The East-West dichotomy/Chapter 10

Western analytical-based societies, with their emphasis on achieving “useful” knowledge, became masters and possessors of nature, with the perspective of active domination over other civilizations.

While in the integration-based societies knowledge came from studying the classics, the wise, the kings of old, the analysis-based West started to categorize and deconstruct nature and all things. Periodism, for example, is characteristically related to Western rationalism, as opposed to non-event related dynasties named after Chinese emperors for example, so is categorization as a method to acquire new knowledge ad infinitum. Western societies dress themselves in the mantle of knowledge, and knowledge is linked to power, which has been the very source of European predominance.

We should admit… that power produces knowledge… that power and knowledge directly imply one another… that there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge. (Michel Foucault, 1977)

The concept of power in the integration-based East however is sheer might in numbers, uniformity and thus consistency. This spiritual ‘moral power’ drove out the Imperialists in the first half of the 20th century.

The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character, not clothing. (Mahatma Gandhi)

To sum up, Western power in my taxonomy is related to analytically-based deductive knowledge whereas Eastern power is related to integration-based inductive knowledge. The former has the historical function of a dangerous, yet creative force, the latter has the historical function of a tranquil, yet moral force.