Adbusters #95 May/June 2011 19(3)

I just recently purchased the current issue of Adbusters magazine; it is titled "Post West", and subtitled "the philosophy issue".

I found a fantastically insightful (well, to me, at least) passage by Jacques Waardenberg, from "Reflections on the West" which is a chapter in Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century:

Today the West stands for a disintegrating society in which egoism and human solitude prevail. It is the land of the loss of mind, where materialism reigns and where people are imprisoned by their desire for goods and money. It is the land of the loss of soul, where a secular way of life dominates, and people drift without deeper norms and higher values. It is the land of the loss of true feelings, where changing appetites are the norm, and people fall victim to desire and lust. It is the land of the loss of human dignity, with a value system based on economics, and where people aggressively exploit each other. Finally, it is the land of metaphysical alienation and loss of God, with man-made idols and people who have no relationship to Being, nature, history and each other. This barbarian West is seen as not only destructive to itself, with violence flaring in bitter economic, social and political conflicts, but also as a real danger for the rest of the world, and especially the Muslim part of it. (emphasis mine)

Another passage, uncredited (and so thus editorial?) is the following:

Instrumental rationality - the calculation of the most efficient options for achieving a given desire - has overwhelmed Western thinking over the past 300 years, generating a cold, empirical, calculating mindset.

The problem lies in the Western process of thinking - how we 'think about thinking'

There are several more excellent passages floating on a sea of disturbing images (e.g. Jessica Simpson peeling off a pair of camouflage shorts to reveal a 'Stars & Stripes' string bikini, with a wad of chewed bubble gum stuck over one eye) which suggest just how insane the Western world has become in the eyes of the rest of the cultures on this planet. I've just barely begun reading the articles, and already I'm both terrified at Western hubris and its inevitable fall, and encouraged by the small acts of resistance to Western hegemony that are reported in the pages of this excellent publication.

I feel vindicated for my (unpopular) interpretation of Western society's celebration of the killing of Osama bin Laden, for my desire for my culture to consider the reaction of other cultures, mostly Muslim peoples, but also other peoples (I'd love to see a sovereignist Indigenous perspective!) before creating YouTube videos such as the one included in my last post.

I love the editorial statement that acknowledges "we are embarking on an era of "contested modernity," one in which Western nations no longer impose their own values on the world at large." I just hope the West wakes up to this fact soon!