Is East And West Really Important?

Here‘s a well-written article from Himal magazine that asks an interesting question: “How useful is the distinction between East and West in today’s world?”

It’s definitely a question worth asking, in my opinion, since it gets down to that all-important issue of identity.  It takes some good steps early on by suggesting that both the East and the West are constructed notions founded on the stereotypes and misunderstandings people on the other side hold.  So far, so good: the West and the East don’t “really” exist.  But then the article derails itself by talking about how we see “Western” ideals like rationality and secularism in older civilizations, and how the East-West binary is outdated because Western culture has basically taken over the world.

Basically, despite all his pains to avoid it, the author fell into the trap of defining the world in terms of the West, dividing places and eras into those that resemble the West and those that do not.  He loses sight of his main point early on: the kinds of boundaries that separate East and West are drawn for political reasons, and they don’t represent how the world “actually” is.

I’m not saying there aren’t cultural differences in the world, but to speak only of the East and the West vastly oversimplifies things.  The West and the East vary internally and constantly change over time. We would do well to break past artificial categories acknowledge the rich complexity of the world.

–Aaron Bekemeyer