 |
|
|
Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Issue No. 37 October 28 - November 3, 2001 Quezon City, Philippines |
|
|
|
Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Issue No. 37 October 28 - November 3, 2001 Quezon City, Philippines |
|
Passion and Reason BY
UMBERTO ECO
Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index The
religious wars that have drenched the world in blood for centuries all arose
from a passionate attachment to simplifying binaries: we vs. they, good vs.
evil, black vs. white. If Western culture has proven fruitful, it is
because it has been forced to "liberate" itself from such damaging
simplifications through the spirit of inquiry and criticism. Of
course, this has not been invariably the case. Hitler burned books,
condemned "degenerate art" and killed members of "inferior
races", but he too belongs to the history of Western culture. But if
we are to prevent new towers from collapsing, even those that will come after
us, it is the best aspects of our culture which we must discuss with young
people of every skin color. What
often causes confusion is not distinguishing between what are different things:
one's identification with one's own roots, understanding those with different
roots, and the judgment of what is good and bad. As
far as roots are concerned: if someone were to ask me whether I would
rather spend my retirement years in a small village in Monferrato, in the
majestic mountain world of Abruzzi National Park or in the rolling hills of
Siena, I would vote for Monferrato. But this doesn't mean that I consider
the Piedmont to be superior to the rest of Italy. When
our Prime Minister [Berlusconi, of Italy] said (in words spoken in the West and
not directed at Arabs) that he'd rather live near Milan rather than Kabul, and
that he'd rather be treated in a Milan hospital than one in Baghdad, I'm
prepared to agree with him. And this would be the case even if somebody
were to tell me that Baghdad's hospital is the best-equipped in the world. The
point is that Milan is my home, and home is where my native powers of healing
can flourish. Roots can also extend beyond the purely regional or
national. For
example, I'd rather live in Limoges than Moscow. Does that mean that
Moscow isn't a beautiful city? Certainly not, but in Limoges I'd be able
to understand the language. The point is that everybody identifies with
the culture they grew up in. There are certainly cases of transplants, but
they are in the minority. Lawrence of Arabia dressed exactly like an Arab,
but he eventually returned home. Now
let's turn to the conflict of civilizations, because it concerns this point.
The West, even if primarily for reasons of economic expansion, has always been
curious about other civilizations. This interest has often been scornfully
dismissive; the Greeks described those who could not speak Greek as
"Barbarians", i.e. babblers, implying that they could not speak at
all. But
more advanced Greeks, such as the Stoics (perhaps because some of them were of
Phoenician descent) soon noticed that the barbarians indeed spoke coherently and
in fact expressed thoughts similar to their own, but simply in a language other
than Greek. Marco Polo tried to describe the customs and dress of the
Chinese with great respect. The great Doctors of the Church, the
medireview theologians, devoted much effort to translating the texts of the Arab
philosophers, medical writers and astrologers. The men of the Renaissance
even strained to find in these writings a forgotten Wisdom of the East,
transmitted from the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. Montesquieu attempted to
demonstrate how well a Persian would have understood French, and modern
anthropologists today continue the mission of the Salesian order, who traveled
among the Bororo; certainly with the intention of converting them to
Christianity, but also to understand how they thought and lived. In
mentioning the anthropologists, I would be saying nothing new by pointing out
that since the middle of the 19th century, cultural anthropology developed as
the attempt to ease the sting of conscience felt by the West with respect to
other cultures, especially those viewed as "primitive peoples" or
"societies without history." For the West did not always deal
tenderly with such peoples. It
"discovered" them, tried to convert them, exploited them and enslaved
many of them. This was done with the help of the Arabs, because the slaves
who were unloaded in New Orleans by cultivated aristocrats of French origin were
shipped from the African coasts by Muslim traders. The
task of cultural anthropology is to show that a logic exists that is not Western
logic, but that has to be taken seriously and is not to be despised or
suppressed. This does not mean that anthropologists, having described the
logic of others, must choose to adopt it. With few exceptions, they return
from their years of field work back to their homes in Devonshire or Picardy to
enjoy the rest of their lives in leisure. From reading their books, one
could conclude that cultural anthropology adopts a relativist position and
asserts that one culture is as good as any other. But I don't think that
conclusion is valid. At the most, anthropologists tell us that the
lifestyle of others must be respected, at least as long as the others stay at
home. Part
II But
the real lesson that one must learn from cultural anthropology is that one must
adopt criteria if one is to say that one culture is superior to another. It
is one thing to say what a culture is, and another to assert the criteria by
which it is to be judged. A culture may be objectively described: these
people behave in such a way, believe in spirits or in a single God that alone
permeates all of nature; observe such and such rules in their family units,
consider it attractive to wear rings in their nose (this observation could be
applied to current Western youth culture), consider pork to be unclean, practice
circumcision, fatten dogs for the table on feast days, or – as Americans say
about the French -- eat frogs. But asserting the criterion by which a
culture may be judged is another thing altogether. That depends on our
roots, our preferences, our customs, our passions, and our value systems. For
example: Do we consider the extension of human life expectancy from 40 to 80
years to be of value? I am personally convinced, although mystics might
argue with me on this, that between some bon vivant who lived to be 80 and Saint
Luigi of Gonzaga, who lived to be only 23, the latter lived a more fulfilled
life. But let's assume that a greater life expectancy is a good thing per
se. If so, then Western medicine and science are certainly superior to
many other forms of scientific and medical practice. Do we believe that
technological development, the expansion of commerce, the speed of our
transportation to be values? Many are convinced of that and are thus
justified in considering our technical civilization to be superior. But
the Western world also includes those who believe that life in harmony with an
unspoiled environment conforms to a higher value and are therefore prepared to
do without air travel, automobiles and refrigerators. They are prepared to
weave baskets and to travel from village to village on foot in order to avoid
holes in the ozone layer. And so you see that if one is to say one culture is
superior to another, then it doesn't suffice merely to describe it (as the
anthropologists do,) but one must also assert a value system that is
indispensable. Only then can we say that one culture is better than
another. The
advocate of dialogue would demand our respect for the Islamic world and remind
us that it produced figures such as Avicenna (who was born in Bukhara, not far
from present-day Afghanistan) and Averroes -- and that it would be a sin to come
back again and again to those two as if they were the only such individuals.
There were also Al Kindi, Avempace, Avicebron, Ibn Tufail and that great
historian of the 14th century, Ibn Khaldun, regarded by the West as the actual
founder of the social sciences. We remind ourselves that the Arabs of
Spain had already cultivated geography, astronomy, mathematics and medicine This
is all true, but it doesn't constitute an argument. Those who argue this
way might as well say that Vinci, an admirable parish in Tuscany, is superior to
New York City because it produced Leonardo de Vinci at a time when Manhattan was
occupied by four Indians who sat on the ground and had still 150 years ahead of
them to wait before the Dutch arrived so they could sell the peninsula [sic] to
them for sixty guilders. That isn't exactly the point, however. And
besides--and in saying so I have no desire to offend anybody--that the center of
the world today is New York, not Vinci. Times have changed. It
also doesn't do much good to point out that the Arabs of Spain were
tolerant of Christians and Jews at a time in we were attacking the ghettos, or
that Saladin after the reconquest of Jerusalem showed much more mercy to
Christians than the Christians did to the Saracens after they conquered
Jerusalem. All this is true, but it is also true that in today's Arab
world there are fundamentalist and theocratic regimes in which Christians are
not tolerated. And
Osama bin Laden has not exactly shown mercy to New York City. On the other
hand, the French were guilty of the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, yet nobody
today describes the French as barbarians. The
Saracen pirates made "The Raw and the Cooked" out of their victims
while the corsairs torched the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean at the bidding
of the British Crown; bin Laden and Saddam Hussein are
certainly sworn enemies of Western civilization, but that civilization
has featured leaders with names like Hitler and Stalin (Stalin's evil was so
great that it has been called "Oriental", even though Stalin went to
graduate school and read Marx.) No, the problem of criteria is one of
contemporary categories, not One
of the praiseworthy aspects of Western cultures (free and pluralistic, and these
are values that we consider inalienable) is that today we have known for a long
time that one and the same person can deal with different problems using diverse
and even contradictory criteria. For example, we consider the extension of
life expectancy to be good and environmental pollution to be bad, even though
the same energetic communications and support networks that enabled the great
collaborative work necessary for the former also brought the latter in its wake. Western
culture has developed the capacity to freely admit its contradictory
foundations. Perhaps these contradictions have not been resolved, but they
are acknowledged and discussed. Ultimately, this is the very locus of the
entire debate over globalisation: what level of positive globalisation should be
allowed without incurring the risk and injustice of perverse globalization? How
can the lives of millions of Africans with AIDS (and perhaps our own) be
prolonged without accepting a global economy that permits those with AIDS to die
of hunger instead, and leaves us with only contaminated food to swallow? Part
III But
exactly this critique of criteria that the West pursues and encourages makes us
understand that the questions of criteria are delicate. Is it correct and
civilized to protect banking secrecy? Many are convinced that it is. But
what if this allows terrorists to avail themselves of London's finest financial
services? Is the protection of so-called privacy a positive or a doubtful
value? We
are constantly submitting our values to examination. The Western world
does this so much that it allows its own citizens to reject technological
development and to become Buddhists instead, or to live in a community that
doesn't use tires, not even for horse-drawn carriages. Our schools are
required to teach that even the criteria at the heart of our most passionate
convictions must be analyzed and discussed. The
problem that cultural anthropology has not yet solved is what do we do when
somebody from another culture, whose principles we have duly learned to respect,
wants to come live with us? The reality is that most of the racist
backlash in the West stems not from the fact that there are animists in Mali,
but that those animists are coming to live with us. What do we do when
they wear the chador, practice infibulation (i.e., sew their girls' vaginas shut
until marriage) or refuse blood transfusions (as do some Western sects) for
their sick children? What if the last remaining cannibals from New Guinea
(if there are any) emigrate to our country and want to barbecue a little boy at
least every Sunday? With
respect to the cannibals, we are all agreed: we throw them in jail. As far
as the girls who wear a chador to school, I see no reason to raise a fuss if
that's what they want to do. But as far as infibulation goes, that raises
a question (even for those who are so tolerant that insist at least that local
medical facilities be made available to ensure that the operation is sterile.) But
what do we do, for example, with the demand that Muslim women be allowed to be
photographed for passport photos while wearing their veils? We
have laws that are applicable to everybody and established so that citizens may
be identified. I believe that these laws cannot be dispensed with. If
I visit a mosque, I take my shoes off in order to respect the laws and customs
of my host country. How do we deal, then, with a photo with a veil?
I believe that a solution in such cases can be negotiated. At the end of
the day, passport photos are only conditionally suitable anyway. In these
cases, the passport can also possibly include fingerprints. If Muslim
women wish to follow their own rules of dress, but also wish to attend our
schools, they can learn to obey to rules that are not their own, just as the
many Westerners do who enroll in Koranic schools and have decided of their own
free will to become Muslims. For
some years there has been an international organization called "Transcultura"
which advocates an "alternative anthropology." It has encouraged
African researchers who have never been in the West to describe provincial
France and the society of Bologna. Having learned from their writings that
the two most remarkable things about European culture are that we walk our dogs
and frolic naked on the beach, I can assure you that two-way cultural
observation has begun and that many interesting discussions have resulted. Imagine
if Islamic fundamentalists were invited to study Christian fundamentalism.
Not Catholics, but the American Protestants whose fanaticism exceeds an
Ayatollah's and who want to erase all references to Darwin from school
textbooks. I believe that such an anthropological study of another kind of
fundamentalism would enable them better to understand their own. They would
come to understand our own concept of a Holy War (I could recommend to them many
interesting texts and recent dates) and perhaps learn to view their own with a
critical eye. After all, we in the West have learned much about the limits
of our own thinking by attempting to understand that of the "savage." One
of the much-discussed values of Western civilization is acceptance of
differences. Theoretically, we all agree that it is "politically
correct" to refer to somebody in public as gay. But in private, we
still giggle when we talk about a homosexual. How are we teaching
acceptance of differences? The
"Académie universelle des cultures" has a Web site which posts
material on various themes (skin color, religion, mores, customs, etc.) for
the use of teachers who live in countries that want to teach their pupils to
accept those who are different from themselves. Next
it is decided to dish up to our children no lies, all the while asserting that
all men are created equal. But children notice quite well that some
neighbors or classmates aren't like themselves. Their skin color may
differ, they may have slanted eyes, they may have smoother or fuller hair, they
may eat strange things or not take communion. It also doesn't suffice to
say to them that we are all creatures of God. Animals, after all, are also
creatures of God. But children will never see goats sitting beside them in
the classroom during spelling class. So
instead, children must be taught that human beings are indeed very different.
And we must explain to them exactly what these differences are, so that they can
be shown how such diversity can be enriching. A teacher in an Italian
school must help Italian pupils understand why other children pray to a
different God or play music that isn't rock-n-roll. And of course, a
Chinese teacher must teach Chinese children, who live next to a Christian
community, the same thing. The next step would be to show that our music
has much in common with theirs, and that their God also has good things to teach
us. A
possible objection: why do this in Florence when they don't do it in Kabul? But
this objection couldn't be further from the values of Western civilization. We
constitute ourselves as a pluralistic society because we allow mosques to be
built among us, and we can't dispense with this just because in Kabul they throw
Christian missionaries in jail. Doing so would turn us into the Taliban. Rather,
we should hope that by permitting mosques in our country, that some day
Christian churches will be allowed there and that the Buddhist statues there
will not be bombed. In
recent days, several odd things have come to light. One is that the
defense of Western values has apparently become the exclusive property of the
Right, while the Left is acting, as usual, pro-Islamic. But the defense of
scientific values, technological progress and modern Western culture in general
has always been hallmark of the secular and progressive wing. All
Communist regimes have invoked the ideology of technical and scientific
progress. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 begins with an impartial
justification of bourgeois expansion. Marx doesn't say that we should
reinvent the wheel and return to Asiatic modes of production. Rather, he
asserts that the proletariat must adopt certain values and achievements of the
bourgeoisie. On
the other hand, is precisely reactionary thought (in the highest sense of the
word), that has historically, at least since its rejection of the French
Revolution, opposed the secular ideology of progress by advocating instead a
return to traditional values. The more serious among these thinkers of
tradition have always, along with the rituals and myths of primitive peoples and
Buddhist doctrine, turned to Islam as a still-living source of alternative
spirituality. It was the reactionary thinkers who have always reminded us
that we -- dried-up as we are by the ideology of progress -- are not superior
and that we must seek the truth among the mystical Sufis or whirling dervishes. So in this sense, a strange rift has recently opened up. But this is perhaps only a sign that in an age of great revaluation of values (and the age we're living in is certainly one of these) that nobody is sure any more what side he's on. But it is precisely in times like these that we must understand that our own superstitions must be fought exactly like those of others: with the weapons of analysis and criticism. I hope that these themes will be addressed not only in press conferences, but also in the schools. Back to Bulatlat.com Alternative Reader Index We want to know what you think of this article.
|
