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elfsThis is very tenuous in its current form. Forgive me; I'd like critiques and help with this idea.
In case anyone does not know, Leon Kass is the chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics.
Edward Said's famous book, Orientalism, is a critique of the way Euro-American scholars of the Arab world have romanticized and politicized our view of Arab culture, did so for political reasons, and served political ends. He claimed that "oriental studies," as they were called at the time, were carried out to describe the "alter ego" of the West, to provide the West with a comfortable view of what it means to be alien and to describe that alienation in a way that made it both controllable and deserving of outside control.
Now, a fabulous book has come out that turns this notion on its head. Occidentalism takes the view that there is common notion of what "The West" is about and defines and describes The West in a way that makes the West both inherently destructible and deserving of destruction.
The Kyoto Conference of the West in 1942 epitomized Occidentalism. A group of prominent Japanese philosophers, religious leaders, politicians, and writers agreed that the Western Tradition deserved to be destroyed. Science demystified nature and broke it down into component parts. Capitalism made individual choice more powerful than communal efforts by giving each man the power to decide for himself what foods, clothes, and furnishing he could have. Individualism as well was a tragedy, because it discouraged communal thought. All of these were dangers to be opposed.
The Kyoto Conference instead advocated a holistic mysticism, the wholeness of Oriental spiritual culture. Blood, flesh, the worship of the soil, were more important than knowledge and self-determination. Devotion to a corporealized, idealized spirit would unite all the Asian peoples against the fragmented, amoral, demoralized West.
Throughout all of this, and even now in the Islamicist literature one can freely read at MEMRI. The West is "without morals, without law, without principles." We are a "machine civilization," cold, mechanical, analytical, without soul.
I believe that Leon Kass and those like him are practicing Occidentalism. To ephemeralists like Kass and his followers, biological fundamentalism is more important than free will, democracy, or self-determination. Demystification-- that is, the ability of focused inquiry, guided by the scientific method, to turn a mystery into a body of knowledge-- is a danger to be opposed. The ephemeralists have as real an anchor as any other occidentalists-- the body, our bones and blood and skin, however twisted and gnarled and doomed we receive them from the capricious vagaries of natural selection-- and oppose such abstract a notion as individual choice when it comes to what that body should look like, what shape the mind and one's own thoughts should take.
As we get closer to demystifying the human body and the human brain, to understanding that this tweak will make me more studious, or that tweak will allow you to eat as much as you wish without getting fat, that this tweak will make me less shy and more outgoing, and that tweak will cure you of herpes (or HIV, or glaucoma, or whatever), Kass and his ilk ring the alarm that by taking these tribulations out of our lives we lessen the color and meaning. Life was "better" when we faced polio and watched our children die of it-- their struggles taught the rest of us what it means to be alive. Kass has gone so far as to claim that if "the handicapped" were cured, it would be a tragic thing for we'd have no more of their heroic examples.
It's a tenuous connection, I admit, but I feel that somewhere in there is a biological analogy for occidentalism, a critique of biological fundamentalism and its dedication to ontological conservatism, that parallels nicely with the "good intentions" but critically evil outcomes of the Japanese, German, and Islamic theorists. They bemoaned the loss of a kind of unity-- social unity, identifying with "pure Japanese" or "pure German" or "purely Muslim," and decried the freedoms of The West, claiming that its "mongrelization" would make it weak, when in fact it is that mixing of cultures and ideas that has made us successful. Biological fundamentalists bemoan a different loss of unity-- unity in our fear of disease and death, unity in our identity as weak, doomed human beings, and decry the freedoms of modern medicine, claiming that its "demystification" makes us soulless, weak, and unworthy.
Both identity determinism and biological fundamentalism are wrong. They are ideas that provide nothing but handbrakes against the inevitable, Darwinistic power of the marketplace of ideas, where only the really worthy ones survive in great force. Ultimately, identity determinism condemned millions of its own people to massive suffering as well as those against whom such ideologies were directed. Biological fundamentalists will do the same if we do not oppose them.
In case anyone does not know, Leon Kass is the chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics.
Edward Said's famous book, Orientalism, is a critique of the way Euro-American scholars of the Arab world have romanticized and politicized our view of Arab culture, did so for political reasons, and served political ends. He claimed that "oriental studies," as they were called at the time, were carried out to describe the "alter ego" of the West, to provide the West with a comfortable view of what it means to be alien and to describe that alienation in a way that made it both controllable and deserving of outside control.
Now, a fabulous book has come out that turns this notion on its head. Occidentalism takes the view that there is common notion of what "The West" is about and defines and describes The West in a way that makes the West both inherently destructible and deserving of destruction.
The Kyoto Conference of the West in 1942 epitomized Occidentalism. A group of prominent Japanese philosophers, religious leaders, politicians, and writers agreed that the Western Tradition deserved to be destroyed. Science demystified nature and broke it down into component parts. Capitalism made individual choice more powerful than communal efforts by giving each man the power to decide for himself what foods, clothes, and furnishing he could have. Individualism as well was a tragedy, because it discouraged communal thought. All of these were dangers to be opposed.
The Kyoto Conference instead advocated a holistic mysticism, the wholeness of Oriental spiritual culture. Blood, flesh, the worship of the soil, were more important than knowledge and self-determination. Devotion to a corporealized, idealized spirit would unite all the Asian peoples against the fragmented, amoral, demoralized West.
Throughout all of this, and even now in the Islamicist literature one can freely read at MEMRI. The West is "without morals, without law, without principles." We are a "machine civilization," cold, mechanical, analytical, without soul.
I believe that Leon Kass and those like him are practicing Occidentalism. To ephemeralists like Kass and his followers, biological fundamentalism is more important than free will, democracy, or self-determination. Demystification-- that is, the ability of focused inquiry, guided by the scientific method, to turn a mystery into a body of knowledge-- is a danger to be opposed. The ephemeralists have as real an anchor as any other occidentalists-- the body, our bones and blood and skin, however twisted and gnarled and doomed we receive them from the capricious vagaries of natural selection-- and oppose such abstract a notion as individual choice when it comes to what that body should look like, what shape the mind and one's own thoughts should take.
As we get closer to demystifying the human body and the human brain, to understanding that this tweak will make me more studious, or that tweak will allow you to eat as much as you wish without getting fat, that this tweak will make me less shy and more outgoing, and that tweak will cure you of herpes (or HIV, or glaucoma, or whatever), Kass and his ilk ring the alarm that by taking these tribulations out of our lives we lessen the color and meaning. Life was "better" when we faced polio and watched our children die of it-- their struggles taught the rest of us what it means to be alive. Kass has gone so far as to claim that if "the handicapped" were cured, it would be a tragic thing for we'd have no more of their heroic examples.
It's a tenuous connection, I admit, but I feel that somewhere in there is a biological analogy for occidentalism, a critique of biological fundamentalism and its dedication to ontological conservatism, that parallels nicely with the "good intentions" but critically evil outcomes of the Japanese, German, and Islamic theorists. They bemoaned the loss of a kind of unity-- social unity, identifying with "pure Japanese" or "pure German" or "purely Muslim," and decried the freedoms of The West, claiming that its "mongrelization" would make it weak, when in fact it is that mixing of cultures and ideas that has made us successful. Biological fundamentalists bemoan a different loss of unity-- unity in our fear of disease and death, unity in our identity as weak, doomed human beings, and decry the freedoms of modern medicine, claiming that its "demystification" makes us soulless, weak, and unworthy.
Both identity determinism and biological fundamentalism are wrong. They are ideas that provide nothing but handbrakes against the inevitable, Darwinistic power of the marketplace of ideas, where only the really worthy ones survive in great force. Ultimately, identity determinism condemned millions of its own people to massive suffering as well as those against whom such ideologies were directed. Biological fundamentalists will do the same if we do not oppose them.
