When we do we will see the world as it is
Patrick LAWRENCE
This is the second of two essays on the question of our collective sight and its opposite. Part 1 of this series is here.
23 AUGUST-The Cold War redefined the world for 42 or 44 years, depending on whether we mark its end with the fall of the Berlin Wall or the final dissolution of the Soviet Union. Beginning with Truman's 1947 intervention in behalf of Greece's fascist monarchy, all was subsumed in the East-West binary, that blight upon the human community. It was difficult for any nation to manifest an identity of its own. India to an extent, Indonesia until Sukarno was deposed, de Gaulle's France to an extent, Tito's Yugoslavia: These were among the notable exceptions. For the rest it was with-this-lot-or-with-the-other.
The Cold War's end changed everything, or nearly, once again. As East-West enmities evaporated, nations were able to define themselves on their own terms and no one else's. Those paying attention in the 1990s could scarcely miss this, a promising time after four grim decades-for many people crushing decades. It was as if the world had gone back to the first years after the 1945 victories, I recall thinking. The same aspirations were again evident.
"Become who you are" is one of Nietzsche's frequently quoted aphorisms. This was the post-Cold War project for much of humanity. It was a question of restoring social relations the East-West binary had done much to tear apart. Cultures, traditions, submerged histories, foreign relations, political systems, systems of justice, social structures, the lessons taught in schools...: By way of these and many other such things people and nations set about retrieving identities the Cold War decades had suppressed but never extinguished.
The Cold War's passing precipitated an historic turn in the collective consciousness, I will take the risk of saying. In my read it was as much a revival as it was the advent of anything new. Certain inevitable realities reappeared. It was as if they had been preserved in an earthen jar, like scrolls, and disinterred more or less intact. I have named two of these here and there in previous commentaries. One was parity among Western and non-Western nations and peoples: The demand for this came once more to the surface. There was also the necessity of seeing others as they are and developing the capacity-the desire, indeed-to understand their perspectives.
A couple of examples seem in order so as to avoid drifting into airy abstractions. If the People's Republic asks one thing of the West, beyond the export markets and the foreign investment and the technology, it is to be recognized as an equal of the Western powers. China's infamous "century of humiliation"-from the Opium Wars to the Revolution-adds a piquancy to its insistence on this point.
As to seeing others as they are, the case of post-Sukarno Indonesia is a ready-to-hand illustration of my point. It was politics in command for the archipelago nation's first president. Sovereignty, independence, and pride came before all else, "the Bung," Brother Karno, taught his people. When the C.I.A. deposed him and installed Suharto as another of Southeast Asia's dictators, Indonesians were instantly rendered invisible and their aspirations counted for nothing. For the next three decades Indonesia was shorthanded as "a staunch Western ally"-a phrase I heard so often it came to repel me during my correspondent years in Asia.
Parity among nations, seeing as others see: I count these 21st century imperatives and have done so for some years. If we are fully to understand what amounts to a revolution in the world order we must grasp first of all that it reflects the non-West's insistence that a half-millennium of inequality is ending. But I will leave aside the matter of parity for now. My immediate concern is clear sight, our ability-ours as in America's, as in the West's altogether-to see others just as they are. Our ability or our inability, as the case so often is. If we are unable or unwilling to see ourselves as we are, as I argued in the first of these essays, it follows ineluctably that we have blinded ourselves to other peoples and the cultures and traditions that define them.
How costly it is to live in a pervasive darkness.
Original article: thefloutist.substack.com