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%wester.2[w88,jmc]	Western Technology and Western Culture
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\title{WESTERN TECHNOLOGY, WORLD TECHNOLOOGY, WESTERN CULTURE, WORLD CULTURE}

	It's not controversial, except to a few people blinded by
ideology, that today we have a world technology that is a descendant of
Western technology.  Before 1500 non-Western countries contributed
a lot to the technological base of Western technology, and today
many non-Western countries are very good at world technology.
However, for about 500 years, between 1450 and 1950, almost all
significant technological advances were made in the West.  Also
it isn't very controversial that the reason Western technology
won out is because it was better.  The ships carried more goods
faster and more safely, the guns worked better, fewer babies died,
literacy became universal.

	I will argue that the same is substantially true of culture,
though not quite to the same extent.  There is a world culture today that
is mostly a descendant of Western culture.  Moreover, the superiority of
Western culture contributed to Western pre-eminence almost as much as did
the superiority of Western technology.

	One of the most striking examples is the conquest of Mexico
by Cortez with 500 men.  The decisive battles were fought when they
were out of ammunition for their firearms and using Aztec cotton
armor that had proved superior to their metal armor.
Sixteenth century Spanish Catholicism had many faults, and has
long been intellectually and morally obsoleter.  There is
its intolerance represented by the Inquisition and the fact that
its adherents often violated its moral precepts.

	Nevertheless, the Spanish victory was substantially a consequence
of its intellectual and moral superiority to Aztec religion and ideology.
In the first place, it proclaimed universal religious and moral
principles.  These principles were asserted to be applicable to Mexican
Indians just as well as to whites.  In particular, it proclaimed that human
sacrifice was universally wrong, not merely that it wasn't the Spanish
custom.  These principles enabled the Spanish to gain allies and to gain
converts.  (I don't suppose that I would avoid charges of being
pro-imperialist even without saying anything about the
results of the Spanish conquest, one way or the other).  Actually,
I think that both the establishment of the Spanish empire and its
overthrow after 300 years were advances for the Latin American
peoples.

	The superiority of Western civilization over Asian civilizations
seems to be real though not so overwhelming.  The idea of democracy is
Western, but its application to non-Western countries only began in the
late nineteenth century, so that can't account for the earlier Western
cultural superiority.  One paradigmatic example might be the British
suppression of {\it suttee} in 1829.  This is the Hindu custom of a
widow throwing herself on her husband's funeral pyre.  The suppression
was triggered by Indian widows fleeing to the British to avoid
the enforced suicide.  This illustrates that the British already had a
reputation in India as people to whom one could flee to avoid some
kinds of injustice.  Before suppressing {\it suttee} the British
argued about whether the evil of the custom justified interfering
with Indian religion.

	Here are some of the items which the West has contributed to world
culture and civilization.

	1. In politics.  The idea of democracy and many ideas about
human rights.  The idea of national rights and of international law.

\smallskip\centerline{Copyright \copyright\ \number\year\ by John McCarthy}
\smallskip\noindent{This draft of WESTER.2[W88,JMC]\ TEXed
on \jmcdate\ at \theTime}
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