Wajahat Qazi*
Centuries of Western dominance – ideational, ideological, economic, and political- might be coming to an end. The reference is not to banalities like the inauguration of a multi-polar world, or other relevant structural (and seismic) changes in world politics and international relations but broader, wider, and deeper ideational shifts – within the West and without. Is this a cause for alarm? Is it a welcome development? Should the world welcome Western decline? What are the alternatives? Are these the anchors and pegs that the non-west (or the west) hitch its proverbial wagon to?
Before I attempt to craft an answer to these important questions, I must hasten to make my vantage point clear: My broad ideational rubric is that of an Easterner. I am a quintessential Easterner. This aspect of my identity was forged and rendered poignant in the West- through racism, through quasi-exclusion, and through some ruthless life-changing behaviors toward me. But to some extent, I am Western too – an element in my personality mix forged not just by my academic and learning quest but importantly and elementally by my interactions with bold, beautiful, and amazing people.
These elemental experiences mostly took place in Australia – the worst of times in my life and the best of times. If at all I have any hint of intellectual sophistication I owe it to my Australian mentor who shaped my worldview. If I have empathy, a humane outlook, and sensitivity these were honed and rendered sharper by an Australian woman. Obiter dictum, I still cherish and jealously guard my Australian mentor’s parting gift to me: an old, tin cigarette case that was her father’s. The Australian woman remains close to my heart, with her memories an indelibly cherished aspect of my repertoire and personality.
These influences are both suggestive and determinative. The Australian mentor imbibed in me the virtues of public service and civic consciousness. He drove home to me that power lay within each of us, a life lived in the sole pursuit of money was a life not well lived and that pursuit of the accouterments of outward power was a distortion of the self. A life worth living was one where the romantic quest – the primacy of the imagination, the ideal over the ‘real’, transcendence of the self, and so on – was supreme.
The woman taught me – in practical terms when I was at my lowest – that humanity and humanness are universals embedded in each of us. All we (humans) needed was to rediscover these, enmesh and align ourselves with the rhythms of the cosmos, get rid of accretions and constructs like race, culture, and nations see each other as we are: humans in who inhere dignity, empathy, and compassion. These were values that I had absorbed and imbibed by my faith and religion. But an added impetus was imparted to these by the two Australians who have shaped me.
The reference to these bold and beautiful people is neither academic nor idle nor a digression. In fact, these go to the heart of Western decline. Premised on reason and rationality, the concept and the idea of the West have constituted a ‘revolution in human affairs- from a certain perspective. The gist and mill of either was modernity – a concept that held reason to be its apogee.
Sovereignty, in this schema, was vested in reason – something that would not only conquer the natural world but go beyond. Nothing was a priority. Scientism, the Cartesian method, the ‘light’ of Comptean positivism aided by analytical and instrumental reason with empiricism as its evidentiary complement, would make man (woman) supreme. The ‘ubermensch’ (superhuman) of that great Western philosopher Friedrick Nietzsche would overcome the ‘slave mentality’ and create new values, thereby a new man.
The remarkable fact about these formulations and philosophies was that these were remarkably successful: inspired by reason and rationality, a new man(woman) was indeed crafted. Shorn of culture, ‘dead weight tradition’ and ‘prejudices’ emanating from these, the new man’s (woman’s) lived reality was present. He (she) stood liberated from history and religion which were viewed as shackles inhibiting human potential. The only liberating idea, in this schema, was the self, the lone individual battling the ‘imprisoning paradigms of society, culture and tradition’.
The self and its relation to time were critical: once the self withered and died, it was all over. The implication was stark: do as much as you can with and to yourself. Only pain avoidance and pleasure-seeking mattered. In a jiffy, it would be all over. The cautionary tale here was that ‘ultimately the king and the pawn go into the same box (grave)’.
In terms of international relations, scribblers penned that the’ ultima ratio of states was the power quest. The all-important discipline of economics was fetishized: as a cog in the industrial machine (now postindustrial), humankind would find ‘nirvana’ and ultimate closure. All this constituted the foundational wellsprings of ‘progress’. But a fundamental paradox undergirded it: the ‘march of progress’ was divorced from what had been a determinative and causative influence of the West’s rise and pre-eminence: philosophy. An absurd reductionism that privileged hyper-individualism which, in turn, collapsed in the vortex of political economy, was the parametric value that defined the West.
Thus, was born the ‘dictatorship of reason’ that relegated the human to the margin and the new altar that was to be worshipped was techno-rationality. Herein lay and lies the ‘decline of the West. And it is here that the non-west or the ’rest’ can reclaim and redeem itself. The result can only be real liberation and freedom. But does this liberationary moment have to be contra-West? Do we – the non-west- to reclaim what is ours, have to overcome, denigrate, and enter into a conflict with the West?
No. Not necessarily. We have to reclaim what is (and what was) ours. But this should not mean we superimpose ourselves on the West. This pronouncement and assertion is not a declaration of victory; a long, arduous path has to be charted and traversed before we ‘find’ our moment of liberation.
The best of our traditions suggests grace and graciousness. It is in the interstices of these plus compassion we must comport ourselves. Having said this, prudence and the battle for civilization in the singular warrant an approach that is defined by synthesis – between the East and the West. The East would not be easy without the West and vice versa. But this relationship need not devolve into a zero-sum apocalyptic scenario.
Here the lessons of the Australians close to my heart hold a sanguine outcome: the moment we recognize the humanity inhering in us, the moment we see the quest for power for its own sake, when refuse to see life and the human quest in absurdly crude and reductionist utilitarian terms, we begin to redeem humanity and humankind. In other words, the moment we reclaim and recover romanticism, we create an idiom for an expansive ‘lived space’ for all. That, more than anything else, will liberate us from the ‘dictatorship of reason’, and reclaim life and its purpose. Authenticity and real liberation beckon. Let us make haste slowly.
*The author is a columnist based in Kashmir
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