I have written before about the "Clash of Civilisations" and thinking about this vexed question has made me reflect deeply on how and where the "clash", divergence or difference has arisen.
Educated persons living in the countries centred on the Mediterranean are well aware that our present culture has its known roots in Mesopotamia, now part of Iraq, that it spread around the Fertile Crescent to engulf the Levant and then moved on around our middle sea and outwards from there. In the beginning the means of communication was through what we now recognise as semitic languages but came, through contact with Greece and the Roman Empire, to use various Aryan tongues. These are now represented by such languages as Italian, French and English, among others. We also have languages with roots in both groups, such as Spanish which is an aryan language using many words of semitic origin and Maltese a semitic language with a large number of words of Aryan (mainly romance) origin.
To the east of Mesopotamia arose another rival culture based on Aryan languages which we can crudely categorise as Persian, and this spread mainly eastwards to take over what are now India and Pakistan. This linguistic frontier between the Aryan Farsi and the semitic Arabic is still very much in existence and (very roughly, because real life is not tidy) it follows the political boundary between Iran and Iraq.
Although such sadly ill-informed but highly influential persons as Wilhelm Marr, Theodor Herzl and Adolf Hitler pretended (for their own respective base political reasons) that this linguistic frontier also applied to racial characteristics, it seems like a joke in bad taste when one realises that millions of speakers of still surviving ancient Aryan languages, such as Hindi, Urdu and Farsi do not in any way comply with Adolf Hitler's idea of the Aryan Master Race.
Given our own languages' deep roots in both groups, we have no reason to deny either and indeed we should glory in our civilisation and culture, and in the sub-cultures which have grown up in our delightfully varied communities. As I have said many times, my brief visits to India and Pakistan (I have not had the pleasure of visiting Iran beyond the confines of Tehran Airport) have given me a view of a civilisation which is wonderful, but distinctly different from what we find in our own which stretches from Iraq in the east to Western Europe and Morocco in the west (i.e. both to the north and to the south of the Mediterranean).
When I look at both our own civilisation and the neighbouring lively culture which I have seen in India and Pakistan, I see that both benefit from deep traditions of spirituality, and universal religions such as Christianity and Islam find themselves equally at home in both civilisations. On the other hand, some other religious communities (but not all, since many Buddhists and Sikhs, for example, seem to participate fully in the life around them wherever they find themselves) find it difficult to fit in with one or the other, and hold on ferociously to the civilisation from which they arose, while remaining determined never to integrate within the other. Individuals within both Christianity and Islam also fail to integrate, but this seems to be for reasons which are in fact political rather than religious, however much they may be claimed to be matters of faith.
While we see this spirituality as fundamental to these two civlisations, we remain puzzled at what has happened across the North Atlantic in the former colonies founded by immigrants principally from Europe and also peopled by those whom they transported as slaves from Africa (often sold by their own communities).
Going right back to the Founding Fathers of the USA, we see a rejection of what we consider to be essential elements of any modern and fully human civilisation from a spiritual point of view, while very ostentatiously claiming what I think of as the Cloak of Religiosity. Many of the said Founding Fathers felt able to accept slavery, while pretending that this was compatible with their duty to treat other human beings as brothers and sisters in Christ.
This strange outlook has come to the fore with the ruthlessness of successive administrations in the USA, all of which (even more strongly from Mr George H.W. Bush onwards) have as their major policy the subjection of the rest of the world to their ideas and to their ultra-greedy corporations. I have previously described this attitude and this policy as being post-ciivilisational, but it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it is post-spiritual, despite its hiding itself so deeply in its cloak of religiosity. What we see, from our side of the Atlantic, is a totally alien culture which wishes to swallow (or drown) our civilisation and make us conform to their idea of what is "democratic". We prefer to live our faith, whichever it may be, peaceably alongside our brothers and sisters of other faiths, and cannot understand the attraction of the "Mega-Churches" of the High Priests of Mammon, who seem to have no other aim than to suck as much substance as possible from their adepts. To give an example, I shall never see how a man like Mr John C. Hagee, who like Abraham has had children from two living women, can make anyone believe that he is a worthy preacher of the Christian message, when he completely ignores the stern words of Jesus on the subject of adultery.
Mr George W. Bush has committed some of the worst crimes against humanity in modern times, yet he claims that his religion justifies this. His "god" (which I have to consider to be that horrible thing Mammon) has apparently given him instructions to commit these crimes, and his remaining in office following the election in 2004 was welcomed by his enthusiastic supporter, William Franklin Graham, as being thanks to an act of their "god".
Such religiosity is on our side of the Atlantic very generally considered to be in extreme bad taste, and all decent politicians (yes, they do exist) specifically avoid making a great "song and dance" about their personal faith. This goes some way towards explaining how very foreign we find the sort of declaration made, even by admitted hardened and stubborn sinners, that they find their strength in whichever religion they may for the sake of convenience espouse.
Looking at the leading candidates in the present presidential election in the USA, we can see little sign of any form of common civilisation, and I have come to the reluctant conclusion that the great "clash" or divide between cultures is drawn between us and the USA. What puzzles me is that that much of Latin America seems much closer to us than the financially dominant USA, and I wonder whether or not this comes from the more relaxed way of life to be found among our brothers and sisters on both sides speaking Romance languages than that which has come to the fore among the more puritan peoples of Northern Europe.
It would be wonderful if this cloak of religiosity could be ripped away revealing the greed and nastiness of all those who wrap themselves in it clearly visible to all mankind.
© Copyright 2008 by AxisofLogic.com
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