My Take | From Plato to Nato: Why Western dominance is its own undoing
- Exactly a century ago, philosopher and historian Oswald Spengler published his famous book that prophesied the decline of the West. Its conquest of the world inadvertently gave the vanquished the intellectual tools to reject and overthrow the conquerors just as it constantly challenged and undermined its own beliefs and convictions
“The coming of Caesarism breaks the [dictatorship] of money and its political weapon, democracy. After a long triumph of world-city economy and its interests over political creative force, the political side of life manifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will.” – Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
My favourite hate readers are always complaining that I am anti-Western but live in the West. They are right and I have no excuses. One simple reason was that I inherited a nice house in Toronto whereas there was no such inheritance waiting for me in China. If there were, it’s perfectly conceivable my family and I would be living on the mainland. My wife and I would certainly have no objections living there, except that I might have to regularly show up at an SCMP bureau office. That could be a deal-breaker.
Be that as it may, let me express my appreciation to my faithful haters. They keep coming back for more – some do so daily – when it must be torture to encounter views that are anathema to their own. When I come across columnists I can’t stand, I just stop reading them. But then, I am not a masochist.
Nietzsche and me
The other day, I was rereading Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche whom I idolised in (Canadian) high school when I was a lonely, friendless teenager but whom I have not read again since. He did make me a lifelong student of philosophy. Now, though, I just find his self-aggrandisement and terrible attempts at humour embarrassing. But still, he wrote: “Under these circumstances, it is a duty - and one against which my customary reserve, and to a still greater degree the pride of my instincts, rebel - to say: Listen! for I am such and such a person.”
So there, we all feel this Nietzschean urge, sometimes! Of course I am anti-Western because I am so Westernised to the core, in my whole education and outlook. And yet, I self-identify as a Chinese, not a Canadian-Chinese, not Canadian-Hongkonger but simply a Chinese. Why? Because when I look in the mirror, I see a Chinese. Other people look at me and they see a Chinese, not a Westerner. They don’t see my wholly Westernised soul. When they hear me speak English, they hear my heavy Chinese accent. When I was young, I was ashamed of my accent. Now, like Martin Yan of Yan Can Cook, I deliberately exaggerate it; I am proud of it because my first language is Chinese (Cantonese).