The West Vs. Reality

In fact, while the distinctive ideologies and religious groups still exist, the clear boundaries of different civilizations characterized by Huntington have blurred. When this dichotomy to recognize the world as direct confrontations between ideology and culture groups becomes no longer valid, the theory of the inevitability of the clash of civilization, thus, are now flawed, because it is realistically unreasonable, ethically wrong, conceptually biased and historically inaccurate. These problems regarding the clash of civilizations embody a misleading western supremacy shown in Bush’s speech as well as the war on terror on a larger

The civilizations, as identified by Huntington are Sinic [Chinese or Confusious], Japanese, Hindu, Islamic, Orthodox [Russian], Western [Europe, North American, Australia, New Zealand], Latin American and possibly African. And it is among these groups that share a “common interest and common values” and have a “common culture or civilization” that will lead to more interdependence on members of the same civilization and less dependent on the West. Huntington’s theory is that the West has had [at one time or another] a negative impact on every other civilization, and this has led to a decline of power and influence around the world, especially the Islam civilization. Therefore he predicts, “the fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.”

“What is the West, a better question might be what was not the west. It seems when we talk about the west one has to stop and think are we talking about a geography location or are we talking about a culture or could we be talking about a civilization. It is true when we are talking about western culture that we need to know at what time period of time we are talking because it has evolved so much over time.

Each one of the claims will go onto support the overall issue that culture will cause the clash of civilizations. A great support Huntington uses is that no matter what we think of cultures each one is different in many ways. If its religion, language, or different historical backgrounds these will cause conflict to arise. With each civilization being different it can be hard to get along with other people because of how different their views might be. Another issue that arises is that not all, but many civilizations are influenced by the west. This is where the idea of westernization comes into play. Each community is trying to improve and be bigger and better themselves, they are trying to be better than their neighbors. If one civilization improves the surrounding groups will want to be the same. This means they will compete to be the same or even better than the civilization that already made it. This can lead to conflict and death between civilizations. Another reason is that when conflicts arise between civilizations it is a lot harder to resolve than a political or economical one. Like stated before it is very difficult to change someone’s beliefs, that means there is very little wiggle room for negotiation. The final example that Huntington writes about is that the economic regionalism is increasing. This means that more cultures and civilization are trading between themselves, but

It cannot be argued that there are obvious contradictions between archaeological accounts of the past and Indigenous accounts. However, we cannot have one without the other because these two points of view provide us with a more in-depth and thorough understanding of the past, present, and future. For example, Nicholas and Markey (2014) state that Aboriginal medicine was once viewed as unscientific, but now it is valued in the search for new drugs (Nicholas & Markey 2014, 300).

Huntington also does not see westernization as a desirable surge that engulfs world politics. Conflict is very natural and history proves that argument. The author takes away focus from states as a foundation of war in the future and more on conflict between major culture regions. He states that peoples cultural and religious identities will be the primary bases of conflict post cold war. The world is becoming a smaller place with modernization and technology; thus, relations between people of different civilizations deepen consciousness and awareness. Post cold war, the role of the Western society enhances the growth of civilization. Unlike Fukuyamas argument, Huntington states that cultural characteristics and differences are more complex to solve than political and economical

In the work of Elliot west, entitled The Way to the West, and in the fourth chapter, stories, West details the impacts and implications of western tales and ideology in regards to how the telling of those tales and ideas about the west influences our present understanding of western history and culture. West uses the catch line “stories have power.” This is in reference to the idea that the types of stories and the way they are told contains a large base of influence over those who partake of them.

HIS 100-810 — The West and the World to 1500 – Paper Prep Assignment – October 5th, 2015

He frames the sketch of this imagined community of ‘civilization’ through Orientalism concept, where the superior ‘civilized world’ is being threatened by ‘enemies’. As he puts it, this ‘Civilization’ will be defended by ‘We’ who are waging a war to save it. Therefore, the two actors are the traditional components of ‘us’ and ‘them’, as can be deduced from the following statements by him:

identifying with an audience dealing with the same sense of confusion. The system, at the time of the recession, was falling apart. Schools were closing; prisoners were being released due to overcrowding, yet it appeared as if people were more concerned with him and Swift. At the end of “Power,” West questions in plain voice, “Are you strong enough to let power go?” The incredibly deep and wondrous record revealed a darker side of West that showed his transformation and desire to once more speak for the people and highlight dark, comedic experiences. After “Power,” West released new, free records every Friday via his Twitter and website for two months leading up to the release of MBDTF. On Twitter, West explained that his exile showed him

We cannot be too sure of what accurately caused the rise of the west, but we could as well be close enough. The problem about history is that stories will evolve after time passes. Debates between Historians and other will sometimes change ideas. Authors of some best selling books leave out some key details that could be needed later on. We have also been false on a certain number of subjects like how Columbus was the first to discover America when truth was he wasn't. There is a lot of evidence pointing towards that the West actually did rise, but there are still problems from our fellow Historians this current day.

After reading the article I have came to the conclusion that Huntington makes some rather stellar points about his thoughts. I would say that I agree with most of them, his thoughts on the clash the most. I do believe that cultural differences can be stronger than that of political ones. I believe people are more prone to fight over things they are passionate about like religion or their cultural history. When it comes down to it, there culture defines who they are. If we make laws or have a stronger government that can solve some political issues. When it comes down to our roots of culture and what we believer it is not the easiest thing to sit down and talk about it. We are who we are because we believe what we believe, trying to change someone’s

Samuel Huntington sees an emerging world organized on the basis of "civilizations". Societies that share cultural affinities cooperate with each other and the efforts to force a society into another civilization will fail; countries gather around the leading States of their civilization. This description of the process of new structures of international relations that Huntington sees developing, leads him to consider that the greatest risks of violence and confrontation lie in the Westerns’ claims to universality, which are leading them to increasingly get into conflict with other civilizations, particularly Islam and China; local conflicts, especially between Muslims and non-Muslims, generate new alliances and lead to an escalation of violence, which will usually lead the dominant states to make an attempt to stop them.

So what exactly is the clash of civilizations? This was briefly addressed in Samuel Huntington’s paper “The clash of civilizations?”. In order to explain the term, let’s first look into what civilization is. Person does not simply get to choose the civilization he/she simply belongs to. Communists can become democrats and vice versa, but Russians can never become Americans or Arabs cannot become European. In the conflict between civilizations the question is “What are you?”, it is something given and cannot be changed. Conflicts between countries are inevitable and with the way things work it is just a matter of time, before one country would not be comfortable with what other country is doing. In that case, cultural characteristics and differences are less mutable and hence less easily compromised and resolved than political and economic ones [1]. The clash of civilizations often occurs on two levels. Micro-level is when small

19th century came to the end of the Cold War. History continuously updating itself, intellectual thinkers begin trying to hypothesis the future off conflicting regions and new world order. The current living and economic lifestyles of multiple civilizations created with are two of the greatest theories on the future of the world. First, Huntington P. Samuel writing the “Clash of Civilizations: And the Remaking of World Order," then Edward Said writing a scholarly essay on his theory known as Orientalism. These two theories both established in the same era refer to issues within economies like the Women in the Middle World.