Question: Is there a clash of civilizations?
Parag Khanna: I don’t believe there ever was such a thing as the clash of civilizations. There was a term that caught on. Many people used it because they were afraid it might happen, in a way it was negatively aspirational, in the sense of this is what we want to avoid.
But was there ever genuinely any monolithic civilizations to be clashing? No, they weren’t. Civilizations have always been far too broad to be defined in that way, and to be so exclusive as the term lead people to believe. So I don’t really think there is a clash of civilizations.
Recorded on: 3/3/2008
Discuss
JOSE LUIS SORCIA on March 21, 2008, 8:40 AM
Hello Parag.
The globalization es the sign of our time.
We must to recognize the trend, and take advantage about that all we can to do in order to impruve the world development. Specialy the young people lijke you or me. I like your idea.
José Luis Sorcia.
From Mexico.
JOSE LUIS SORCIA on March 21, 2008, 12:40 PM
Hello Parag.
The globalization es the sign of our time.
We must to recognize the trend, and take advantage about that all we can to do in order to impruve the world development. Specialy the young people lijke you or me. I like your idea.
Jos
Dilip Bam on March 28, 2008, 12:28 AM
Of course there is a clash of civilizations. I cannot believe in so-called "revelations". All single (human?) [prophet?] based religions are media hypes of a basic lie. If you begin by believing that which is impossible, then everything else based on and flowing from the basic lie becomes believable. It is a clash of mdeia hypes. Darwin said, "Survival of the fittest". But in religions, it is the loudest that will be heard furthest and hence spread further. Now if two people within earshot shout different sounds, there will be a clash of sound waves. That is the clash of civilizationsclash of two different liesclash of two different sounds. Each wants monopoly, each offers a cut-and-dried path. People want the easy way out. They want a cut-and-dried solution so that they can get on with their day to day mundane lives of eating, sleeping and reproducing [or if not actually reproducing, making natural reproductive attempts], which is the be-all and end-all of life.
The fact that 99% people today use WiNDOWs software and happily PAY FOR IT is because it is cut-and-dried & ready to use. Nobody wants free LiNUX because you will have to write your own program. Who wants to do this extra work? The genetic code is for propagation of the species. It is embedded hardware, while religion is externally introduced software. Law of Nature needs no media hype. The genetic code simply exists. It is not competing against anything or anyone and needs no media hype.
Dilip Bam on March 28, 2008, 4:28 AM
Of course there is a clash of civilizations. I cannot believe in so-called “revelations”. All single (human?) [prophet?] based religions are media hypes of a basic lie. If you begin by believing that which is impossible, then everything else based on and flowing from the basic lie becomes believable. It is a clash of mdeia hypes. Darwin said, “Survival of the fittest”. But in religions, it is the loudest that will be heard furthest and hence spread further. Now if two people within earshot shout different sounds, there will be a clash of sound waves. That is the clash of civilizationsclash of two different liesclash of two different sounds. Each wants monopoly, each offers a cut-and-dried path. People want the easy way out. They want a cut-and-dried solution so that they can get on with their day to day mundane lives of eating, sleeping and reproducing [or if not actually reproducing, making natural reproductive attempts], which is the be-all and end-all of life.
The fact that 99% people today use WiNDOWs software and happily PAY FOR IT is because it is cut-and-dried & ready to use. Nobody wants free LiNUX because you will have to write your own program. Who wants to do this extra work? The genetic code is for propagation of the species. It is embedded hardware, while religion is externally introduced software. Law of Nature needs no media hype. The genetic code simply exists. It is not competing against anything or anyone and needs no media hype.
Jamaal Lowe on July 16, 2008, 10:38 PM
The clash of civilizations is a viable occurance that can be measured by the expression of a little thing called, assimilation. All throughout nature, when two entities come into contact with each other, say…such as a bacterium and a host, the entities will either learn to adapt to each other in some way…or, if symbiosis can't be attained, one of the entities will be destroyed. There are without a doubt many civilizations and cultures that have existed very strongly, but if they happened to encounter or be encountered by a civilization that was more powerful or more expansive, the smaller civilization and specifically thier beliefs and way of life would be eclipsed by the views and practices of the larger, more overtly dominant—thereby assimilating views previously alien to their own, as a last-ditch effort to survive; and very few of these 'less-dominant' civilations have been ablt to retain a sense of personal identity, as a people, via some external cultural marker, though there are a few notible exceptions. An easy way to measure this is to look at the predominant idea within a civilization of just what defines that civilization—-can these ideas be traced to a previous civilization, or people? Is democracy purely an American idea…or European? Would the previous establishments of Socialism and before that, Monarcism, cause a dissonance with a Western way of life? Is this way there has been made a distinction between, Eastern and Western ideals? The clash of civilizations is a real and measurable fact, and wars are an obvious product of expression of a civilization, a culture, fighting to survive.
Jamaal Lowe on July 17, 2008, 2:38 AM
The clash of civilizations is a viable occurance that can be measured by the expression of a little thing called, assimilation. All throughout nature, when two entities come into contact with each other, say…such as a bacterium and a host, the entities will either learn to adapt to each other in some way…or, if symbiosis can’t be attained, one of the entities will be destroyed. There are without a doubt many civilizations and cultures that have existed very strongly, but if they happened to encounter or be encountered by a civilization that was more powerful or more expansive, the smaller civilization and specifically thier beliefs and way of life would be eclipsed by the views and practices of the larger, more overtly dominant—thereby assimilating views previously alien to their own, as a last-ditch effort to survive; and very few of these ‘less-dominant’ civilations have been ablt to retain a sense of personal identity, as a people, via some external cultural marker, though there are a few notible exceptions. An easy way to measure this is to look at the predominant idea within a civilization of just what defines that civilization—-can these ideas be traced to a previous civilization, or people? Is democracy purely an American idea…or European? Would the previous establishments of Socialism and before that, Monarcism, cause a dissonance with a Western way of life? Is this way there has been made a distinction between, Eastern and Western ideals? The clash of civilizations is a real and measurable fact, and wars are an obvious product of expression of a civilization, a culture, fighting to survive.
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