The framers of European Union Constitution refused to write Christianity as the source of western values to the great anguish of the late Pope John Paul II. The Baptists and Evangelists who control American politics reject the liberal values of European enlightenment tradition. The Pope bemoans the corrupting influence of globalization and capitalist consumerism on the religious life of christians. All the same, in spite of their divergent views on values, these are the three forces that collectively determine the dynamics of contemporary Western values.
Christianity, Europe and America are three spaces that intersect to create the concept of the 'west'. Christianity is based on the belief of Christ's uniqueness and the historicity of his birth, death and resurrection. America is a state bound by a constitution committed to the protection of individual freedom and Europe is a bastion of secular liberalism otherwise called humanism. These three ideas drive humanity today- Group uniqueness, individual freedom and humanism.
Let me elaborate these ideas. It is a natural law that the strong alone prevails in the struggle for survival in this world of limited resources. Strength is a fluid concept. It is gained by developing physical, intellectual, emotional, verbal and social skills, one or several of them depending on the nature of the challenge. So rationalizing backward: the strong survives, not all; all can not be equally strong, because capabilities are unequally distributed; Survival is result of unique properties.
From this logic it is a natural psychological jump to claim uniqueness for oneself and one's group. Thus Moses claimed uniqueness for himself and for his group, sons of Abraham, the Jews, as God's chosen people. Such a claim invests the claimant with a special psychological power to face the immediate challenge and, over a period of time, becomes racial and national characteristic. Moses and Jews, Christ and Christians, Europe and Europeans, England and Anglo-Saxons believed in their respective uniquenesses.
All claims to uniqueness have an underlying sense of vulnerability and insecurity. And hence the compulsive obsessive need for recognition and the desire to impose one's belief system and the drive to martyrdom and proselytisation. The same spirit is the motivation and energy behind colonization and globalization. That is the belief behind the new Pope Benedict XVI's assertion that all religions, including Protestant, Anglican and Eastern Orthodoxies, other than Roman Catholicism are deficient. The learned and pious first Shepherd of the one billion strong catholics condemns Buddhism as a form of "auto-erotic' spiritualism. Hindus are idol worshippers crawling in the abysmal pit of spiritual darkness. Individual freedom, the right to life, property and the pursuit of happiness based on the belief that 'all men[ did they mean no women, and that too only white protestant Anglo-Saxon] are created equal' is the corner stone of American constitution. And the rule of and the inviolability of legal contracts based on that constitution is the highest standard of American morality and values. The state ensures equal opportunity to all citizens [ blacks were excluded from this blank check facility till the civil rights legislation in the sixties] and creates infrastructure/social assets to unleash citizens' potentials. Freedom of choice and to create one's destiny is the heart of true freedom.
Where the eastern societies shackle the individual with many fetters of family, tribal, caste, custom and ritual loyalties, the west defined the individual a free agent of his destiny. Though it invested the individual with unrestrained freedom, it also caused alienation, loneliness and neurosis and a pervasive sense of purposelessness, rootlessness and nostalgia. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proclaimed four freedoms as the guiding principles of America- freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want. Successive American presidents took care to couch their national interest rhetoric, foreign military adventures and anti- Soviet policies in the suave language of these four freedoms.
Europe, especially France, England and Germany, is the cradle of modern western civilization. All impulses of change began there- religious revolution in Germany, Industrial revolution in England and the political revolution in France. The emergence of nation states, establishment of world wide colonies, accumulation of capital and the appearance of the leisure/middle class. The collapse of holy empires based on divine authority represented by the Pope and the success of nation states based of raison d'état/ national self interest unleashed the potential of many nationalities there was an effervescence of creativity in science, political philosophy, economical thinking, discoveries and innovations. What I would call humanist values. Man became the measure of every thing. Religion was separated from state and bible ceased to be the ultimate authority of knowledge. Galileo Galilei peered through the telescope into the vast sky, dropped objects from the leaning Pisa tower and proclaimed that the earth was round and later propounded the most revolutionary theory of Evolution and survival of the fittest by natural selection. James Watt discovered steam engine and Louis Pasteur vaccination. The French Revolution of 1777 dethroned the emperor and declared the inalienable human rights of liberty, equality and moral foundation of society as fraternity. I would call this whole movement as liberal humanism.
The contemporary western values developed based on these three principles of 1] uniqueness/exclusivism/exceptionalism 2] Liberal humanism/rationalism 3] individual freedom and rule of law.
For Jew he was born privileged to be one among the only chosen people of God, for Christians Jesus was the only son of God, for the Europeans they were the chosen race to civilize the world, for the Anglo-Saxons they were born to rule the world and for Americans they were deputed by destiny to evangelize the whole world into democracy and human rights. 'Hindus are congenital liars, they were never a nation, India will fall into the flames of civil war and religious and caste conflicts once the British leave', arrogantly declared the Viceroy, Mr. Curzon. The British called him 'Lord'. " ..Whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny, prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder...the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on success of liberty in other lands...it is the policy of U.S to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture with ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world" [ Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan tyrannies supported by U.S is a direct slap on the face of this boast], declared President George Bush in his second inaugural address to the nation. " The humanity which sometimes seems lost and dominated by the power of evil, egoism and fear, the RISEN LORD offers us as a gift his love that pardons, reconciles and reopens the soul to hope", Pope John Paul II said in his dying message, asserting the uniqueness of Catholicism and its exclusive hold over the key to Heaven.
Swami Bodhananda