Anthony Pagden -- Worlds at war
=================================

It's a book for those of us who both are interested in history and
want some edge to their reading.  I would have trouble staying
interested in a book this long containing this many details.  But
Pagden kept me interested by framing the historical in terms of the
conflict between western civilization and the civilizations of the
Middle East.

It's especially important now to have some perspective and some
appreciation for how long that struggle has been going on.

It's also important to understand that it is not a single struggle,
although Pagden does try to describe some common threads that
continue across time.  That's to be expected in a story and in
Pagden's book that begins around 500 B.C.E. and continues to within
a few years of the present.

And, this history does cover an immense period of time: the ancient
Greeks and Persians, Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, the
Eastern Roman Empire, the rise of Islam, the Christian Crusades, the
Reformation in Europe and the resulting division within
Christianity, the rise of science and its separation from religion
and the Enlightenment, and more.  These are all covered.

And, it's more that just a chronicle of events, places, and people.
Pagden gives heavy doses of commentary and analysis on the
significance of the culture and civilization and on the ideas and
reasons behind them.

For me, the main event in this book is the coming of Islam, because
the conflicts that we are wrestling with and trying to understand
*today* are a result of that development.  It's the rise of the
modern and somewhat secularized but also Christian West and the
Islamic East that form the basis for much of the conflict that we
are still living with today.

Related to that, I found Pagden's discussions of law in the West
(Roman law, but other developments, also) and law in regions where
Islam holds sway to be fascinating.  There are serious and
fundamental differences between laws written by men and for men and
influenced by culture of the time in which they are formulated, as
seems to be the case in the West, in contrast to laws created by
God/Allah, as is arguably the case in Islamic regions of the world.
Understanding these differences is important for understanding why
they can't become like us, viewed from either side of the divide.

Another valuable aspect of "Worlds at war" is that it teaches us a
bit of humility in the sense that some of the things we take for
granted are not obvious at all to those in other cultures and, in
fact, are not stable nor even that likely to last in our own
culture.  In particular, liberal, western democracy and the
humanistic, individual-centered society that those of us in Western
culture value highly may seem strange and far from desirable to
someone raised in a different culture.  A couple of points that he
makes: (1) In a culture where family ties are very strong, it goes
against ones culture to *not* favor ones own close relatives,
especially if and when you have the power to do so.  And, (2) the
ability and willingness of any individual to give up political power
when the democratic process says to do so is a learned behavior, is
not an easily acquired one, and is one that seems bizarre in other
cultures.  And, Pagden makes the point that these features that we
take for granted in the West are actually relatively recent
developments and were gained only after bitter and vicious
struggles.

In part because of the huge success and potential of the "scientific
revolution" and the power of science and technology, a delusion has
developed in the West that all people, given education and given an
awareness of the benefits that an enlightened and Western culture
could bring, would not fail to embrace that culture, i.e. they would
become "Westernized" and would come to believe in modern science and
technology.  Pagden makes this especially clear in his discussion of
Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the 1790's.  And, so many of us seem
to hold onto this mistaken belief even now: If they would only learn
the benefits of modernism, Western science, liberal democracy,
humanism, individualism, the free market economy, then all these
problems would go away.  Sigh.  Some mistaken belief seem to never
die.

So, don't expect any solutions.  I get the feeling that Pagden would
be inclined to say that, since this conflict, these *many* conflicts
have been going on for so long, they are more than likely to
continue for a long time.  Perhaps the only way to resolve those
conflicts is for one world to conquer the other, for the East to
conquer the West or the West to conquer the East, for it all to
become *one* world, analogous to the way that the Roman Empire
covered the entire (known) world.  And, Pagden adequately describes
how much brutality (and slavery, too) was perpetrated to create and
maintain that one world empire, the Roman Empire.

By the way, although "Worlds at war" is a book of history and facts,
Pagden is well aware of how powerful myths, fantasies, and
falsehoods are in driving that history.  And, he describes many of
those delusions, too.

It's a fascinating book, both in terms of history and in terms of
analysis of culture and politics and religion and more.

04/01/2015

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