A New Beginning

Jun 08, 2009 Editorial

The change of Presidents in the USA appears to have precipitated a shift, not just in the occupant in the White House, or a change in the incumbent’s race as has been emphasised by commentators, but evidently to a new philosophical understanding of global power.

At least that is what the words articulated by President Barack Obama in Cairo last week, seem to suggest. We hope that the reality as it unfolds will match the rhetoric, since the prior world view that guided Mr. Obama’s predecessor, President Bush, did not deliver the stability and peace that it promised.

In pursuing a policy that actively sought to “export” democracy, the Bush administration was taking as given, that its premises on governance were appropriate for all times and places. This notion was encapsulated by the influential American thinker, Francis Fukayama, in 1991, after the fall of the USSR and the end of the Cold War, in the phrase, “The End of History”.

Expropriating the Hegelian notion, Fukuyama reasoned that if the struggle between communism and democracy had ended in the victory of the latter, then there was no basis for future struggle over the forms and substance of governance. Democracy, as conceived by the neo-conservatives, would be the only path that any right thinking people could choose.

However, even then, this view was challenged by some other highly influential Western intellectuals, who spoke from a similar position. Samuel Huntington, who taught Fukuyama at Harvard University, outlined a broader concern than just the issue of governance: “In recent years, Westerners have reassured themselves and irritated others, by expounding the notion that the culture of the West is and ought to be the culture of the world.

This conceit takes two forms. One is the Coca-colonization thesis. Its proponents claim that Western, and more specifically American, popular culture is enveloping the world. American food, clothing, pop music, movies, and consumer goods, are more and more enthusiastically embraced by people on every continent. The other has to do with modernization.

It claims not only that the West has led the world to modern society, but that as people in other civilizations modernize they also westernize, abandoning their traditional values, institutions, and customs, and adopting those that prevail in the West. Both theses project the image of an emerging homogenous, universally Western world, and both are to varying degrees misguided, arrogant, false, and dangerous.”

Thus, when President Obama called for “a new beginning” between the US and the Muslim world, he was explicitly going beyond his acceptance, that democracy could not be “imposed”.

He explicitly recognised the dangers identified by Huntington, when he noted that, “the sweeping change brought by modernity and globalization, led many Muslims to view the West as hostile to the traditions of Islam.” This is a crucial and nuanced insight that is important for all nations such as ours, that may have different traditions and customs than the US.

After all, Huntington himself had famously postulated that the different cultures or civilisations – Orthodox, Islamic, Latin American, African, Confucian, Buddhist, Hindu, and Japanese, that felt threatened by the West, would lead to a “clash of civilisations”.

The Muslim world to a wide degree, and not unreasonably, saw the US’s recent posture and activities in Iraq and in its support of Israel versus the Palestinians as contributing to that clash.

Obama has attempted to step around the dangers of universalising the “American Way” and demonstrated a knowledge and understanding of the differences between the two worlds he himself straddles. While he stressed the commonalities, his acceptance of differences, both among and within various cultures (or sets of cultures) is most important for understanding and dealing with the world we live in.

Events play out not in “the end of history” but as a new history, a history which will include narratives of different cultures and different traditions, all grouped together and all treated with equal respect.

There is a message in there for us in Guyana also.

Latest News

A New Beginning

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| March, 17th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Groups, schedule announced for One Guyana 3×3 Quest

2025 Republic Bank Caribbean Premier League...

Virtual Meeting of Caribbean Boxing Promoters...

GBA AirBadminton Tournament spikes off with...

Briton John sets sights on another sweep with...

Waramuri stuns Vreed-en-Hoop 7-1, as Bush Lot...

Features/Columnists

Desecration, Disrespectful, and Disgraceful

The Caribbean: Destined to Grin and Bear the Consequences of Its Self-Created Vulnerabilities?

Radical left-wing lunatic

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]

A New Beginning

Share this:

Related

Similar Articles

The Glenn Lall Show|| March, 17th, 2025

Follow on Tik Tok @Glennlall

THE BLUNT OF THE DAY

Sports

Features/Columnists

Publisher’s Note

Weekend Cartoon

Bridge Watch

Demerara Harbour Bridge

> Berbice Bridge […]