During the discussion with philosophers last night, glaring cultural differences among us became obvious. The Western European and American (including Latin American) scholars gleefully exchanged apocalyptic scenarios and denounced progress and capitalism.
Scholars from India and Eastern Europe (khm, khm), on the other hand, saw the current moment in history as highly hopeful and refused to agree that we would all be better off without the Western civilization or capitalism.
“Look where this completely misguided idea of progress brought us!” a Latin American philosopher exclaimed. “If the results are this horrible, then surely we can agree that the very idea is rotten to the core.”
“We have 3 women sitting at this table, talking about philosophy,” I observed. “This is something that couldn’t have happened at any other moment in history. My ancestors were slaves. So you’ll have to excuse me for disagreeing that the belief in progress is misguided.”
“Yes, but you have to agree that capitalism is evil!” a philosopher from France said. “The birth of capitalism really messed everything up.”
“I can’t agree,” a scholar from India responded. “The free market is one of the greatest advances of humanity. I’m sure Clarissa here will be glad to tell us just how problematic a regulated economy is.”
Clarissa nodded vigorously.
It’s curious to me that I had the greatest affinity with the worldview of an Indian scholar and had almost nothing in common with American and Eastern European thinkers. We also had a discussion of whether a sense of security or insecurity comes from the inside or is created by the external conditions. The Indian philosopher and I were instantly on the same page. Our understanding of each other’s ideas on the subject was almost intuitive. The Western scholars, in the meanwhile, looked perplexed when they heard the Indian and Eastern European ideas on the subject.
It was the Indian’s and the Ukrainian’s turn to look stumped when Westerners started discussing how everything was horrible, life was hopeless, and they were surviving on a subsistence level, working as indentured slaves, while traveling all over the world, wearing beautiful clothes, using sophisticated technology, and enjoying expensive wines. I suspect that “subsistence level” means different things to Westerners on the one hand and Ukrainians and Indians on the other.
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