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صراع الثقافات

Jan 3, 2022 Harold James

برينستون ـ تَبَين أن الأطروحة الشهيرة للمؤرخ صمويل هنتنغتون القائلة بأن عالم ما بعد الحرب الباردة سيشهد "صراع الحضارات" كانت خاطئة تمامًا. ما لدينا بدلاً من ذلك هو صراع الثقافات داخل الحضارات، مما يجعل الحضارة نفسها مستحيلة في النهاية - أو على الأقل مختلة وظيفيًا. بدءا بجائحة كورونا إلى الجغرافيا السياسية، تخضع كل قضية الآن لحرب ثقافية. لقد انتُزع حجاب الحشمة.

على الرغم من أن النقاشات حول القيم الثقافية منتشرة في كل مكان، يفترض الجميع أن صراعه المحلي أو الوطني فريد إلى حد ما، كما لو أن مخلفات ما بعد الإمبراطورية في بريطانيا وفرنسا تتحدى المقارنة أو تختلف تمامًا عن كارثة الإمبريالية الأمريكية. هل المناقشات الأمريكية حول إرث العبودية والقمع العنصري خصوصية حقًا؟ هل الكفاح من أجل التغلب على (أو إعادة تأكيد) الهوية الوطنية هو بالفعل ظاهرة أوروبية بالأساس؟ في الواقع، تفقد المصطلحات التي تحدد هذه المناقشات أي معنى بسرعة.

في عام 1907، أثار الفيلسوف الأمريكي ويليام جيمس غضبًا واسع النطاق عندما اقترح أن صحة فكرة ما يمكن تقييمها من خلال

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Harold James

Writing for PS since 2001
198 Commentaries

Harold James is Professor of History and International Affairs at Princeton University. A specialist on German economic history and on globalization, he is a co-author of The Euro and The Battle of Ideas, and the author of The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Krupp: A History of the Legendary German Firm, Making the European Monetary Union, and The War of Words.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 6 Comments on this article

alex Finch Jan 4, 2022

Charlie Munger recently suggested that „millennials are very peculiar, very self-centered and very leftist“. I would argue, they are also lazier, relying on Government promises of welfare. Take for example average hours worked per year by a Full-time worker. It fell from 1800h in 1970 to 1700h in 2019 in the US, in France from 2000h to 1500h, and in Germany from 2000h to just 1400h. Meanwhile in Asia it’s around 2300h. As a consequence household wealth in Germany for half the population is almost nonexistent, as recreational activities have become far more important than saving for retirement. Higher taxes have also reduced the incentive to work higher, especially in Europe. The wealth in Europe is mostly inherited real estate wealth. Socialism may have created modern hospitals in Europe, but a lack of qualified staff (only getting worse) will reduce the quality of healthcare in the future.
- Bernhard Kopp Jan 5, 2022
  
  It is definitely debateable that the European welfare state has its flaws, and, that populist, media-driven politics has made it worse, and in some parts almost impossible to correct. If you take the socioeconomic bottom 30% of the US population, some 100 million, you see a staggering amount of poverty and misery spanning generations, poor health, poor education, and low life expectancy. If you believe the fairy tale that there is no correlation between socioeconomic living conditions and crime and violence, you are wrong. If you believe that are no better ways, you might be wrong as well.
  - alex Finch Jan 5, 2022
    
    It’s true, there is much less violence and you don’t see people living in tents in Austria which has a lower poverty rate than the US, Japan or Germany. Yet the lower 50% of Austrians remain lifelong renters of tiny, government subsidized apartments and live effectively a hand-to-mouth existence (as do 50% of Germans). I see two problems with this socialist system. Firstly, as a result of high taxes and generous social transfers, wealth-creation for the upper 50% is severely stunted, leaving the entire country poorer and unprepared for the future. Secondly, with such high social transfers, there are no incentives to work harder or longer hours, and without the help of foreign workers in healthcare, construction and hospitality, the economy would already have collapsed. An eye specialist told me in 10 years things will get much worse in the healthcare system. Just compare Frankfurt with Singapore over the last 50 years. Germans work 1350 hours per year, Asians 2300. Up until 2020, doctors and hospitals in Germany and Austria were still only communicating by fax, not emails. Don’t look for people in tents, look for the decline in Europe elsewhere. Just like the US, Europe needs more foreigners, and that will inevitably also bring more crime. Socialism is not the answer.
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Dominique Joannet Jan 3, 2022

Thanks professor. A very clever analysis that could be share in the no-end debate of the so called "end of a civilisation" in France before the presidential election.
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Cary Fraser Jan 3, 2022

Changing the lexicon of contemporary politics and and policy will require an understanding that the current limits of the human imagination have to be transcended.

The Communist manifesto was published in 1848 and the Russian Revolution emerged in 1917 and Chinese Communists seized power in China in 1949 which opened the way for the re-emergence of Asia as the centre of a new world order.

Martin Luther King, Jr. posed the central question in 1967, the year before his assassination - Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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