Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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This was mostly wishful thinking, but not entirely; for all their fissiparous differences, most peoples of Asia do share attitudes and traditions that set them apart from the Western world-or, more specifically, from the modern world...
...which he flatly described that meeting as "the major event of our time." To a U.S. deeply preoccupied with a seemingly shattered Europe, that statement two decades ago appeared vastly exaggerated. Today few would question it. The problems, needs and challenges of Asia weigh ever more heavily on the Western mind. The East-West encounter will undoubtedly dominate the rest of the 20th century...
...notion of an entity called Asia is a Western fiction, it is a fiction that many Asians now support-to assert unity against the West. In South Viet Nam recently, a Japanese journalist was taken out on patrol. The Vietnamese captain of the patrol spoke neither Japanese nor English but managed to tell his guest through a U.S. interpreter: "You're an Asian. You can really understand...
This may look to Western eyes like abject submission; the Asian sees it as the only way to win. In Taoism, the symbol of strength is water, which conforms to the shape of whatever it touches yet in the end cuts its own path through rock. Jujitsu (literally, "give-way art") is the art of defeating an aggressor with his own strength...
...Western imagery abounds in conflict with the elements -man harnesses nature, tames the wilderness and conquers space. The Eastern mode, on the contrary, is to create a balance with nature and to identify even with nature's terrible aspects. India's mother goddess, giver of life, is also black and bloody Kali, the bringer of death and destruction. The West divides good and evil, and thinks evil can be destroyed-St. George killing the dragon, the Virgin crushing the serpent beneath her heel. The Hindus revere the serpent as the symbol of all nature, good and vile together...