Diatribes of Jay: Has the West Had It?

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Tribalism and nuclear weapons don’t mix. If we keep dividing our human species into inimical tribes striving for dominance by building yet more terrible weapons, eventually it will happen. Some not-too-foresighted leader will miscalculate. Rival leaders will agree to test their rival tribes’ “luck” in war, and all will lose, just as in World War I. Or a badly designed autonomous war system will start nuclear Armageddon faster than Boeing’s autonomous software could down two 737 Max 8s.

More than any other risk we know today, this sort of thing could fix our fate as a species. Half a millennium from now, if we survive, we should be far less divided by tribe than we are today. Or we might not be much of an intelligent species at all. We might have extinguished ourselves completely, or we might be slowly struggling, with renewed social and biological evolution, to bootstrap ourselves up from a radioactive new Stone Age.

If global warming is an existential threat, tribalism is a worse one. Everything about global warming will make tribalism worse: a struggle for resources, a backlash against hordes of migrants, economic and social disruption, and a tendency to blame other tribes for burning fossil fuels while we burn them ourselves. The more we humans argue and fight tribally among ourselves, the less effort we will devote to the energy conversion that we know we must make before our climate changes beyond recognition and oil and gas run out for good.

Once upon a time, the “West”—meaning all of us humans but Asians—seemed to understand the risks of unrestrained tribalism, if only unconsciously. The West invented democracy, in ancient Greek and Rome. The Romans let members of other tribes become citizens after serving in the Roman army. The Brits revived democracy in a modern form with Magna Carta. British and European colonialists eventually turned from brutally exploiting their colonized tribes to educating them in democratic values and science. The United States gave up its two war-won colonies—Cuba and the Philippines. After our species’ most terrible war, it took baby steps toward a world government with GATT, the WTO, the United Nations and innumerable economic treaties.

In these and may other ways, the West first bruited the idea of “citizens of the world.” For these enlightened members of our species, tribalism would be little more than an amusing relic of history and culture. It would provide diversity in cuisine, literature, language and music—a touch of cultural spice—in a nourishing meal of internationalism. Globalism would prevail in the workplace, in diplomacy, and in global challenges like ebola, energy and climate change, and the World Wide Web.

Now we are suffering an unprecedented, near-global tribal backlash. Three events in just the last week highlight it in stark relief.

The clearest example is Israel’s dancing on a pinnacle, as described by Tom Friedman in a recent must-read column. There Bibi is bent on forming a government of Israel’s most rabid tribalists, including a tiny racist, anti-Arab party. His apparent goal is to kill, once and for all, the dream of a “two-state solution,” with Israelis and Arabs living peacefully side by side. Instead, he’s moving toward annexing as much of the Arab West Bank as possible and leaving the rest and Gaza to fend for themselves.

Not only would this “solution” elevate one tribe and diminish the other. Due to the West Bank’s large population, it would eventually force Jewish Israel to choose between remaining democratic and inviting Arab citizens to join in substantial power, or developing something like tribal Apartheid and converting Israel into a theocracy like Iran’s. Friedman frets that this stark choice would sunder the global Jewish community, including America’s, into fierce tribes divided by ideology.

A similar choice faces Britain with Brexit. In fact, tribalism was a primary motive for this fiasco, which is even now dividing Brits and their visitors both by ethnic and ideological tribes. The bare 52% majority of Brits who voted for Brexit in 2016 wanted to lower the level of non-British immigrants and reduce the control that non-Brits have over British government. Their very motive for the whole fiasco was explicitly and unabashedly tribal.

The third big sign of a backlash of tribalism is the presidency of Donald J. Trump. If he’s not a consummate tribalist and bigot himself, he’s at least an actor of Academy-Award quality. More important, his policies are based on pure tribalism: the “Wall,” the obsession with “America first,” a fear of immigrants (especially non-whites and non-Christians), a desire to downplay foreign alliances, and a big push to unwind international cooperation in trade, diplomacy, and economic cooperation. His tariffs are just a start, reminiscent of the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that once help trigger the most terrible war (so far) in human history.

In each case, these outbursts of tribalism cast doubt upon the means by which the West has heretofore sought to reduce tribalism: science, technology, trade and democracy. Science and technology have increased the terror of war and the efficacy of social control, bringing George Orwell’s only imagined totalitarianism within practical reach. But they have not yet led to a noticeable improvement in empathy and international understanding.

A near-majority in both Britain and the United States blames trade and international cooperation, as well as tribal scapegoats, for its fall from grace. And democracy has taken a big hit in all three countries, as democratic leaders have been unable to square democracy with either the imaginary or legitimate grievances of large parts of their respective populations.

For its minuscule size, Israel is a powerhouse of science, technology and trade. Over the last decade, it has, for example, taken over generic production of the “miracle drugs” that I and most geezers take. It still deserves credit as the single most democratic state in the Middle East. But now it seems about to re-elect a leader (Bibi) who is not only eager to bow to raw tribalism, but whose very campaign may be a mere ploy to save himself from indictment and conviction for corruption.

Britain has no apparent corruption, but it sure has a lot of fuzzy thinking. Despite being world’s oldest continuously functioning modern representative democracy, it ceded control of its future to a popular referendum, on a complex question on which the people have no basis for deciding. That’s not democracy; it’s abdication. As for science, technology and trade, Britain’s proposed withdrawal from Europe will most likely render it a backwater in all three, as Europe once again assumes global leadership in fundamental science with its Large Hadron Collider and independent space missions.

As for the United States, what can we say? Trump as president is waging a propaganda war against science, technology, trade and democracy. He’s gone the Brits one better: instead of following a 52% majority, he has taken his cues from an angry 43% minority in unwinding the global community. He’s retreated to tribalism in its most base (pun intended) and vulgar form, undermining democracy with such demagogic calumnies as Mexican “rapists” and murderers, “invasions” of “caravans” of desperate women and children seeking refuge, and thousands of Hitlerian lies like “Only I can fix it.”

Are these sea changes in Israel, Britain and the United States? Or are they only temporary insanities? Time will tell.

In the meantime, there’s a nation having more than twice the population of all three put together, which has much to say about tribalism. It’s China.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, China has spent centuries fighting tribalism. It’s done so against greater odds and with more success than any other modern nation, including India, which suffers regular Hindu-Muslim pogroms.

There are still some 56 different ethnic groups in China, most with their own spoken languages. And with notable exceptions (in Tibet and Xinjiang) China has had remarkable success in unifying them into a uniform national culture that it claims as “Han” Chinese.

The linchpin of China’s unification has been its common written language. It has nothing like a Western alphabet. Instead, it uses complex ideographic characters called “hantsu” in Chinese (pronounced “hahnt-SUE”). China’s many Chinese dialects use the same written characters, but the sounds and pronunciations that go with them vary radically among the dialects. That’s why China has been trying hard to get all Chinese to speak Mandarin—the Lingua Franca of China—whatever else they may also speak.

There’s a big downside to the complex writing system. Each hantsu character can have as many as 24 strokes, as compared to 4 in the most complex Roman letters (E, M and W). To be literate, a scholar has to know as many as 3,000 hantsu, while an ordinary person has to know about 1,600 just to read a newspaper. Those high numbers compare to the Roman alphabet’s four maximum strokes and 26 letters.

As I’ve argued in a separate essay, this cumbersome writing system may delay mental maturation of students and impede abstract thought. But as a uniform national writing system in which every adult is invested through years of learning, it does much to reduce misunderstandings and tribalism throughout China. Today every schoolchild in China must learn Mandarin.

So China has made great strides in linguistic unification of its once diverse population. Mandarin has probably fostered that unification as much or more than does English in Britain and the United States. The differences lie in the respective governments’ tolerance of tribalism.

In Britain and the United States, people can say or write virtually anything they want. The only true restraints are revealing state secrets and inciting others to immediate violence. Thus Nigel Farage can rail against foreign immigrants and their undesirability as non-British, while Donald Trump and his supporters can bury us in lies about non-white people, foreigners, Muslims and their supposed criminal and violent tendencies. Trump and his minions have done exactly that, in winning elections, in fostering nativist tendencies, and in getting otherwise reasonable people to redirect their legitimate anger from inadequate government policy toward racial, ethic and religious scapegoats. Isn’t that just a milder form of what Hitler once did?

Which is the better way? At this early stage, an honest answer is that it’s no longer clear.

To see why, look at the results. Britain and Europe are cowering in exaggerated fear of migrants and terrorists. Their fear has made them resort to splitting up the EU—the second most distinguished repository of Enlightenment values after the United States. It has also induced them to follow crude authoritarian leaders in Italy, Hungary and Poland, just as we have in the United States.

Now consider Xinjiang, the mostly-Muslim Chinese province in China’s far northwest. As of 2017, it had a total population of 24.45 million, of which 58% (in 2010) were Muslims. That was a majority. Yet China controls this “majority-minority” population with Han immigration, strict policing and “re-education” of those deemed to have anti-social or terrorist tendencies. It also controls firearms strictly and censors the Internet strictly (everywhere in China).

As a result, in a province almost equally divided between “minority” Muslims and “majority” Han Chinese (elsewhere in China), China has had only a few, relatively minor terrorist attacks by Muslims in Xinjiang. Almost all have involved only knives and other hand weapons. There have, to my knowledge, been virtually no terrorist attacks by the dominant groups, whether Han Chinese or others.

In contrast, we have had several Islamic terrorist attacks by Muslims with advanced weapons. We also have had several fatal “backlash” attacks by white supremacists and “white nationalists,” including ones with firearms.

So which approach is better? Which better keeps minority terrorism under control? Which best suppresses majority terrorism like the old Ku Klux Klan’s? Which is better, forcible “re-education,” unchecked violent extremism, or war? Can we Americans be proud of what we have done so far, and all the lives and treasure we have lost and let be lost, in Iraq? in Syria?

The difference in trade is even starker. Under Trump and the realistic threat of Brexit, the Anglo-American leaders that once led peaceful globalism have all but abandoned it. In contrast, China is hard at work on its “Belt and Road” initiative, beginning with places most neglected by the West: South Asia, Latin America and Africa.

The places that China is cultivating need almost everything modern. So it’s quite possible that China could soon rely on them to replace America, Britain and even Europe as markets for its manufactured goods. Perhaps that’s China’s near-term economic goal.

If you look at what’s happening around the globe today, it’s impossible to ignore the facts. China is bent on upward growth and outward expansion and influence. America, Britain and Europe are turning inward and renouncing global influence. Israel, too, seems to be falling into the same dead-end trap, save for ever preparing for what might be a cataclysmic war.

Meanwhile, the West is busy producing a class of clueless, demagogic leaders who rile up and follow, not lead, their people. They prey on their people’s bald ignorance and most savage tendencies. At times, as in America, the leader’s only plausible motive seems corruption or self-interest.

The West’s media daily spew propaganda, trivia and tribalism and support extremism and terrorism by inciting vicious backlashes, almost as if they were the Communist dailies of old. Instead of serving their people, the “democratic representatives” now manipulate the prejudices and predilections of ordinary people who haven’t a clue.

Which is the better system? I wish I knew. I like America, Britain and Israel because they purport to share the social and moral values that I grew up with. For me, the Western Enlightenment planted the seeds of both human greatness and human happiness.

But if I ask which system, as it exists today, will allow our species to survive in an age of growing challenges from nuclear-fueled tribalism and fossil-fueled global warming, I’m not so sure. Isn’t survival the most important value of all?

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Diatribes of Jay

28 March 2019

Has the West Had It?

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