I was loading my recently purchased iPod Shuffle with my favorite tunes from my iTunes Library yesterday and I came across an old song I hadn't heard for a while.
"Ride The Tiger", by Jefferson Starship, released around 1975. Not a great song but worth listening to now and then.
The chorus goes like this:
It's like a tear in the hands of a western man
Tell you about salt, carbon and water
But a tear to a chinese man
He'll tell you about sadness and sorrow or the love of a man and
a woman.
I don't think things have changed much in the world attitude towards Western and Eastern Cultures.
That is that the east has "Good Culture" and the West has not, if you'll excuse the flagrant generalisation.
We in the West tend to put our culture down, like we have some inferiority complex and think that Eastern Beliefs are somehow elevated beyond our superficial and consumerist society.
There are bad apples in every barrel. You can't judge the West just by it's profligacy of pornography, Sports/Celebrity Idolisation, Technological Gimmickry, Fast Food eateries, Daytime Dramas, and the Dumbest U.S. President EVER.
We are a Humanist Culture. Most of us have broken away, or at least are trying to break away, from the Shackles of Religious fear and oppression.
When I think of eastern Culture I think of self-indulgent Superstitions, Mysticism and Religious Sects spawning a population controlled by fear and ignorance. A population afraid of free thought, afraid of "being human".
It may be said that Ignorance is Bliss, but Knowledge is Power.
Much of the turmoil in the Middle East is being caused by this clash and misunderstanding of West vs. East. There is a lot of western sympathy for the Muslims in that area, much of it justified.
But if you have to pick sides, I am rooting for our side, The West.
Yes we are a superficial Consumerist Society. But consumerism is fueling the daily technological breakthroughs which are going to save this Planet and going to make our lives more pleasurable.
No amount of praying or hoping will do that.
