By Prabhakar T. Overland
The United Nations (UN) has been hanging in the balance ever since the beginning of the Cold War. These days, the UN is deemed irrelevant as far as solving global crises goes. The brokering of peace in Ukraine, Gaza and elsewhere takes place not at the NYC UN headquarters but at the White House in Washington. As soon as the dominant US economic and political world machine has run its course, such dynamics will play out elsewhere.
World security is not somebody’s monopoly but everybody’s duty. Practically, it is a delicate balance of two planetary brain hemispheres, each embroiled in internal strife at present.
When analysing the West, we have to admit we were fooled by the Cold War. Russia was never an “inaccessible East” but very much a part of western consciousness. That western mindset has since forever been dominated by ideas of power politics and brutality, all in the name of human rights and democracy—or dictatorship.
The other hemisphere is the real East, with its main proponents China and India. The eastern superpowers are also at loggerheads over geographical positions and natural resources, just like their western counterparts: Western Europe, Russia, and the US.
To truly understand the world’s clashes and cohesions, we sometimes need to take a backward step to get a wider perspective. How did these two planetary brain hemispheres get their polar characteristics?
Environment may have played an essential part. The early Europeans were nomadic folks coming out of an ice age. Their Caucasian ways grew out of Central Europe where food and fodder were sparse, and infighting and even slaughtering among competing groups were part and parcel of the struggle for survival. Wherever they wandered, those primitive westerners impacted indigenous people with their rough and tough ways, rigid social norms, and insisting culture, all under the motto “accept our rule or go under”.
The Eastern Way comes out of a warmer climate conducive to settled life. There are of course cold places in India and China. Even the East has had its fair share of warlords and even conquerors. However, the overall culture and psychology of the East are embedded in a more life-friendly environment that has provided abundant nourishment during the millennia. Consequently, the more at ease Orientals tend toward the subtle philosophical, socially relaxed and even escapist.
Due to increased communication and education, the western mindset now operates in the East and vice versa. Still, we live in a world shaped by differences in the fundamental thinking and cultural expressions of those hemispheres. How they will sort out their domestic strifes and come together to solve their common planetary challenges, will dominate the news media over the coming years.
To secure world harmony and growth, both planetary brain hemispheres would need to settle acute disputes on their home front. Then they would need to assist each other in synthesising their respective fortes into a more wholesome world consciousness. “The existing world order” would need to transform into “universal order”. The extroversial West and the introspective East will have to play their significant roles in better ways and increasingly united style to achieve that ideal state of planetary affairs.