In Defense of Western Civilization

Several weeks ago, in Warsaw, President Trump issued a ringing endorsement of Western Civilization.  He praised Western values and cited Western music, literature, and religion as a legacy of which Europeans and Americans could be proud.

Within days, the American Left counter-attacked.  In outlets, like the Atlantic Magazine and the Washington Post, writers expressed outrage at the implication that figures such as Beethoven and Shakespeare had done something special.  This assertion was nothing less than a coded argument in favor of racism and white supremacy.

I, for one, was amazed by this line of reasoning.  When journalists endorse freedom of the press, I am with them.  But when they defame the cultural advances that made this freedom possible, they expose the brain-dead status of contemporary progressivism.

The Atlantic is a magazine of ideas.  As such, it has been very influential.  But who invented this format?  Meanwhile, the Washington Post is a mass circulation newspaper.  So who initiated the printing press as a mode of public communication?  Why, it was Westerners of course.  These innovations were not developed in Africa, or China, or India.

Think of how much we owe to Western civilization.  It is responsible not just for great music and literature.  Who, after all, gave us modern science, the industrial revolution, state-of-the-art medicine, the airplane, the railroad, the computer, free public education, television, reading glasses, the fork, the mechanical clock, the pocket, or the chimney?

 More importantly, who gave us democracy, the Bill of Rights, or religious tolerance?  It wasn’t the Chinese.  It wasn’t the Africans.  It wasn’t the Indians.  These tools, without which, the writers at the Atlantic could not spout their egregious nonsense, evolved first in Europe and then spread to our shores.

But more than this, the folks who made these contributions were primarily Caucasian.  That’s right, they were white.  Is this something of which we should be ashamed?  Should folks of European descent deny their heritage just because some other folks might be offended?

The Chinese made some wonderful contributions to civilization.  They gave us moveable print and gunpowder.  The Indians also made superb contributions.  They gave us the modern numbering system.  The African has likewise advanced our knowledge, most notably in Egypt.

In celebrating what white folks have achieved, there is no need to denigrate what these others have done.  But neither do we enhance the impact of non-Europeans by denouncing the inputs of the West.  Fake history is fake history.  Promoting a sanitized version of the past cannot erase what actually happened.

Contemporary liberalism is shot through with fantasies and well-intentioned insults.  In the name of political correctness, it now demands that everyone be equal in every respect—whether or not this is the case.  As a result, it is dumbing down our culture and hastening its decline.

Everyone deserves an opportunity to succeed, no matter what the skin color or ethnic background.  Nonetheless, a person’s chances are not advanced by intellectual fictions.  Did this tactic, for instance, help the Russians when they claimed to have invented everything from the airplane to the automobile?

Worse yet, what alternative to modernism are the hyper-liberals proposing? It surely cannot be a variation of Chinese socialism or African tribalism.  Left-wingers like to criticize capitalism and the free market.  Yet these have furnished humanity with greater freedom and prosperity than any previous form of social organization.

True, western nations have sponsored slavery and sexism.  But they also supplied the intellectual tools and democratic institutions to move us beyond these.  Can this be said of socialism, anarchism, or Asian autocracy? 

The Bible tells us, “You will know them by their fruits.”  If so, most of the fruits of Western Civilization have been very nutritious.  If they are allowed to further ripen, they may yet become tastier and more wholesome in their extent.

Simply burning down the orchard is no answer.  Intellectuals, who in their hatred of Trump, hope to excise every shred of human progress do none of us a service.  By making skin color the sole criteria of acceptability, they disseminate the very racism they abhor.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

The Shangri-La Myth

A couple of weeks ago, I got to see the remastered version of Lost Horizon on Turner Classic Movies.  I had never viewed the film before, but it provided a wealth of insights into liberal and utopian thinking.

During the Great Depression, James Hilton’s novel was enormously popular.  It told of a hidden valley sheltered somewhere in the Tibetan Mountains, where peace and prosperity provided a model that the rest of humanity should emulate.  Only this form of social organization would save the world from self-imposed destruction.

So well-known—and admired—was this vision that when President Franklin Roosevelt was asked from whence the Doolittle raid on Japan had been launched, he replied that the planes had taken off from Shangri-la; that is, from Hilton’s fictitious valley.

In any event, I was impressed how nonsensical this paradise was.  Much like Sir Thomas More’s original Utopia, it was a place that never was or could be.  What was more, it dramatized the absurdities of socialism and communism.  Anyone who paid attention could see the eerie parallels.

To begin with, in an early reel, Ronald Coleman, the movie’s star, explains his pacifist philosophy.  If only an army would lay down its arms, any potential invader would be humiliated into doing the same.  Its soldiers would immediately realize that war was illogical.

This was articulated in 1937.  By then, many people feared a second World War.  Although this attitude was understandable, in the very next year the Nazis marched unopposed into Czechoslovakia.  The Czechs had been forced to put down their guns, but this did not induce Hitler’s troops to set down theirs.  So much for unbridled romanticism.

Anyway, after Coleman and his companions arrived in Shangri-La, they were put up in a fabulously comfortable palace.  The natives, who were unfailingly attentive, then served them sumptuous meals and dressed them in brocades.  At no point were these recent arrivals asked to do any meaningful work. 

The locals, it must be added, lived down in the valley in what amounted to huts.  They also labored as farmers, herders, and porters.  All seemed to love their work, while none appeared to have a supervisor to over-see their efforts.

When Coleman asked why they were so happy, he was told it was because they owned no property.  With everything held in common, no one was envious of anyone else.  Colman then inquired about sexual jealousy.  Here the answer was that happy people are well mannered and hence do not fight over such things.

As I was listening to this explanation, I could not help but be reminded of the realities of hunter/gatherer societies.  These folks also owned very little, but the murder rate among them was much higher than among us.  Moreover, much of this was due to sexual rivalries.

I also realized that this small valley had limited resources.  The inhabitants had enough to eat, but what if the population outgrew this supply?  If love were essentially free, wouldn’t they eventually reach its limits?  What then?

As for governing this earthly paradise, it was in the hands of what amounted to a European philosopher king.  There was no democracy.  But neither was there coordination between the citizens.  Somehow—by osmosis—everyone knew what to do.

In More’s original Utopia, all of the citizens were equal.  This did not, of course, include the slaves.  In Shangri-La, however, there were no slaves.  Nonetheless, a firm social class divide was in evidence.  The Europeans and their representatives were privileged, whereas the Asiatic natives were docile subordinates.

In socialism too, everyone is supposed to be on a par, while in communism there is not supposed to be any government.  In fact, every collectivist society has had a hierarchical divide.  The party apparatchiks always get to live in bigger houses, eat better food, and wear more luxurious clothing.

In other words, the equality of these societies is just as fictitious as that of Shangri-La.  So is their purported prosperity and freedom.  Novelists can make up any universe they desire.  They can say their characters are happy when in actuality they would not be. 

It is the same with socialism.  Its proponents can create attractive word pictures, but that does not mean these can ever come into being.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Emotional Maturity

I have recently written columns about principled realism and social individualism.  These were put forward as an antidote to the ideological crisis we are currently experiencing.  Yet if liberalism, conservatism, and libertarianism are obsolete, can these alternatives fill the vacuum?

Last week, I spoke about our need for balance.  By themselves, none of the old truisms are sufficient for our purposes.  None answers all of our questions; nevertheless each supplies wisdom that if supplemented by the others can advance our joint interests.

The trouble is that implementing this balance or my suggested replacements presupposes the existence of a crucial foundation.  Ours may have become a mass techno-commercial society in which our affluence offers up a multitude of choices, but we will not be able to take advantage of them without “emotional maturity.”

David Goleman authored several books about what he calls “EQ.”  He compares this emotional quotient with IQ, that is, with the intelligence quotient.  Both are said to be crucial for social success, but the way he puts it is that IQ will get us a job, whereas EQ is essential for keeping it.

Unless we know how to get along with other humans, we are sure to alienate them.  If we can’t read people emotionally or control our emotional impulses, we are sure to behave in an off-putting manner.  It is, therefore, critical to understand and master our passions.

While Goleman is partial to a comparison between EQ and IQ, I prefer to talk about emotional maturity.  We are all born with a full complement of affects.  Some folks may be more sensitive than others; even so, we all feel fear, anger, guilt, shame, disgust, sadness, and love.

What distinguishes us, however, is how well we learn to use these emotions.  They must all be adequately “socialized” if our affects are to be helpful to our adult selves.  Were we to experience and deploy them the way that children do, we would be in enormous peril.  Our social life would, in fact, come to a grinding halt.

To illustrate, we all get angry. Yet how we get angry differs.  An extremely irate infant may literally bite the hand that feeds it.  Then again, were an adult to do something comparable, he would probably go to jail.  Adults must learn to express their irritation verbally—not physically.

Something similar applies to fear.  Adults need to learn the difference between what is dangerous and what is not.  Thus, while a ceiling fan might startle a baby, a teenager should be able to take this in stride.  The teenager should also have learned to cross a busy street by looking both ways.

Strong emotions must be controlled or they revert to their infantile forms.  Without self-discipline, people behave inappropriately.  They get angry when they shouldn’t.  They get frightened when they ought not.  Worse still, they lash out when they should keep silent or run away when they should stand and fight.

This is what I mean by emotional maturity.  It is not something we are born with, but something we develop.  Unlike IQ, it is a competence that we acquire.  All of us are able to learn how to be less afraid.  All of us can discover how to get angry without throwing a tantrum.

What is more, unless we do, we cannot engage in principled realism.  We would instead be so terrified by reality that we hid under a bushel-basket of fantasies.  We would also be so enraged by our frustrations that we immorally injured those who got in our way.

Social individualism is correspondingly impractical in the absence of emotional maturity.  We would not be able to make wise choices because we did not recognize, or honor, our limitations.  We would, in fact, be too busy pretending that we should get everything we desire.

Unfortunately, emotional maturity is currently in short supply.  We see this in politics.  We see it in the media.  We see it in our entertainments.  Everywhere we look, childishness is in full bloom.  Not only is it ubiquitous; it is celebrated as energetic and optimistic.

Too bad, because in its ignorance and impulsivity, this sort of immaturity is endangering our future.  A world that is converted into a puerile sandbox will shortly have all the coherence of a pile of sand.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University

Is There an Adult In the Room?

Barack Obama often liked to pretend that he was the only adult in the room.  As he saw it, he was the only one with the good sense and emotional control to make wise decisions.  Others were too caught up in the passions of the moment to put current events in perspective.

This, however, was a charade.  Our former president was an admirable speaker, but a juvenile thinker.  He could put words together better than most folks and do so with admirable composure.  As was said, he was no drama Obama.  Yet did this make him an adult?

Anyone familiar with Barack’s history knows that his political philosophy was formed when he was a teenager and underwent few changes as he supposedly matured.  He was always in favor of semi-socialist solutions.  He always regarded these as common sense.

Donald Trump, in contrast, is seldom thought of as an adult.  His language and demeanor are frequently those of an adolescent.  His penchants for name-calling and hyperbole unquestionably aim for the lowest common denominator.  They certainly do not inspire us with their penetrating insights.

Nonetheless, when our president called for “principled realism” in Riyadh and urged us to uphold our shared Western values in Warsaw, he conducted himself very much as an adult.  He also did so with a combination of restraint and determination in dealing with North Korea.

Members of the media, on the other hand, have behaved like a band of mischievous children.  They are so determined to bring down a hated president that they will stoop to any form of derision that makes him look bad.  Yet when they do, they do not stop to think about the best interests of their country—the way adults would.

To cite a small example from the recent past, mainstream journalists hysterically bemoaned Trump’s unkind dismissal of CNN while in Europe.  They complained this was unpresidential.  And yet they conveniently left out the part that he said this only because a reporter asked a question that virtually begged for such a response.

As for politicians, few of them have in recent years distinguished themselves as statesmen.  Thus, both Democrats and Republicans have amped up their mutual recriminations in the manner of schoolyard bullies.  The worst sorts of accusations are hurled without any concern for their accuracy.

Instead of quietly attempting to legislate on behalf of their constituents, congressmen nowadays preen for the cameras.  The problems we face are so complex and so vexing that mature thought would appear to be necessary.  This, however, is not what we get.  We get adolescent grandstanding.

Why is this so?  Perhaps it is because so few adults go to the voting booth.  Regrettably, not enough Americans think for themselves.  They are instead influenced by slogans and invective.  These provide easy answers that do not require them to exert effort.  This way they do not have to read, but can get solutions served up in digestible portions.

We see the same trend at the movies.  When I was an adolescent, I enjoyed reading my best friend’s stash of comic books.  The exploits of Superman and Batman were a secret indulgence that I even then realized was immature.  But today we see a comparable quest of empty-headed fun at nearly every theater.

It is currently summertime, with its tidal wave of computer-generated graphics designed to impress and excite.  The idea is to get our hearts racing, not our brains cogitating.  Throw in a dash of romance and a menagerie of monsters and we are happy as three years olds with two scoops of ice cream.

So where are the adults?  I am a college professor and I don’t see many of my students actively attempting to grow up.  For that matter, I have been shocked at how little serious reading some of my colleagues do.  They too seem to be in search of easy answers.

But guess what?  Childishness has a serious downside.  The world is too complicated for juvenile remedies.  Furthermore, the challenges we face require adult courage.  Without the clear-eyed collaboration of millions of determined adults, society is bound to become further disorganized.

Am I the only one frightened by this prospect?  I hope not!

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University