The debate over European exceptionalism is an ongoing fuss based on whether or not one adopts the current deconstructive, race/gender emphasis when examining historical development, or whether that position is rejected, and the historical record is dealt with absent such an all encompassing ideological prism.

If judged consequentially, the legacy of various cultures can be separated out. The English based societies seem to have done fairly well. The French based seem to have fallen victim to some dubious political ideologies. The Belgian and Dutch histories are mixed. The Spanish is much like the French—a legacy of authoritarian and unstable states.

Secondarily, the affect of Europe on the world in the modern era, as in the 19th and 20th centuries, is unfortunate, to say the least.

Imperialism, the horrendous waste and slaughter of 2 world wars, the gruesome philosophical/ideological nonsense which gave birth to fascism, communism, and socialism, and the cultural arrogance to inculcate these corrosive ideas into numerous other societies around the world, are a venomous inheritence to leave the rest of the world as Europe itself succumbs to the effects of these very same poisons by fading into irrelevence and impotence.

Finally, the motivating forces behind European dynamism in the exploratory and imperial phases were many and varied, but there seem to me to be two which stand out.

Empiricism and legalism are characteristics of European/Western culture which seem exceptional when compared with the rest of the world’s cultures.

Western thought has avoided the straightjacket of the “taboo” frame of mind. Even as it was always lurking in various aspects of the culture, the most pernicious effects were avoided or circumvented by the continual fragmentation and cultural differentiation in European history, and especially in its more anarchical spread around the globe.

The search for something that worked, and gave the discoverers an edge over their competitors, was an enormous advantage when confronting traditional cultures which rejected new ways of doing things out of hand because it was not part of the established method of operating.

This is most clearly seen in the Japanese experience. A closed society which utterly rejected non-traditional, alien ideas and technology, it was finally forced to open to modern ideas, and then, when their traditional militarism led them to disaster, adopt several major cultural and societal structures which were totally foriegn in derivation.

Distilled in this experience is an allegory of what is happening now in much of the non-western world. Cultures which never could, or would, have developed modern industrial/technological societies and enjoyed the resultant economic, medical, agricultural, scientific advantages, now want the advantages without the corrosive effects of modern western unstructured social mores that so often go along with these things, especially when the American model is involved.

This brings us to the second aspect—legalism.

Most cultures have been based on men, not laws. The transition to a system of transparent, even-handed, non-tribal legalistic methods is very difficult, even for societies which want to be more western and open to development, much less for those determined to remain closed and controlled.

Japan’s banking collapse, the problems experienced in transition by the Russians and Chinese, and the outright hostility of the various Islamic societies, are reactions to the idea that people should be treated with a reasonalbe equality before the law, and that legal/commercial procedures should be transparent and accessible.

I have written on this subject before many times. The reason Western culture is so feared and even hated by many around the world is not that it is evil, but that it is so threatening to the traditional ways that so many people and societies rely on to provide a familiar landscape within which to operate.

Western, especially American, cultural norms displace the importance of family ties, tribal loyalties, traditional jobs and methods of performing work, skills that have been important for centuries are suddenly meaningless, powerful and comfortable relationships become unimportant, religious leaders no longer determine what should or should not be permitted.

Commercial culture is hated becasue nothing is sacred, nothing is hidden, nothing is reserved only for the elite, and the successful have more than the unsuccessful, even if those unsuccessful used to be very important people once upon a time when one’s family name or caste were more important than talent or hard work.

We are now replaying the development of industrial, scientific culture in Europe on a world wide scale. Societies that had spent thousands of years farming small plots and herding animals are confronted with factories, universities, ideas, religions, and cultural norms which undermine everything they once knew and counted on to make sense of the universe.

Europe killed millions uncounted trying to figure out how to deal with such a revolutionary changes in mens’ relationships with each other and nature, and god. It is not surprising a similar confused, violent struggle is taking place around the world as this upheaval spreads to every part of the Earth.

European culture has been yeast in the world’s dough for several centuries. The little germs causing all the bubbles are empirical science as a mode of thought, and a legalistic social structure within which to operate societies’ major functions.

The American engine is now pulling most of the world into the 21st century, whether they want to go there or not. My children, and theirs, will live in interesting times, as have we all. How could it be any other way?