Very incisive post on your part.
I must recommend the book Fortunate Sons by Liel Leibovitz.
It is an amazing story of 120 Chinese children who came to the U.S. 150 years ago. They came here at the young age of 5 or 6 living with adopted American families and stayed for 15years before being called back to China.
They went to Yale and Harvard and interacted with the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and Mark Twain. They went back to become leaders in China.
But their Western education and technological ideas were no match against the ingrained Chinese culture and feng shui.
We often ask is the man or the times that determine history? Perhaps the better question is whether it is the culture or the religion?
I’ve yet to read a better book elucidating Kipling’s ballad of “East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.”
If anyone wants to spend a fascinating half hour, listen to the author of Fortunate Sons talking about his book . . .
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Fortuna
I bought 4 copies. I should be his agent.
Culture is based on religion, as Spengler argued in The Decline of the West. Without religion, culture loses its basis.
Romanticism has been called “spilt religion.” Religion leaves its influence for decades and centuries, but unless renewed, the culture will gradually fail. The Cultural Revolution of the 60s was based on, really, nothing. So unless we get some sort of Christian revival, I think western civilization is cooked.
I hadn’t heard about that book, Fortunate Sons, but I can well believe it.
One of Kiplling’s most astute observations
was the one about how a westerner
would rarely to never
out-fox; out-negotiate; out-haggle the typical oriental.
I forget the exact wording.