The
first thing I read, after our class discussions Wednesday night, was “Clash of
Civilizations,” which turned out to be a fairly amusing, if be it disturbing,
read. Some of his points I could nod my head to (explained in depth below) and
then (of course) some of his claims made me go "wt?” and then ask “how the
heck did you get there?”. So maybe I'm missing information, but the following
comments are a few of those which garnered the previously described
reaction.
“the people active in fundamentalist movements
are young, college-educated, middle-class technicians, professionals and
business persons” (p. 26). So, maybe I'm unique in this understanding, but in
my experience it is not mostly “young, college-educated, middle-class
technicians, professionals and business persons” who are principally active in
fundamentalist organizations. From my experiences, fundamentalist groups pull
from a) family indoctrination b) having limited options and picks something
existential to blame life's problems on c) being themselves what they hate in
others d) wanting to have strict rules for themselves after being scared among
life's chaos e) these groups are also still a mix of people not all one type or
not f) well I'm getting tired of listing more possibilities so we'll stop here.
“cultural commonalities increasingly overcome
ideological differences, and mainland China move closer together” (p. 28). I
feel like its the guns China has pointed toward the Taiwanese that has the two
countries “moving closer together” versus “cultural commonalities”. Granted
this article is from '93 and I don't know the then current state of those two
countries' relations, but looking at now Taiwan is not wanting to be a part of
China.
“founded originally in the 1960s by Turkey,
Pakistan and Iran, is the realization by the leaders of several of these
countries that they had no chance of admission to the European Community” (p.
28). To this I just wanted to ask “what changed to make Turkey suddenly feel
like it has a chance to be a part of the European Community through the EU?” I
should add also that I do not know the current state of Turkey's in or out
status in regards to the EU. Who does know?
However,
disputing facts of Huntington or his opinions is, in my opinion, not what's
most important or what is the most interesting/engaging aspect of this article.
The truly interesting aspect of this article is the danger this article, and
those like it, directly and indirectly pose to people's perceptions of the
world's "Civilizations" and most importantly people's views of the
Western/Islamic relationship. The real danger of authors like Samuel Huntington
(and even Bernard Lewis to an extent) is how quickly a person can believe them.
This is not an ignorable thing, but something very real.
During
my first read through of Huntington's article, I started to notice a change
within myself—an almost acceptance or understanding of the skeleton of his
thesis. I was surprised that I could near-agree with him on the idea of
identity how it starts small, but gets bigger and bigger (see Roman example)
and on the idea of big civilizations being the big players in the soon to be
history; I was surprised because of the thoughts and opinions I had heard in
class. I finished Huntington's piece and decided to do other tasks for a bit as
I thought about what happened and something clicked. The simplicity of
Huntington's argument is what makes him so dangerous. Most Americans (indeed
people in general) read for pleasure or the gathering of intel, but most, in my
experience, do not read with their critical lens on—arguably in part because to
be fully critical requires some background of knowledge in the topic area. For
example, I read whatever interests me, but I don't always have enough
background information on a topic to be fully critical. Its in this step that
traps so many people into thinking and agreeing with Huntington and this
general philosophy of thinking. Simplicity. Huntington takes out all of the
complicatedness and makes generalities without complete explanations. He draws
on Westerners already existing pre-conceived notions of our superiority and
uses it to 'exempt' him from having to use explanations and facts that go
beyond skin deep. Course, then I go and read Said and find him saying the exact
same thing—about the simplicity of Huntington's argument, that is. The one
particular thing that Said wrote that I hadn't
thought of or didn't think about was in reaction or in light of the 9/11
attacks. According, to Said Huntington's article was quoted as 'future-telling',
but Said poses the question “but why not instead see parallels, admittedly less
spectacular in their destructiveness, for Osama bin Laden and his followers in
cults like the Branch Davidians or the disciples of the Rev. Jim Jones at
Guyana or the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo?”. This truly important question leads me
to want to ask all the people who revere Huntington's work “did he really
'predict' the future and future international relations, or are we making the
future fit into his work? Did Huntington really see anything forthcoming,
something his contemporaries were missing, or was his analysis so simple (thus
so understandable) that it fits almost every version of the future to come?”. I
don't have an answer, only inklings or feelings. Maybe you do; likely the rest
of our readings will shed further inklings or suggestions into my pool of
explanation options.
-W.H.B.
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