West & Rest
The Discovery of America was a miracle in itself but a breakthrough towards being “west” to “West”. The American continent assisted in shaping the modern-day ideology of the “West and Rest”. This phenomenon is intimately associated with what we call historical superiority. We will see how Europeans twist the words to construct torsion in reality? The term “west” appears to be the “West”, and what are its various meanings?
Our blue planet had confronted severe winter five times in history; Ice Age. It remained for several thousand years. The human being of the recent ice age used to survive in caves and hunt in the union for food. Once a group of huntsmen and nomads left Siberia for a new place for food and shelter and lost their way. Slipping and hiking, they do not know was that ice links two landmasses. Eleven thousand years ago, the ice age halted, sea level rose — terminating the communion between two. Today that crossing is known as Bering Strait. There is a point where the gap separating the old and new world is merely 85 km. However, it took ten and a half thousand years for humans to cross it. Today we know this new world by the term America.
May 29, 1453, after the fall of Constantinople, Europe went into economic and spiritual malaise. Byzantine Empire was the shortest link to the East and also the holiest city for Christians. Day by day, Muslims were conquering European cities — leaning Orthodox in worry. The economic crisis set a wave of relentless starvation and unemployment. At that time, the travel stories of Marco Polo (1254–1324) were famous among the people. His exaggerated tales of Quinsay (China) and Cipango (Japan) urged all dead hearts to comprehend a new way to reach there. In the midst of it, an infamous Italian explorer Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), professed to know a way to the East.
October 12, 1492, his feet anchored in America — believing to be docked in India — commencing centuries-long colonization. Colonial gold, silver, rubber, tobacco, marijuana, cotton helped Europeans to lift their empires. They got filthy rich at the expense of others: Empires of Dirt. Anything which affected most is our Modern World — the notion of “West and Rest”.
Europeans constructed luscious and lustful fiction. New World was called Earthly Paradise, Golden Age and Utopia, drawing people as naive, upright and close to nature. They often become prey to rhetorical lust and seduction. Sexuality is crucial in phantasm. This phenomenon always twists around women. Vespucci unriddles the culture of aboriginals,
‘lived according to Nature’, and went naked and unashamed; ‘the women … remained attractive after childbirth’ (quoted in Honour, 1968, pg. 66).
In short, he objectified the human genital parts to show lust and lure. Walter Raleigh had faith to unearth king El Dorado. Columbus also theologized the Orinoco river to be a divine river flowing out of Eden.
When it is good, there is evil. European Society portrayed natives as inhuman and unscrupulous. They also orient their cultural distinctions as taboo and savage, like a beast in human form. Living close to nature meant that they had no developed culture — they are savage. They were also barbarian in terms of the political system, the power hierarchy, social values and religion. Cannibalism was well-known in its holy rituals. They used to please their idols by human sacrifice. Natives had been through an offbeat course of antiquity and historical events. Hence, they acquired an odd taste of cultural and social values, which Europeans failed to accept.
Europeans idealize and orient the natives. They project their biblical and mythical fantasies. They slipped to acknowledge and appreciate the contrast. Natives also became prey to the European stereotypes of being friendly and war-like. As a consequence of this, historical superiority sowed down in the conscious and subconscious minds of each European. And this originates centuries-long phenomena of Racial Slavery and White Supremacy; the white of Europe is superior to everyone else.
Historical superiority entangles deep with slavery. Racial slavery is a modern commodity. A ship undocks from Glasgow, travels to West Africa, captures black people. And those black people were used as currency to buy tobacco, cotton and other goods in American markets. Relative progress is also a principal constituent. Natives were relatively less progressive and developed than their colonial counterparts. They use bull carts to travel — their irrigation system was old — they stay almost naked. Europe took this as they were living in the stone age. They oriented them as barbarians and took charge to enlighten them. Non-Christians were rated inferior. Church used to commission missionaries to spread Christianity in colonies. By that time term, Christian and Christianity became Western. Christianity is an eastern religion — Jesus Christ was born in the east. But portraits of that time speak different things. Jesus was shown blonde and white, Gabriel, Marry, all angles and biblical creatures were shown white on canvas. Being Christian gave them an edge to be historically superior.
Everything comes with its pros and cons. In the era of enlightenment, people ill-treated science for their interests. Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778) founded Modern Scientific Taxonomy — a science of classification of species. He introduced binomial nomenclature for plants and animals. His research proposed that there are many species in plants and animal kingdoms, so does in humans. He called a modern-day human “Homosapien”. He also named the biological cousins who were extinct thousands of years ago. But his studies do not count the idea that a human cannot be biologically differentiated. At the same time, Franz Joseph Gall (1758–1828) introduced Phrenology. He devised methods to study humans based on the external structure of the skull. He manifested in his studies that Europeans have the most comprehensive brain — they are the smartest ones. As a result of this, they pledge to rule over those who possess a more petite brain. All these artefacts gave racism a pseudo-biological perspective. Now the equation of racism contains two terms; history and biology. Modern says they are better than those in the past. On the other hand, they believe they are what now is always a matter of nature.
After all of this, there arises a question; “what is west?” and “where does it come from?”. The very idea of the west is more historical, sociological and geopolitical rather than geographical. And it is the foundation of our modern-day world which we perceive through our eyes. Our modern world is a product of phenomenal violence and divorce with Feudalism. In today’s world, it describes certain things. First, it isolates the rest from the west. It builds up a set of qualities, characteristics and images which describes the word progress and development. It is also a standard model of comparison. Ultimately, it creates an unconscious attitude towards different attributes. Together with its conjuncts with the understanding of a common man form a modern world, aka the western dominated world. There is also a key factor called progress.
Blind faith in progress is deeply ingrained and rooted in the mind of a Modern Man. Progress challenges time, people, wisdom, religion because there is no constraint to achieve it. It is an inverted Confucianism. It made men believe he is the centre of the universe. In the 15th century, when Europeans left their home, it was not a man looking for a new world. But a collective thought to spread influence and bring gold and capita. They discovered the new world by accident. They regard themselves to be historically superior — they colonized and looted them in a much formal way.
One after another, the great civilization went extinct at the hand of colonial power. Today’s world is proof of that phenomenal violence. We have seen what happens when someone comes out of his comfort zone — something extraordinary occurs. But if we judge things to our perception, then pseudo-reality might differ from actual reality. What happened is a matter of the past, but the present is always pregnant by the past. Modern socio-political theories, Marxism, Communism, Capitalism and Socialism, are extraordinarily influenced by the west. Every glimpse of the eye is a reflection of it.
References
Dekho Suno Jano. (2020). History of America S01E01 | Story of two lost continents | Faisal Warraich [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqXQBfcoQPM
VICE. (2020). The Disturbing History of Tobacco | Empires of Dirt [YouTube Video]. In YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_YDMbLXtx0
Hall, S., (1992), Formation of Modernity
