Wrong Division

"Give the people a new word and they think they have a new fact." - Willa Cather

Theres a war coming down between my brothers and I

I don't want no war going down, going down tonight

Stop this war

Stop this war

Civilization ha I call it as I see it

I call this bullshit you know, I still cannot believe it

Our evolution now has gone the way of hate

A world evolved, resolved in this stupid fate

Stop this war

Stop this war

-Operation Ivy, "Unity"

Free your mind of poorly defined words.

There is no such thing as Europe, or Western Civilization.

Why is it that Europe and Asia are considered by many people to be two different continents? If you gave one million people a world map with no lines on it, precisely zero of them would be able to identify the exact boundary of Asia and Europe. Scientists mostly refer to it as Eurasia these days but calling it Afro-Eurasia is even more accurate since those land masses are all connected.

So why do we still adhere to this convenient fiction that Europe is somehow separate, or different than Asia? You can dive into the etymology of the word Asia but even that won't give you the full picture of why so many people consider them to be different continents. The word Asia originates from ancient Greek, it basically means the land of the rising sun, referring to the land across the sea towards their East, which is modern day Turkey (nothing to do with Japan). The question of how when and where we continued to call Asia by that name over the last couple thousand years could probably be the topic of an entire book. I haven't researched this very thoroughly, but it's not a huge leap of logic to assume that this division has a lot to do with race. Nikole Hannah-Jones pointed this out years ago on Twitter.

It just so happens that the accepted dividing line between Europe and Asia is far enough to the east to include most of the "white" parts of Russia, but not Siberia or Kazakhstan.

We have all sorts of badly defined shorthand words that we use to describe geographical areas. What is "The Middle East"? I think I know a lot about geography, but I would be hard pressed to provide the exact definition. The Middle East is as far west as you can go in Asia. Why is India often referred to as "the subcontinent"? Might it be because the people there appear to be racially different than other parts of Asia? There's North Africa and "Sub-Saharan" which is definitely not shorthand for anything, right? Why is "Central America" its own region? Is Mexico part of Central America? If not, why not?

So, what's the harm in having some shorthand words to describe geographical regions? The problem is that words condition thoughts, and thoughts condition actions. The rampant xenophobia of the last N thousand years has caused immense amounts of death and suffering. The more we describe and focus on regions and races as "separate" and "other", the more likely we are to become chauvinistic and xenophobic. Instead of focusing on our shared humanity, we let people in far flung regions become enemies in our minds. Why do so many US policy makers refer to China as a "strategic competitor" instead of a "strategic partner"? What exactly are we competing over? Are we competing over religious or political truths? Millions of Chinese people work for paltry wages to make goods for US consumers, but the countries are still stuck in a Cold War mentality.

The East-West divide in our minds works to manipulate us into dividing us as people. If you stood on the North or South pole, the entire concept of East and West would have very little relevance to you.

Western Civilization is neither western nor civilized.

To really drill into the point of just how meaningless "The West" is as a concept, you only need to look at a map of the globe and be aware that people have been travelling it by foot and by boat for tens of thousands of years. The West has never and will never be completely independent of the East South and North. People have been travelling the continents and exchanging DNA and technology since long before writing was invented. Archeological evidence shows that the spread of various technologies throughout Afro-Eurasia took place throughout all of human history.

The delineated borders that we recognize in 2025 as forming our distinct nation states did not exist for the vast majority of that time.

The word civilization itself is somewhat chauvinistic, for it implies that some people are civilized while others are not. "My country is more well behaved than your tribe." (Tribe being another loaded word). This statement may or may not be true, but it does reek of some kind of bigotry. Unfortunately for us the history of what people like to call Western Civilization has not been one of remotely good behavior, it has been a mostly gruesome story of conflict, slavery, and genocide.

Some particularly myopic people like to say things like, "we've been mostly war-free since 1945", but that's only true if you ignore all the wars of the past 80 years.

The -ism words are all dangerously reductive.

The appending of an -ism to some words in order to make them descriptive of ideologies or belief systems can make it seem like that -ism is the only -ism relevant to a person's belief system.

Some -ism words are in my opinion quite silly in their reductiveness. Capitalism and communism are good examples of how complex systems get reduced to one-word descriptors. Just because something we call "capital" exists, does not mean that is the main or only thing we believe in. The economy exists only because our solar system and planet lets it exist, a fact most people seem to be well aware of. We exist only within the bounds of the laws of physics, but we choose to orient ourselves around words that describe our political beliefs. Every communist and capitalist on earth will admit they need oxygen to survive, they need trees and oceans etc. for the continued existence of human life on earth. I doubt many capitalists believe that capital alone will solve our problems, or that many communists believe communes or communities will. Just as there are many types of capitalist ideology, the same is true of communism.

These words have become used to describe such broad and varied belief systems that they are barely even useful as descriptors anymore.

Use critical thinking.

In general, the more complex a word is the more one needs to question its actual meaning in every given context, especially the words that are used to divide us.

As a thought exercise, examine the meaning of the word terrorism as it has been applied over the last 40 years. Think about its usefulness as a descriptor from the perspectives of both the perpetrators and victims of violence. Is it accurate? Is it something the perpetrator "believes" in? Is there a better word or phrase we could employ for things we call terrorism?

Everyone in the world needs to learn the language of diplomacy and reject outdated binaries and hyperbole. This is not an easy task, but it is necessary to stop these wars.