The Gift of Western Wisdom

This enormous improvement in the human condition is a result of a slow process of Western ideas and best practices seeping into other societies. The biggest gift the West gave the Rest was the power of reasoning.

‘Reasoning’ is a commonly used word. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it thus: ‘To think (something) through, work out in a logical manner’. Western forms of reasoning have seeped into Asian minds gradually, through the adoption of Western science and technology and the application of the scientific method to solving social problems. Science and technology showed the power of empirical proof and constant verification. It led to the adoption of many new technologies, from modern medicine to electricity, from railways to cell phones, all of which improved lives significantly. The application of the scientific method also provided solutions for the seemingly insoluble problems Asians had experienced for millennia, including floods and famines, pandemics and poverty. Similarly, individuals also began to understand how reasoning could improve their personal sense of well-being. As Bertrand Russell said, ‘The world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs.’12 It did not go directly from the West to all other societies. East Asian societies, especially Japan and the ‘Four Tigers’ (South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore), were the first to absorb these ideas and practices, such as free market economics and empirical scientific research. Their success in turn inspired other societies. East Asia provided the first bridge between the West and the Rest.

As the spirit of Western reasoning seeped into Asian societies, it led to the soaring of ambition which, in turn, has generated the many Asian miracles we see unfolding today. It is also leading to success in Estonia, Botswana and Chile, three countries on three different continents.

This spread of Western reasoning, in turn, triggered three silent revolutions that explain the extraordinary success of many non-Western societies in recent decades. These silent revolutions have gone unnoticed in Western intellectual circles.

The first revolution is political. For millennia, Asian societies were deeply feudal. The people were accountable to their rulers, not rulers to their people. ‘Oriental despotism’ was a fair description of the political environments in all corners of Asia, from Teheran to Tokyo. Each person in Asian societies was supposed to know his or her place. India carried it to the extreme with its caste system. A person’s destiny was determined at birth. There was no escape.

The rebellion against all kinds of feudal mind-sets which gained momentum in the second half of the twentieth century was hugely liberating for all Asian societies. Millions of Asians went from being passive bystanders to becoming active agents of change. They took control of their personal destinies. Over time, the rulers of most Asian societies came to understand and accept that they were accountable to their people, not the people to them. These changes could be clearly seen in those societies that accepted democratic forms of government, like India and Japan, South Korea and Sri Lanka. However, an equally profound political revolution was taking place in the non-democratic societies.

This explains the extraordinary success of China over the past four decades. In theory, there was no change when China went from being ruled by one Communist Party leader, Mao Zedong, to another, Deng Xiaoping. In practice, a fundamental political revolution took place. Mao behaved exactly like a traditional Chinese emperor, issuing edicts that often caused great human suffering. By contrast, Deng focused all his energies on improving the living conditions of the Chinese people. He educated them enormously. He opened the world to them. In so doing, he completely changed the social contract between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people. All of Deng’s successors – Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping – know that, at the end of the day, they are accountable to the people. This explains the extraordinary transformation of Chinese society. 800 million Chinese have been rescued from absolute poverty in three decades.

This is also why many Asian countries, including hitherto troubled countries like Burma (Myanmar) and Bangladesh, Pakistan and the Philippines, are progressing slowly and steadily. In each of these four countries, various forms of dictatorship have been replaced by leaders who believe that they are accountable to their populations. Many of their troubles continue, but poverty has diminished significantly, the middle classes are growing and modern education is spreading. There are no perfect democracies in Asia (and, as we have learned after Trump and Brexit, democracies in the West are deficient, too). In theory, democratic processes are designed to deliver results that reflect the will of the people. Also, since each citizen is entitled to participate in the processes, the result should be accepted by all and result in national consensus building. Instead, democratic processes in the US and the UK have recently led to deep polarization, with virtual civil wars continuing even after election and referendum results have come in. Western theorists of democracy need to go back to their drawing boards to figure out where democratic processes have gone awry. In Asia, a different story is evolving. The political systems remain hugely imperfect. However, in a big shift from previous ‘despotic’ assumptions, most Asian leaders now recognize that they are accountable to their people, and as long as they have to demonstrate daily that they are improving their people’s lives Asian societies will continue to improve. This is one big gift that Western reasoning has made to Asia.

Today, Africans and Latin Americans are learning from Asian success stories. In 2008, Kenya launched Vision 2030, an ambitious development programme that was heavily inspired by similar concepts in Singapore and Malaysia.13 Kenya’s northern neighbour, Ethiopia, has been explicit in its admiration and emulation of South Korea and Taiwan.¹⁴ In 2015, Ethiopian President Mulatu Teshome said, ‘Ethiopia is going through a national renaissance, following Korea’s model of development.’¹⁵ The World Bank’s South-South Knowledge Exchange Initiative has fostered the exchange of policy lessons and technical assistance between Latin American countries and their developing Asian counterparts. Costa Rica’s Investment Promotion Agency, CINDE, followed Singapore’s best practice and persuaded Intel to establish a processing plant in the country.¹⁶

The second revolution is psychological: the Rest are going from believing that they were helpless voyagers in a life determined by ‘fate’ to believing that they can take control of their lives and rationally produce better outcomes. In my lifetime, we have gone from my parents’ generation, who had zero university education, to my children’s generation, who are experiencing almost universal university education. Now multiply these experiences millions, if not hundreds of millions, of times. In the last thirty years, we have carried more people over the threshold of university education than we have in the previous 3,000 years.

It makes a huge difference if you believe that you can create a better life for yourself and your children. Billions more people believe that they can do this. This enormous psychological revolution also explains why the human condition is getting better.

The third revolution is in the field of governance. Here, too, the major transformation can be seen most acutely in Asia. Fifty years ago, few Asian governments believed that good rational governance could transform their societies. Now most do.

Take the case of Asia’s three most populous countries: China, India and Indonesia. All three had strong founding leaders in the post-colonial era: Mao Zedong, Jawaharlal Nehru and Sukarno. They were very different personalities, but they shared one common trait: they focused on politics, not governance. This may be because the personality required to lead a country through a revolution or a struggle for political freedom is not necessarily that of someone who knows how to govern and administer a newly established nation state. Even the great soul Nelson Mandela struggled to provide good governance.

By contrast, the current leaders, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Jokowi (who are also very different in personality) share a common conviction that good governance will transform and uplift their societies. They are actively searching out and implementing public policies that could put their countries on a secure long-term road of economic development. All three also have severe political challenges to deal with domestically, yet all three are equally determined that this should not prevent them from delivering good governance to their societies. Modi is often criticized in the Western media for his right-wing nationalist stances. Some of these political stances are tactical moves, to gain stronger political support. In many elections, he has received broad-based support from all ethnic and religious groups, including Muslims.

This recent experience of rational good governance, in the form of beneficial public policies, may also explain why the populations of China, India and Indonesia are more optimistic than their counterparts in the West. According to a study by Populus in 2016, 90 per cent of young Indonesians said that they were happy, compared to just 57 per cent in Britain and France. According to the same study, the countries with the highest proportions of young people who think the world is getting better are China, India and Nigeria. In China, India and Indonesia, more than 90 per cent of young people named technology as the factor that made them most hopeful for the future.17