"What World Do We Live In" — Review of "Christ with a Rifle on His Shoulder"

Thu, 28 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Krzysztof Mętrak. Source: Twórczość, 1976, no. 6.

The concept of a “world civilisation,” which publicists invoke from time to time, is highly abstract and increasingly meaningless in the mouth of a European (or representative of Western culture). The processes taking place in the so-called Third World — encompassing a third of humanity, three vast continents, dozens of states, hundreds of languages — cannot be understood when European-centrist measures and categories are applied to them. The offer put forward by Western civilisation, which wished to introduce its models of life into the Third World — from monogamous marriage to universal suffrage, from department stores to savings banks — has been rejected. The leaders of that world do not wish to replicate anyone else’s civilisational models, invoking ever more frequently “authenticity,” “their own specific character,” “a sense of their own worth,” and “the uniqueness of their experience.” Meanwhile Europeans go blind, unwilling to surrender their self-assurance and abandon the “centre of the world,” and in translating that life into their own idiom they often commit cardinal errors.

Krzysztof-Metrak on kapuscinski.info

"What World Do We Live In" — Review of "Christ with a Rifle on His Shoulder"