What the East can mean to the West, and
a little about each unto its own.
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East Asia is home to the world's

• single greatest concentration of people - China
• greatest concentration of conventional arms - Northeast Asia
• fastest growing economic regions - China and South Korea
• second largest economy - Japan
• second largest surface navy - Japan
• second oldest civilization - China

Unlike the West whose industrial revolution, scientific enlightenment, systems of jurisprudence, commercial traditions, and political democracy evolved as one from within, East Asia has embraced many of these institutions in a piecemeal fashion from without. In fact, many of them have been adopted as a means of self-defense against their wholesale intrusion by the West. Thus, what for the West has often been viewed as a historic tug-of-war between modern and traditional, urban and rural, progressive and reactionary, and liberal and conservative, is viewed by many East Asians as a confrontation between the West and East. This trend has resulted in the formation of modern social, political, economic, and educational institutions that are poorly understood by, and often very offensive to, Western citizens -- new institutions that in many cases have resulted in greater security and comfort for the peoples of East Asia.

There is a trade-off in every human society between the right of the individual to do as he pleases, and the security of the individual within his group. Whereas the West tends to achieve this security through the external enforcement of abstract sets of rules and the inculcation of moral doctrines, the East seeks to preserve cultural and family traditions through group allegiance, and strict lines of authority. These different approaches toward the individual and his society have led to vastly different social outcomes with very different positive and negative effects for each.

In order for the West to develop the modern social institutions that allow individuals to criss-cross ethnic, linguistic, and social barriers freely, the West sacrificed many of the values that these barriers were built to protect. In so doing the West has become hardened and in some ways foolish with regard to human nature, the importance of the group, and the preservation of individual well-being. Indeed, the West has largely forgotten that which East Asia is struggling so hard to preserve.

East Asia differs importantly from the West in that

• the common good is often placed before that of the individual, and deception is more commonly used as a tool to defend that good, protect the individual, and maintain established lines of authority.
• the rule of law and political democracy are generally subordinated to the maintenance of existing human relationships and the pre-established social, economic, and political order.
• family values, work ethic, and study are reinforced through educational systems and work environments that place greater emphasis on self-discipline, group allegiance, respect for authority, than individual expression, creativity, and equality before the law.

The future of humankind is not all that certain. We have built our present economies on resources that are exhaustible, and our future is cast in a struggle to out perform one another in the development of new technologies that allow us ever more control and manipulation of our environment and each other.

In truth, competition and growth can only be worthwhile ends when the latter is sustainable and the former does not lead to conflict.

Indeed, there is something very wrong with the notion that the East must catch up, and the West must stay ahead. In its struggle to catch up the East is wreaking havoc on its social and biological environments and making many of the same mistakes from which the West is still finding it difficult to recover. In contrast, the West has turned its back to the East and refuses to learn from those who have clung to the past with greater tenacity and have thus preserved a way of life that can still be beneficial to the West, if only the West were not so preoccupied with its struggle to keep ahead. In the end it is much less a matter of how technologically advanced we are, than what we do with our technological advances.

As technology advances, and local, national, regional and world markets grow, the world becomes simultaneoulsy more alike and more complex.

Surely, some traditions are no longer worthy of the time and effort they require to maintain on universal basis. Still others must be adapted to the technological and social reality in which we live. Notwithstanding, we should not make light of tradition simply because it retards our forward progress. Forward progress in a direction that we cannot know, may just as well be backward, if it leads to more environmental destruction and social unrest. Surely tradition retards innovation, but it also provides us with the opportunity to examine, understand, and incorporate innovation in such a way that it does not destroy that which has served us so well in the past.

In the end we should not be in a hurry to throw away our differences, nor should we be eager to impose them on each another.

It is a fallacy to believe that what is best for the individual is always best for the group. It is equally fallacious to believe that what is good for one group is necessarily good for the next. The geography of our planet is too complex, and each nation follows a different historical path different from that of its neighbors.

Everyone doing as he pleases can only lead to chaos and anarchy. We are no longer roaming bands of hunters and gatherers that live freely from the hand of nature; rather, we depend on each other through a myriad of market and political relationships that threathen nature's and our very own existence.

My life has no meaning, if the children of our world have no tomorrow. What about your life? What does it mean to you?