VIEWPOINTS AND VIEWS PART 2

Owing to the strong influence that Europe has exerted on the rest of the world during the last few centuries, Europeans have developed a tendency to consider the world and world affairs with a collective or Europocentric viewpoint. Our thinking is consequently affected by various features of this viewpoint. In particular, the Europeans have imposed Europocentric place terms on the rest of the world. The Near, Middle, and Far East are only near, middle, and far in relation to Europe. The Far East is the centre of the world for the Chinese and Japanese. It is the Far West for people living in California and British Columbia. Likewise, the terms Old World and New World are misleading. If America was a new world for the European explorers who arrived there towards the end of the fifteenth century, it was he Old World for the tens of millions of people whose ancestors had already been living in the continent at least for a few thousand years. The terms West, Western World, and Westernization are also unfortunate. The West is a vague term widely used in world affairs, but we should remember that if it is west of the East, the East is also west of the West. If we must use these and other Europocentric terms, we should not allow them to prejudice our thinking. Other examples of the acceptance by all or much of the rest of the world of European place and time terms are the labelling of the meridian of Greenwich as 0 and the use of teh Christian calendar (Sunday, of no significance in non-Christian countries, is still kept as a rest day).

There are many viewpoints as individual viewers and as many collective viewpoints as groups of viewers with some collective interest and consciousness of their collectiveness. If we appreciate this fact we begin to be more critical of some of our own views and more sympathetic towards the views of others while remembering, of course, that these are just as biased as our own. Certainly, we cannot afford to ignore what other people say and do, whether they are allies or enemies. Indeed, if they are more powerful, it often pays to do what they say.

Failure to consider the aims and aspirations of others leads to misunderstandings. Something might have been done to prevent the Second World War if certain countries had taken seriously what was said in others. What is more important, a third world war might be avoided if people in power spent more time trying to understand the views of others and less on broadcasting their own.