The Clash of Civilizations by Samuel Huntington in the early 1990s (you can have a browse inside the book at Amazon) has had a lot of airplay and influence because of its controversial stance and because of its broad sweep of world cultures. Huntington says, in brief, that future conflicts would likely be fought over cultural or religious differences, not between states or for political or economic reasons. “The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” (For an article about his ideas go to Online Opinion)
Barak Obama, in Dreams From My Father, doesn’t see terrorists as representing any religious culture, and instead he sees nihilism “the stark nihilism that drove the terrorists that day and that drives their brethren still”. Nihilism is found in every religious and cultural group.
The ‘clash’ as Obama sees it, is between “those who embrace our teeming, colliding, irksome diversity, while still insisting on a set of values that binds us together, and those who would seek, under whatever flag or slogan or sacred text, a certainty and simplification that justifies cruelty towards those not like us”.
Perhaps we need a test of unconscious nihilism?
1 Comment
January 11, 2009 at 7:28 am
[...] They take no more than 10 minutes and are impossible to cheat. (But perhaps you are not racist, just nihilist?) [...]