Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book is an excellent analysis and critique of the ills of contemporary Western culture, and their relevance to the relationship between the West and the rest of the world, particularly in the light of international terrorism such as the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The author's basic argument is that the contemporary West lives in a state of nearly complete disconnection from the reality that most people inhabit or have inhabited both now and throughout most of human history. In many, if not most places in the world, people struggle for daily survival, living in the ever present shadow of death and chaos. As a result, they understand the importance of moral order and a belief in the transcendant that gives meaning to life. We in the West, on the other hand, enjoy political stability, technological sophistication, and a level of comfort and safety unparalleled in human history. Largely padded and pampered from the harsh realities of daily survival that most people have to contend with, we have largely discarded a belief in the transcendant and have replaced objective morality with self-centered hedonism. As a result, the author argues, we have become infantile, technologically sophisticated barbarians, and this is how the rest of the world largely views us. Furthermore, our great power and influence around the world, causes many people from more traditional cultures to view us as a threat to decency, moral order, and the survival of everything they hold dear. As a result, the West is hated in many places. As a result of their often condescending attitudes towards those they view as less advanced, Westerners are often completely incapable of understanding these realities.

The book is succinct, reasonably short, well written and well argued. The author lays out well the historical factors that have led to our present situation, as well as the crisis that is currently facing the West. He also does an excellent job of critiquing the condescending attitude held by many westerners towards traditional religious and moral beliefs, and showing how even our much vaunted "tolerance" and acceptance of other cultures is really a joke. What is needed, he argues, if there is any chance of saving the West, is a return to some kind of solid, public moral commitments, and a resurgence of public religious beliefs. Things don't look particularly hopeful on this account.

All in all in excellent book. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting
Review: *** At some point in your life, the phrase "Ugly American" has probably been heard in reference not to how Americans or Westerners look, but how they act around less advanced people or people whose beliefs are different. In recent years, political correctness, tolerance for anything but intolerance, and open mindedness have become popular. Yet, if anything, that has made things worse, because as minds have been opened, the brains and hearts have fallen out, crushing values and morality underneath. Readers are given a history lesson in this concise volume, but a lesson with a difference. The past is traced not so much by what happened but by going to the heart, seeing the effects of history on values and philosophy. Although highly academic, it is not incomprehensible to the average reader. ***

Amanda Killgore

Rating:
Summary: Fertility
Review: I am so glad that the connection between social ills (serial boyfriends, unstable partners/unfaithful partners) and fertility and the possible crisis is brought out in this book. With 44% of women childless under the age of 44 in the US, it won't take much higher childlessness for there to be an even worse crisis in the very near future.
Charlotte Fairchild, author of Fertile Prayers: Daily Fertile Prayers www.fertilityfair.com

Rating:
Summary: Good observations but not what you'd expect from the title
Review: With a confrontational title like "Why the Rest Hates the West" you might expect a scathing talk-radio-style diatribe about the evils of the uncivilized non-western world. Or you might have expected the author to blame Western imperialism, Judeo-Christian religious history, and ecological shortsightedness for terrorist attacks.

Refreshingly, the book offers fodder for neither set of extremist views. Instead it's a reserved and rather academic (although readable) study in the differences between the post-modern West and the rest of the current world and all previous world cultures. In taking the high road though, I get the sense that the author might have titled this book "A History of Post-Modern Western Civilization's Moral Failings and their Long Range Impact on Global Demographic Shifts" and the publisher's publicist probably played a role in the "Hate" title despite little content in the book supporting it.

The author makes several keen observations on differences between the current west and non-western worlds. He details that the post-modern world has rejected its own religious heritage (despite the cries of the American left in the days following the 2004 election, the U.S. is not in danger of becoming puritanical although the U.S. does have a larger percentage of practicing Christians than many European countries). He looks at the west's history from the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Reformation, through the Victorian, post-Victorian, and finally post-modern ages. He observes the effects of all of these upheavals on the institution of the family.

His first main conclusion is these changes along with industrialism have combined to devalue social institutions like the family and local communities while elevating the importance of individualism, nationality, and human rights. It is however the institutions of family (including ancestors) and local communities that all previous world cultures and the current non-western civilization still hold dear and it is this distinction (not religion itself or militarism) that separates the west from non-west today. The pre-industrial non-west can't afford the luxury of "individualism" - families need to stick together for mere sustenance and survival. Nationality is expressly rejected by Islam. And abstractions such as "human rights" mean little to anyone struggling day to day for clean water and food. Pre-modern societies who don't know where tomorrow's meal might come from also favor stability over change, so even an "evil" dictator who is stable is preferable to a change that might endanger the family's day-to-day living. Divorced from the reality of day-to-day living by hyperprosperity, the west can afford temporary instability in the name of the long term march of freedom and can't understand how anyone could deny the value of freedom.

While he doesn't say so explicitly (unfortunately) the inevitable conclusion I drew from the book up to this point is that the west, in its all-knowing all-powerful elitist style fails to understand that today's west took some 500 years of history to evolve. But we then turn around and try to force 500 years of "progress" down the rest of the world's throat in the name of "freedom" or "human rights." If the rest of the world is to find "freedom" or "human rights" they're going to have to find it on their own terms, in their own time. Neither the approach of democracy at the point of a gun nor the approach of peaceful mediation to convince the non-west of the intellectual superiority of "tolerance" and other western values will advance real freedom's march by a day. (These are both laughable approaches considering the arbitrary geographic boundaries imposed by the west "joining" vastly different religious sub-cultures into pseudo-countries.)

He concludes the book with an unexpected twist: he ties all of the post-modern west's rejection of religion and tradition to staggeringly low birthrates in Europe, birthrates so low that they point to a population implosion. Along with rising senior citizen populations thanks to longer life expectancy, economic struggles result from an imbalance in the ration of workers to retires. These trends open the door to a flood of immigration to fill the European void and the current trend is this immigration is decidedly non-Western. The new immigrants aren't westernizing, are holding dear their traditional values including family which means higher birthrates in their populations, leading to the conclusion that "western" culture as we know if today in Europe will cease to exist within 100 years and will be equally balanced by the influx and growth of non-Western traditions. He paints a slightly different picture for the U.S. where the birthrate is at least holding steady at the minimum population rates but points out that immigration will reshape the U.S. as well. The only alternative is for the west to re-adopt traditional values.

And with that, the book ends. Not with a conclusion that the "rest" hates the "west" but that the current west is not viable because the population is not self-sustaining and that the non-west will overtake the west via population growth.
While in general he makes many good points and I felt I learned from reading it, there were things I didn't like about this.
First: the disconnect between the title and the material. He made very little effort to link his lengthy discourse on the last 500 years of western history to "hate" for the west from the rest.

Second, while the issues of family and local community are important to many people non-western world, I think he vastly understates the role of religious differences in creating and maintaining the current divide. Millennia of religious differences and western military domination the last several hundred years are hatred's foundation. The fear that the western non-traditional values will be part of the west's cultural steamroller only adds heat to hate's fire.

Finally, on the population sustainability note, I thought he failed in not connecting that if the non-west sees the west's non-sustainable birthrates, the non-west may fear the west will take the only other route available to any demographic that can't sustain through procreation - converting others (the non-west) to western culture.