Harmonious Economics or The New World Order. Vladimir Emelyanovich Chabanov
cultures of India and Europe that provide an example of a most striking contrast. What are their fundamental differences?
European culture is relatively young. It was shaped by the rationality of Rome reinforced by the Greek Romanticism. Indeed, “… take Rome out – and the entire European edifice will collapse’ (Valentin Ivanov). If we analyse the map of the Roman oikumene at the beginning of the first millennium AD, including the territories of the Germanic tribes that the Roman Empire fought against, it is evident that the oikumene reunites precisely the states that make part of the modern Western Europe. All the tribes inhabiting this territory were inevitably and profoundly influenced by the sophisticated culture, language, order, and the very image of the rigorous Roman mind. The successors of the Empire naturally inherited its organisation, its harmony, rationality, democracy and inherent homogeneity.
But at the same time, they inherited the egotism, cynicism, cruelty, arrogance and pragmatism of Rome of those days, which in the end brought the Empire to ruin. For it was in the depths of Rome that the pagan cults of violence, hedonism, thirst for luxury, and permissiveness flourished. It was there that double standards, the modern plague of the western society, appeared. Within that system, everything that benefited Rome was considered good, while evil was all that ran counter to its interests. Then, the notions of truth, conscience and justice were employed as needed, often, as an excuse.
The Indian civilisation is more ancient. It is based on occult learning, manuscripts and cultural monuments that the legend attributes to the ancient Aryan civilisation. That is why all notions of this culture have already been tested by the time, and they tend to be more profound and precise. For this reason, as Carl Gustav Jung [17], a recognized expert in the western and eastern cultures, said, not only the lifestyles, but also the types of mentality of the western and the eastern societies are remarkably different.
Indeed, in the West, thinking, intelligence and logic are deemed the best tools for discovering the truth. As the result, the western mentality has become rigid, it does not tolerate deviations and unjustified assumptions. Besides, the area of rational use of mind has been significantly restricted in the West. While people there trust exact observations and logic, they also shun the unconscious and its dubious fantasies. The East has different demands. While the European mind can only process what is visible and tangible, the eastern mind strives to discover the nature and the essence of things. Consequently, a European sees the World around as a system of hierarchies, and an Indian – as a whole. Knowing the way to control the supreme power inside a person is the highest good for an Indian; a European only values what his eye sees.
To illustrate this idea, it can be mentioned that the a maiore ad minus15 (Latin for “from the bigger to the smaller’) principle is seen in the East as the key tool for learning about the reality. All inferences are drawn from the general principles. In the West, the road towards the truth takes the opposite direction: from the simple to the more complex. Western thinkers believe that the process of learning about the world can only be consecutive, it advances as new data is collected and processed; eastern thinkers discover the world through studying and elaborating the way the general Laws of the Universe are manifested. That is why it is these laws that the western philosophers usually study.
The above explains why a western person takes a detached view of the World, striving to distance themselves from it, to acquire an absolute personal freedom, and an Indian, on the contrary, tries to merge with the World. Therefore, a western person draws conclusions regarding their inner world based on external sensations, while an Indian person is guided by their internal meditations.
Consequently, western mind has a wide knowledge of the Nature, and knows very little about it essence. Europeans always try to make use of things instead of understanding them. They see the reality as something that works, that is connected with the world of phenomena, while for an Indian only the soul, the spirit is real.
Science, with its tendency for systematisation, for logic and consistency, is undoubtedly an invention of the western world. Science conforms with its capacity for logical thinking and reality management. However, about 80% of the scientific knowledge considered evident is proved wrong every 100 years. Although the physical world view as presented by modern science is logically rigorous and justified, it allows no space for life. So, this theory will suffer no changes if the humans disappear from the Universe. Now what is the real value of science if the only being it was created for is excluded from its structure?
The East, on the contrary, glorifies the rational dominant of feeling, elevates the spiritual component of the World, and perceives the truth through intuition, feelings and emotions. That is why eastern knowledge is indifferent to time running, and what was valued a thousand years ago is still valued today. To give just one example, “The supreme good of the human-beast is health; the supreme good of a spiritual human being is truth’16 (from The Gems of the East [15]). Is there anything to oppose this statement? Indeed, what is eternal is immune to change, and what is constant is eternal.
All this eventually shaped the different views of the people who live at the opposite points of the planet, both their views of themselves, and of the World around them. One of the cultures under consideration underestimates the world of consciousness, the other rejects that of the Uniform Spirit. The West celebrates “objectiveness’ sacrificing to it the beauty and the integrity of life. The East substitutes objectiveness with wisdom, peace of estrangement and psychic immobility that help human beings return to the source and leave all troubles and joys outside. “Subjectivity is really an advanced or preparatory stage for objectivity’ (Satprem [18]).
Having completed their historic development, the Europeans have gone so far from their origins that their minds have finally split into faith and knowledge. This is not surprising, as any psychological exaggeration leads to a split into the inherent opposites. Thus, a European person, equipped with the bad habit of believing and, at the same time, with a developed scientific and philosophic criticism, is inevitably trapped either in blind adoration or in an equally uncompromising rejection of foreign opinions and lifestyles.
The East believes that “Everything requires for its existence its own opposite, or else it fades into nothingness’ (Carl Gustav Jung, [17]). The World is stable as long as its composing factors are balanced. It understands that “Where there is faith, there is doubt; where there is doubt, there is thirst for faith; where there is morality, there is temptation’ (Laozi). That is why “The West can galvanize and separate, but it can neither stabilize nor unite’ (A. J. Toynbee).
An Indian take care both of the body and the mind, and a European keeps forgetting to attend to either the one or to the other. Where there is a will, there is a way, claims the West, and a European person takes this as a life motto. Thanks to persistent energy and forgetfulness, the Europeans have conquered the entire planet. And, at the same time, they have lost their planet. “That is the sickness of western man, and he will not rest until he has infected the whole world with his own greedy restlessness’ (C. G. Jung [17]). This is why the western man has become a symbol of the material component of the World, this is why he has made impressive material achievements. However, he has failed in the spiritual ones, as an increase in one place will always be balanced by a decrease in another, according to the law of conservation of energy.
In fact, neither of these two highly contrasted viewpoints is universal. As the great medieval scientist, theologian and poet Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī [19] said, there are two tools for discovering the world: logic and sense. And these two are inseparable and irreplaceable, just as the two sides of the coin. Rumi believed that the more one tries to push apart two opposites, the more power they have.
Obviously, a person’s mood and their understanding of the good and the evil, the moral and the immoral is profoundly influenced by the religious dogmas that the person lives by. It is evident that people with different psychic and incomparable values cannot pray to the same
[
[