The Geopolitics of Emotion: How Cultures of Fear, Humiliation, and Hope are Reshaping the World by Dominique Moisi. This book is Moisi's reply to Samuel Huntington's Clash of Civilizations and Francis Fukuyama's End of History and the Last Man. This book is short, better and pragmatic than the other two.
The three core emotions are:
Humiliation: Arab/Islamic world. Terrorism makes it self evident that they feel humiliated by the West. It comes from clinching to the past, misrepresentation of a peaceful religion and that self-fullfiling prophecy. Education, economic growth and democracy are the only panacea to get them out of this quagmire. Let's hope that this century would bring them hope.
Hope: Asia. No amount "World is Flat" books would do justice to illustrate what is happening in India and China. One has to see it to believe. It's surreal for someone like me who grew up there, to see the old India disappear before my own eyes. All is good except the sad part is they are making the same mistakes developed countries made. Talk about learning from history. On the bright side, history shows us that Asians persevere against all odds.
Fear: West. Again, its self evident. One has to just watch couple of "talk shows" on cables news and would start feeling Africa probably is heaven. No amount of nukes in the arsenal would be able to cure this fear. It's psychological. It comes from refusing to accept Darwin's core philosophy - adapting to change. This is more dangerous since unlike other emotions fear can feed itself indefinitely, thanks to non-stop of feeding of that confirmation bias from the media. West has to re-read it's own fascinating history and learn to adapt before its too late.
I am an Indian born, American citizen. I can relate to and know that the following lines from this book is very true. This is one of the core reasons why Asians are thriving, I don't say this with pride but with a heavy heart. West should listen and learn few things from the East.
"Most of my Asian friends went through the best western universities. They have an intimate knowledge of us and our culture. They know what makes us tick, so to speak. By contrast, the "Asian side" of their personality remains largely a mystery to me and my western friends. In the West, experts on Asia remain too few and too often limited to their field of expertise, be it art, history or language. One highly respected specialist in Japan at a major American university told me many years ago that more she knew about the Japanese culture, the less she "really" understood.
Thus the hybrid nature of Asian identity seems much more adaptive to a world in conflict, and therefore more beneficial, than the relative homogeneity we find in the Western world. Because we in the West still tend to see ourselves as central, we are more challenged and even destabilized in our core identity than Asians are. They manage to remain themselves while becoming us."
The three core emotions are:
Humiliation: Arab/Islamic world. Terrorism makes it self evident that they feel humiliated by the West. It comes from clinching to the past, misrepresentation of a peaceful religion and that self-fullfiling prophecy. Education, economic growth and democracy are the only panacea to get them out of this quagmire. Let's hope that this century would bring them hope.
Hope: Asia. No amount "World is Flat" books would do justice to illustrate what is happening in India and China. One has to see it to believe. It's surreal for someone like me who grew up there, to see the old India disappear before my own eyes. All is good except the sad part is they are making the same mistakes developed countries made. Talk about learning from history. On the bright side, history shows us that Asians persevere against all odds.
Fear: West. Again, its self evident. One has to just watch couple of "talk shows" on cables news and would start feeling Africa probably is heaven. No amount of nukes in the arsenal would be able to cure this fear. It's psychological. It comes from refusing to accept Darwin's core philosophy - adapting to change. This is more dangerous since unlike other emotions fear can feed itself indefinitely, thanks to non-stop of feeding of that confirmation bias from the media. West has to re-read it's own fascinating history and learn to adapt before its too late.
I am an Indian born, American citizen. I can relate to and know that the following lines from this book is very true. This is one of the core reasons why Asians are thriving, I don't say this with pride but with a heavy heart. West should listen and learn few things from the East.
"Most of my Asian friends went through the best western universities. They have an intimate knowledge of us and our culture. They know what makes us tick, so to speak. By contrast, the "Asian side" of their personality remains largely a mystery to me and my western friends. In the West, experts on Asia remain too few and too often limited to their field of expertise, be it art, history or language. One highly respected specialist in Japan at a major American university told me many years ago that more she knew about the Japanese culture, the less she "really" understood.
Thus the hybrid nature of Asian identity seems much more adaptive to a world in conflict, and therefore more beneficial, than the relative homogeneity we find in the Western world. Because we in the West still tend to see ourselves as central, we are more challenged and even destabilized in our core identity than Asians are. They manage to remain themselves while becoming us."
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