IN THE CONTINUUM OF HUMAN AFFAIRS…
(…it’s that constant seesaw between cultural progression and cultural regression which causes conflicts)

The world’s condition today seems to be one of never-ending economic, cultural, and political conflicts and upheavals of one kind or another…in almost every corner of it… creating massive displacements and migrations of humanity desperately seeking havens offering some kind of peace and security from it all.

None of this is new, of course, because there has rarely been any period in human history where “peace on Earth” and “goodwill to all” prevailed for any length of time. Thus, a propensity for conflict seems to be inherent in our human nature; and now, with the advent of the globalized matrix of our 21^st Century, c. e. (current era), that propensity for conflict has been further exacerbated because – globalization – seems to be the leading edge of a new world-wide common macro-culture of hedonistic materialism in conflict with all the traditional individual micro-cultures of the world that we have known until now.

Which raises the question: is this new common macro-culture the precursor of a coming global cultural progression, or, will it become a new form of global cultural regression? We don’t really know, except to note that in the continuum of human affairs it’s that constant seesaw between cultural progression and cultural regression which causes conflicts.

For the most part, the Western World slowly (very slowly) evolved over the past eight hundred years, from a former cultural matrix of theological rigidities combined with political, cultural, and social conservatism (in which the individual was considered subservient to the collective demands of a society), into a more progressive cultural matrix where the individual’s needs and wants, rather than just those of the society, have now become paramount. In that process this promoted the concepts of free, open, secular, and pluralist societies in which individuals became much freer to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as they wished. Due to accelerated advances in technology that now appears to be reaching an apogee as a new common macro-culture called “globalization.” Granted, not all elements of the Western World, and those other parts of the world influenced by it, have reached the same level of being open, civil, and free societies, but on the whole most of it has, or continues to strive for it.

On the other hand, the Islamic World in general appears to have evolved in the opposite direction over that same period of time, and we see this to various degrees in almost all of its elements today. That is, from a high point of cultural advance back in the 13^th Century, c. e. (well ahead of the Western World then still mired in its medieval mindsets), and although its political structures were governed by entwined autocracy and theocracy, most of its societies were generally culturally progressive particularly in the fields of academic learning, scientific inquiry and technology, the arts, and medical advances, and, also relatively tolerant of other faiths with which it co-existed and interacted.

Today, however, it seems to have culturally devolved backwards from that high point of renaissance, with its social structures becoming ever more conservative, ever more mired in entwined autocratic theocratic rule, ever more xenophobic and suppressive of individual rights, and generally rejecting the concepts of open, free, secular or pluralist ideals as social and cultural values. In short, in its world political, social, and cultural conservatism is the rule rather than the exception, with the principal examples of that being found in Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The recent explosion of the so-called Arab Spring, and the resulting chaos from it which we see in the region today, much resembles what the Western World went through to extract itself from its former medieval matrix…as a long drawn-out process of conflict between the forces of conservatism and forward progress…before it will achieve some sort of balance between these…and it’s that lack of balance between those forces which is the cause of the Islamic World’s current instability, and extreme hostility to Western ideals.

It is essentially still mired in its own medieval matrix, with the most extreme expression of that cultural regression epitomized by the self-proclaimed “Islamic State”, whose use of criminal terrorism, barbarous enforcement of its authority by murder, rape, extortion and pillage, as the means to gain its ends, is a reflection of that kind of conflict within the Islamic World, making a mockery of both that faith and its cultural contributions to the world at large. And the driving force behind that virulent hatred for the Western World, and everything it stands for, seems to be the contrast between them, because that contrast too vividly shows how miserably barren and sterile their own societies are by comparison.

Unfortunately, that has in turn created just as extreme a xenophobic reaction in the Western World about anything related to Islam in general, to look upon it as a backward and repressive cultural and societal structure rather than as a legitimate faith with a valid though different blueprint for righteous living. We are thus facing a renewed conflict between two major cultural matrices of the world whose values are seemingly antithetical to each other. How that may ultimately be resolved, so that both can not only co-exist but also peacefully interact with each other, will determine whether there will be a long era of conflict between them or not. However, extremism of any kind, from either one, will only hinder any possibility of an early resolution to such a conflict.

In short, it’s these opposing values between the forces of materialist humanism and the forces of adherence to rigid theological orthodoxy which are the root cause of the conflicts we see around the world today; and, how well any society manages to achieve a workable balance between those two forces, is what will determine if any society achieves cultural progression towards a secular, pluralist, and relatively democratic structure; or, if it will just move further backwards into cultural regression as an exclusionary, sectarian, and mostly authoritarian social structure instead.

Thus the ideals embodied in the Constitution of the American republic (which were an attempt to achieve such a balance between those opposing forces), and the fact that it has survived for some 230 odd years, is testimony to their validity as a model for achieving that elusive balance between them. Nevertheless, the current social and political malaise which we see in America today is also a cautionary example of how accruing internal “imbalances” in any system can, over time, jeopardize its continued existence as a society and culture despite having such a grand model.

Ironically both the rest of the Western World and the World of Islam face the same kind of situation because, while cultural matrices are dynamic rather than static ones, these tend to stubbornly resist change in spite of that, which is why it takes so long for the seesawing tensions between progression and regression to reach some kind of stasis…or balance. How long such a condition of “stasis” lasts is what then determines how long a period of peace and stability prevails in any cultural matrix.

So what we’re seeing in the world today, at least for the near term, is a period of conflict between two major cultural matrices both of whom are simultaneously in the throes of internal tensions to achieve balanced conditions not only within themselves but between each other as well; and, with both simultaneously also trying to contend with the disruptive impacts that expanding common macro-culture of -globalization- is having on both.

These are the complexities in the continuum of human affairs which prevail in our world today.

CENTURION