Javânmard
A faster beat (tempo) does not equal an increase in volume (crescendo).
Many beginning musicians make the mistake of playing louder when playing faster. Their mistake is to confuse horizontal advancing in time (beat, tempo) with vertical increase in volume and intensity (crescendo).
How does this apply to our discussion?
Modern Western civilization does exactly the same mistake of confusing advancing in time, the progress in time (horizontal) with increase in civilization (vertical) whereas these are totally different issues. This sort of confusion is typical of Western thinking and the colonial slave minded thinkers in the East. How many times do we have to hear things like:
"How can racism still be possible in 2008?"
"How could this be possible in 2008"
This sort of questions imply that the more we advance in time the more civilized we are supposed to be.This is the belief of positivism (Auguste Comte) and modernity: progress will make humanity better and progress implies a clear cut with the past.
This theoretical premise of modernity has ironically been contradicted times and times again by the very civilization that propounded it and tried to spread it the world over. Here are a few examples:
- colonialism
In the name of progress the West has waged war, looted, killed, enslaved and raped innumerable nations in the name of progress either because it needed enslaved manpower to bring about that progress or because it intended to bring "progress" to those it thought still lived in the "past". The very belief that one needs to cut with the past creates a system of binary values: modern-new-good vs traditional-old-bad. In fact the present war waged upon Muslims today by the West is nothing but the continuation of 19th century colonial discourse that aimed at "civilizing" the East, "liberate" its women and "free" its people from religion termed as "mysticism and superstition". The same discourse used by the French in the 19th century to justify the illegal invasion of Algeria is now used by the West when talking about Muslims and is recurrent in propaganda movies like 300. The fact remains that colonialism is by any accounts morally evil. Great empires of the pas such as Ancient Persia or the Islamic empire never intended to racially subdue or enslave other nations. The aim was rather to bring nations together under a commonly shared law.
- modern wars
Despite the ridiculous accusation that religions have brought war to this world the West has waged the bloodiest and most savage wars during the 20th century in the name of modernity and progressive values. The Nazis destroyed human life in a scientifically planned method and waged war in the name of progress of white civilization. The allies on the other hand whilst criticizing Hitler's white vs white racism waged war on him in the name of so-called tolerance whilst still segregating black people in in the US or treating Indians as second class citizens and canon fodder in its army. In the name of progress it massacred innocent civilian populations in massive bombardments and finally used the atomic bomb against the Japanese in an unprecedented act of military cowardice and racial hatred (ever wondered why they didn't bomb Berlin?). Modern wars have seen an unprecedented amount of victims as well clear abuses of civilian populations who are now clearly the first victims of these wars. Traditional war codes usually forbade the targeting of civilians even though this was not always implemented.
- crime and moral degradation
Despite its claims to progress the West knows now unprecedented levels of violent crime and moral degradation. The fact that pimps and prostitutes have become icons for the modern youth and that vulgar entertainers (pop singers and sportsmen, in Rome they were slaves...) have since WWII become role models is only the tip of the iceberg of a more general degradation of a civilization that cannot stand on its feet because it simply doesn't have a fix divinely ordained way of life.
Technological advancement does not equate greatness in civilization. This doesn't mean that science is evil. It just means that science on its own does NOT bring about civilization. It has to be combined with other factors namely spirituality and religion. As Montaigne said:
Science sans conscience est la ruine de l'âme.
Science without conscience is the ruin of the soul.
Imam Khomeini (ra), Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo were spearheads of of the anti-modern movement that clearly recognized the fallacy of modernity and its evils. They are a testimony of the earth's complaint against a way of life that is an insult to Allah (swt). In fact anyone familiar with traditional cosmologies knows that were are living in the Dark Age or Kali Yuga as the Indians call it and that were are experiencing growing degradation NOT progress.
Let me finish with the following quote of Rabindranath Tagore:
“The political civilization which has sprung up from the soil of Europe and is over-running the whole world, like some prolific weed, is based upon exclusiveness. It is always watchful to keep at bay the aliens or to exterminate them. It is carnivorous and cannibalistic in its tendencies, it feeds upon the resources of other peoples and tries to swallow their whole future. It is always afraid of other races achieving eminence, naming it as a peril, and tries to thwart all symptoms of greatness outside its own boundaries, forcing down races of men who are weaker, to be eternally fixed in their weakness.... This political civilization is scientific, hot human.
“The charge brought against us is that the ideals we cherish in the East are static, that they have no impetus in them to move, to open out new vistas of knowledge and power, that the systems of philosophy which are the mainstays of the time-worn civilizations of the East despise all outward proofs, remaining stolidly satisfied in their subjective certainty. This proves that when our knowledge is vague, we are apt to accuse of vagueness our object of knowledge itself. To a Western observer our civilization appears as all metaphysics, as to a deaf man piano playing appears to me mere movement of figures and no music. He cannot think that we have found some deep basis of reality upon which we have built our institutions. ... The East with her ideals, in whose bosom are stored the ages of sunlight and silence of stars, can patiently wait till the West, hurrying after the expedient, loses breath and stops.”
Rabindranath Tagore, Nationalism, New York, The Macmillan Company, 1917; The Diary of a Westward Voyage, English translation of Indu Dutt, Bombay, Times of India press, 1962.
