Millennial screed

Review of Uncivilized: Ten Lies that Made the West by Subhadra Das

If you want a take on how a left-leaning, academically learned millennial sees the world, this book is a good place to start. I do not mean to sound patronizing, but it reminded me of my hippie days in the early 1970s: quick to moral judgment, I had little patience for the forgiving pragmatism, and indeed the experience, of my parents. These days, rather than expecting immediate results, I look to the health of our institutions, to the potential for constructive change, to safeguards against radical excess. I guess that makes me more conservative, which my kids proclaim, though I would prefer the label skeptical progressive.

Das begins her argument with western science. More precisely, she concentrates on how a number of scientists in the west claimed infallible objectivity in their methods, then went on to justify racism and promote eugenics, which reflected their biases in favor of white superiority. From this, she argues that western politicians created an educational system that blatantly promoted western superiority, inevitably leading to the oppression of alternate points of view and serving the preservation of racial distinctions, even impacting the self esteem of people of color. Moreover, she continues, research institutions persisted in reinforcing these tropes, for example in the way they framed the debate on “civilization”: it was, according to their criteria, only the written word that merited the designation of civilized. In doing so, she states, this ignores a vast array of equally impressive alternative developments, such as the the Inka Kipue, which was perhaps a system of writing in knots and colored fabric in ancient Peru. She also says that critics in the west conceive art in terms that are far too narrow.

I acknowledge that these are valid points, but they require context. Most importantly, the scientific method is one of the most powerful discoveries in human history, but it can be misused and, as Das demonstrates, applied with bald political purpose. The virtue of science is that those kinds of bad faith conclusions should later be recognized as wrong, hence disproven through evidence. What that would take is time, freedom of inquiry, and a lot of effort, that is, the political will to seek the truth in spite of the reactionary pressures against it. However, what Das seems to argue that these misuses prove that all of its conclusions are purely socially constructed, hence subjective and prone to political manipulation. Postmodern. I think she goes too far. Moreover, she acts as if no one else recognizes that many of us in the west understand that we often conceive of things too narrowly.

Das then moves to our institutions. The justice system is supposed to apply to everyone, she observes, but its decisions usually come from those with vested interests. During the Indian wars of the 19^th Century, she solemnly informs us, President Andrew Jackson did not regard Cherokees as human, and so he pursued their disenfranchisement and genocide, opening the way for ownership of their lands by whites. His reasoning depended on Locke’s conception of land rights: those who put it to “productive use” deserved ownership. It was a way to define Native American land management as less productive, hence it was only proper that white settlers could take it. Once again, she has a point. But should one heinous example completely invalidate our entire system of justice? I don’t think so. What we have to do is fight injustice rather than expect that we are entitled to everything coming out right. Her critique of democracy is similar: it’s evidently imperfect, involves too many compromises, and relies on elites to make most of the decisions we delegate. I would agree, but because we have a relatively functional democracy in my humble opinion, we can strive to make it work better. The same goes for nationalism: if the populist right construes it as exclusionary of people of color, not all of us do and some of us passionately despise the populist creeps coming out of the woodwork.

Finally, Das critiques the way we live in capitalist societies. Combining capitalist competition with Freud’s focus on individual psychology, she argues, we deemphasize the cooperation found in other cultures. The use of time as money, the need to appear incessantly busy – all of it limits our perception of life and its possibilities. She even has a chapter on how we in the west think that death is something we can control, like an “Enlightenment scientific prescription”, with measurable stages of grief and the like. If this appears vague and unfocused, that’s the way it appeared to me.

Das goes into a lot of detailed historical examples. In most instances, I cannot disagree with her arguments, but I often wondered where it was going, like throwing food on the wall to find what sticks. The emotion runs very hot. What was missing was the big picture, what we might do about it. Critics certainly have a right to rail against western society and what it’s done. Nonetheless, in assuming she can denounce our hypocrisies, Das seems to expect justice, openness, and fairness as the natural order of things. This is presumptuous. I think they’re ideals we have to fight for and accept when we fail to attain them because there will be another battle, so long as our flawed democracies can function.