Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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There is no single right in a harmonious world, nor are there rights in the Western sense. But there is no alienation, either; in a village culture, everyone is "in." Harmony demands that friction be avoided by elaborate sensitivity for others' feelings, which accounts for the importance of face. Courtesy has an esthetic value in the East that means far more than mere good manners do in Western eyes. Courtesy, in fact, is more of a virtue than honesty-hence the widespread acceptance of bribery and the sense of offended dignity when Westerners rail at the practice...
...these organic microcosms, the Western concept of the individual, upholding and upheld by a written law, has no meaning at all; right action is a meld of custom and propriety demonstrated by the behavior of the sage. Written contracts are usually mere pieces of paper. "No Chinese would understand Shylock's claim to a pound of flesh in The Merchant of Venice," says Harvard Law Professor Jerome Cohen. "The important thing is human relations. You imply a lack of trust when you allow for disputes in contracts." If disputes arise, they are settled through face-to-face negotiations...
...best, is faced with special obstacles in Asia, where the West's unique concept of liberty under law is nearly incomprehensible. The idea of a political opposition is repugnant to a world in which consensus and unanimity rather than creative competition seem the only appropriate atmosphere. The Western practice of loyal opposition seems only further proof of Anglo-American cynicism and hypocrisy. For the existence of such political opposition presupposes the integrity of the lone individual against the group, a tradition that is nonexistent among Asians, who see the man with power as the man with the cosmic forces...
Industrialization need not involve private capitalism, as Soviet Russia has demonstrated, but it can scarcely succeed without many Western attitudes. Modern industry requires a measure of individual initiative, self-reliance, risk-taking. It requires a belief in progress, in the reality of the material world. Instead of a fixed order, it needs a fluid system in which people can rise through merit. It does not necessarily require democracy, although Edwin Reischauer, U.S. Ambassador to Japan, points out that it must have literacy and mass communication-which usually lead people to demand more participation in their government...
Modern industry also must have social and economic units far bigger than the family, the city or the region. It requires education not as a means of imparting fixed dogma but as a process of training the mind to seek its own answers. In short, the secret of Western success is not merely technology, but the Promethean or Faustian spirit...