Sacred Cows | Peter Banks

As the economic chasm between the West and the rest closes, less than a ¼ of the population cannot maintain a monopoly on global culture, ethically or practically.

Recently, the Indian government assassinated a member of the Indian diaspora in Canada sparking an international incident between the two countries. A few weeks later it was reported in the New York Times that a similar assassination was thwarted in New York. In this article I make no plans to litigate these assassinations but instead to raise awareness of a future trend the West is culturally unprepared for. Namely, the sacred cows of our civilization are about to be challenged first by India and then by English speaking Africa over the rest of the 21st century. 

Let me walk you through my logic. Starting in the 18th century (most probably even earlier), global history has effectively been a history of Europe and its diaspora. Of course, certain people can protest this description but undeniably by the turn of the 20th century it would be impossible to understand the administrative boundaries, demographics, economy, or society of any place on earth without engaging with the preferences of White people. In fact, at least in English, we refer to World War 1 as a World War despite the only real action taking place in Europe and West Asia with some minor skirmishes in European colonies. Culturally this political and economic dominance has left its mark in a certain level of Western chauvinism. In particular, whatever Westerns view as valuable has for the living memory of every person alive today been the global value. To see this alive today look no further than the frantic efforts on the part of Palestinian activists to win over Western cultural opinion despite countries like the US having little direct control over what the Israelis do. 

Even today cultural trends with their origins in the West often have huge effects on countries across the globe. As a somewhat comical example of how widespread White culture is, simply look at China. Communism is not the product of Chinese civilization but instead a cultural legacy of continental philosophy. Even in countries like North Korea – which has renounced communism in favor of their own boutique ideology Juche – they continue to play into topics like Rousseau’s national will by holding elections as a source of political legitimacy. Effectively, the world we live in today for better and for worse is a fusion of local customs and Western values. 

This trend is finally beginning to reverse. I don’t want to oversell my point. You would have to be extremely bullish on Hindu nationalism to believe that Western society will ever embrace it to the same degree that South Korea has embraced capitalism and feminism. But one long-run result will be an increasing feeling of “vulgarity” in the political discourse of the West in the sense that a wide variety of topics which are considered closed to real political discourse will be opened rudely by millions of competent and thoughtful people who simply disagree about the relative importance of these topics. 

This brings me back to the start of the article. It is not difficult for someone from a Western country to openly admit to knowing nothing about Sikh separatism. I would in fact view any peer of mine with a particularly strong opinion as somewhat strange. But yet we expect people from across the world to have intricate and thought-out stances on American politics including abortion and Black Lives Matter (BLM). If this isn’t a sort of White centric hypocrisy, I’m unsure what is. This isn’t to downplay the importance of those issues to us but it is important to at least try and get a grasp on how small a share of the world’s population we actually are. For example, the entire population of North America, South America, Europe, and Oceania combined is approximately 1.8 billion people. As the economic chasm between the West and the rest closes, less than a ¼ of the population cannot maintain a monopoly on global culture, ethically or practically. 

As more and more Indians get on the internet and more importantly in my opinion as the Flynn effect continues to work its magic across the globe, the fraction of extremely capable people who live in Western countries will continue to decrease. Importantly for the Anglo-sphere the virtual monopoly on English language media held by Americans will be broken. 

It would be delusional to claim I know what the existence of hundreds of millions of brilliant Indian authors writing in English will be. Overwhelmingly I have no doubt it will be one of the most exceptional moments in human history and something I truly believe would have been inconceivable even a century ago. In fact, the speed at which the developing world has moved into democratic modernity is something that is rarely acknowledged. Without modern global capitalism hundreds of millions of people would be trapped in grinding poverty and oppressive cultural institutions. Instead, I’m going to do my best to articulate those subjects that for idiosyncratic reasons are important to the West. I refer to these as sacred cows for two reasons. First, because its definition in English refers to something that is unreasonably immune to criticism. But second and more importantly, because of the obvious mockery implied in the word. Based on google ngrams, the term appears to have taken off in the 1920s. Contextually based on its meaning, it is clear Englishmen used it in a perhaps playfully mocking way of Hindus since in their minds the special place Hinduism holds cows is unreasonable. Much the same, the special way that the West and Anglo-sphere in specific holds these subjects is rooted deeply in our culture and to an external perspective somewhat unreasonable. 

ISRAEL-PALESTINE:

Fundamentally, this conflict holds an outsized share of global attention for a relatively simple reason. The conflict is a mirror of the origins of Western civilization (the crusades) and so feeds directly into our neurosis in a way no other conflict ever can. In it are mirrored all of the essential conflicts of my civilization; colonization, race, the role of religion in the state, the necessity of violence and our repulsion to it. But expecting other civilizations to care about it for similar reasons is fundamentally delusional. I expect that the world will continue to care about Israel and Palestine but fundamentally it will be for reasons that diverge from those that matter in the Western world. In particular, a certain claim to the unique evil of antisemitism will never have the bite it does here. If you doubt the last sentence simply read this attached article. If you don’t know one thing about the Japanese empire what right do you have to demand the world know about the medieval treatment of Jews.

AMERICAN SLAVERY:

In America, this topic is so sensitive we have a vocabulary of acceptable language that can be used to describe it. As an example of this look at the relevant English Wikipedia article for “concubinage”. The paragraphs on every society other than the United States is largely abstract and legalistic, discussing numbers and religious customs. However, for the US a substantial portion of the article is devoted to emphasizing the fact that slavery was a crime against humanity. In fact, the majority of the section is devoted to discussing the fact that slaves could not give consent and pointing out the evils of slavery. This isn’t to disagree with any of it, but it is important to realize how much this reflects unique historical realities and is not a position that it would be rational to expect everyone in the world to hold equally. Regardless of how much an Indian might try to be delicate with the issue of American slavery, it will never satisfy the tastes of Americans. I expect this to cause huge controversy in the coming years. 

NATIVE AMERICANS AND EUROPEAN CONQUEST OF THE AMERICAS:

For this I merely ask you to engage with how you feel about the Mongols. If you do not instantly jump to the conclusion that they represented a uniquely evil force in human civilization you have no grounds to critique a non-Westerner for simply not caring about the European conquests of the Americas. In fact, it is quite plausible that similar to how Westerners view Mongols, the true scale of their brutality might be obscured by a certain morbid respect. 

The level of sensitivity to this seems to vary significantly by country. But particularly in Canada it appears to have taken on almost sacred importance. Similar to the caste system in India, though, it is something that the average non-American cannot be expected to know the details of. I’m not sure if I find it more humorous or impressive seeing Jagmeet Singh so delicately navigate the issue in Canada. Simply as countries in North America become more diverse, the successive waves of immigrants will care as much about the plight of indigenous Americans as they care about the success of any of their other countrymen. Thus, the delicacy that has become standard procedure in both Canada and the United States will not last, in particular online. For example, it would not surprise me if in 40 years an exceptional movie came out of India that portrayed the Native Americans as savages attacking settlers. Something that at least as long as I’ve been alive is an inconceivable representation despite the fact that millions of White Americans have had their ancestors killed by native raids.

GENDER:

I’m not 100% sure how to label this one. But in the last 30 years the West has taken a sharp turn on gender and queer rights. This is something that every Westerner who did not actively resist the rise of women and LGBTQ rights should be extremely proud of. It represents a unique invention of Western philosophy with no parallel across history. But that uniqueness masks the scale of the cultural shift. In the modern West, it is illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people almost everywhere along any dimension. Seriously examining if there are trade offs to women entering the workforce is largely excluded purposefully from public discourse. This is simply untrue of the rest of the world. The West has a unique view on gender and its role in society. This perspective which has largely been unchallenged for the last 20 years will be subjected to serious criticism. You can already see what a close friend of mine referred to as an Islamization of the men’s rights movement. People like Andrew/Tristen Tate and Sneeko – all of whom literally converted to Islam – represent a real globalization of gender dynamics.

IMMIGRATION:

Immigration to the West is clearly seen by many of our institutions largely as a moral requirement. The evidence for this is pretty overwhelming if you have any interest in examining the way that our leaders talk about. But if you are in support of immigration just examine your own feelings about it. Be candid. How much of your support is predicated on the advantages that are brought to you and how much is built on a desire for the immigrant to succeed and a sympathy for their plight?

I’m not going to comment on the usefulness of thinking about immigration through this lens. There are doubtless trade-offs and advantages. But I do want to emphasize that it doesn’t appear to exist anywhere else. In fact, even in Europe it largely seems to be evaporating as the social cost of immigration has become more salient. In the United States at least, immigration is fundamentally untouchable. As countries like India increasingly become wealthy, I expect there to be serious tensions between the inevitable immigration to these countries and divergent views on its moral value.

BLANK SLATISM:

Blank slatism or the idea that humans’ socialization are fundamentally the same is so deeply ingrained into American psychology and history that it is baked into our founding document. In fact, a huge amount of modern civil rights litigation is built around the idea of disparate impact which in the extreme has largely been interpreted to mean that substantial group differences in outcomes are the result of discrimination and not on average differences in ability. As an example of this, teachers in New York City sued  and were awarded a $1.8B settlement for an examination that was only discriminatory in the sense that Black and Hispanic teachers failed the examination at a higher rate than White teachers. 

At colleges, the belief in blank slatism is so deeply ingrained that America might be one of the few countries in the world that does not operate admissions based on an open examination process. Instead it institutes a much more complicated and classist system simply because of the belief that since examination systems like the SAT have substantial group heterogeneity in scores they have to be biased. This view is simply not held by the vast majority of people in the world. Even in Communist China, the Gaokao is widely respected and viewed as a truly meritocratic assessment system. Here at Stanford, I have yet to meet an international student from outside the West that has the same inherent skepticism of an open examination system. I believe this is because the concept of blank slatism is core to the teachings of Christianity and Liberalism. But if you are not either you have no obligation to accept it as true.

COLONIALISM:

This one I expect to be extremely contentious for a simple reason. Up until recently with the rise of non-White immigration to Western countries acknowledging the evils of colonialism has been extremely easy. Even going so far as to advocate for a view of Western material success that is built on colonialism (something I think is at least partially true although more complicated) is the passive ideology of most modern Westerners. But this is overwhelmingly the result of the West not being forced to confront the living consequences of its crimes. As more and more non-Westerners come online, topics like the British Raj or other atrocities will take on an emotional tone they have as of yet mostly avoided. This will no doubt ruffle the feathers of many Westerners who are largely the product of colonialism. In a simplistic way, I for example as a White American of multinational descent simply would not exist without European colonialism. The cultural consensus that currently exists that preaches there is nothing defensible about colonialism will crumble. White people know there is a lot they like about colonialism if they live in any country that was the creation of colonialism. Their home and family and friends are all things they like about colonialism. The defensive acknowledgement of the crimes of the West is only possible when the victims are not around to demand restitution.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This is by no means an exhaustive list. In fact, it would surprise me if I’m right about more than a few of them. Mostly what I want to emphasize is how primed for change our global society is. In the words of an Indian friend of mine who also studies here at Stanford, “Unlike China, India is also an open society. Indians are not isolated behind a Great Firewall. They are on the same open internet as everyone. Nor are they muzzled by an omnipotent state, as a look at the chaotically vibrant Indian press will show.” The West has learned the wrong lesson from the rise of China, that our cultural hegemony will last forever. Talent, wealth, and all the flowers that grow from them are beginning to bloom across the free world. Humanity will flourish from this but Westerns will have to grapple with the real effects of cultural diversity. The era of Western and Global culture being synonymous is closing.