed Knowledge -- the people on the bottom know more about specific problems than the people on the top. So the fewer decisions that have to go up and down the chain, the faster and better that most decisions will be. Our individualism (bottom-up fixes) led to us out-innovating the rest of the world, even when we were a fraction their size.
- Captialism -- the Muslim and Asian world had strict (often religious) views against "usery" and loaning money (capital), and Africa/Americas hadn't even mastered the ideas of currency. The west plugged their noses at these ideas and mostly tolerated capitalism. There is some residual bigotry in anti-semitism/anti-bankers or the leftist views against industrialists/corporations, but that's just old world ignorant superstitions masquerading as progressivism. Borrowing money to create something that would be worth more to the investor and borrower is a win-win that lead to huge growth. Instead of every business only being able to grow as fast as it could grow organically, a good idea could scale much faster through borrowing (capital). And investors that profited could loan (invest) in more growth: that's capitalism. You could take land, materials, and labor you couldn't afford, put them together and build a house/factory, that was worth more than what existed before and what you borrowed: everyone won. And the good ideas could flourish and permeate society much quicker. That employed workers, that increased the value of the land and community, that drove the economy and added value.
- Science over superstition/tradition -- we care about results and not traditions. You can make something or show something, and we'd rethink our world-view.... eventually. While in much of the rest of the world, they'd kill you for challenging the status quo/authority, especially if it contradicted a religious/cultural beliefs, we allowed it to reward you financially, and the culture through advancement.
Many get those backwards: they hate capitalism without understanding it, or what it gave us. They think collectivism (central authorities) and group think (not individualism) is the way to succeed. They attack cultural appropriation because it erodes the victim narrative they thrive on. They need individuals to conform to their ideas and even fake language of political correctness. Free thinkers don't vote for people that would take their liberty away, so some have to shout down and stifle the individualists. Even in Science, it's all about facts over Superstition.... to them it is about the 97% claiming that Global Warming is man-made, not about the facts that there really isn't very good hard evidence that we are really the cause (as it started hundreds of years before our cars/industry), or even if we are the cause, that it might not be that bad. You can't reason on those topics, because it's all about emotion and not challenging the herd/consensus.
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Tags: Left Lies Alt-History History Inequality American Exceptionalism/all Cultural Appropriation
