A Clean, Well-lighted Place

                
                
The terror attack happened to Brussels several weeks ago has dropped upon me in the most unexpected way, because the very last time I felt attached to this place was in Beijing, when the amiable teacher handed a brochure of an exchange program in Brussels to me during the conference break., within which the intensive multicultural atmosphere was manifested, especially with the pointedly catchline ---”Study at the Middle of Europe”, it appealed me so that I was moved for some time thinking myself living in a boundary-free community with shared common sense. And presagingly my paper for that discourse was about the immerse integrating power of food,especially the one between Non-Muslim and Mulism, and I even draw the conclusion by drawing a picture of some day in the future--people sitting by the same table, sharing beef with each other,exalting each other with good words and intentions along the table despite their different religions, occupations,by which I later found was rather close to the “round table”dream by Mauss. Shamefully, me and my paper at that time catering to today’s scenario perfectly reflected the little value and the faultness of the faith I behold. But somehow there is a little voice murmuring by my ear--religion is not the one to blame and nor should culture, one way out for multiculturalism is resting somewhere.
When first took the book,The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World order, by Samuel Huntington, I intentionally expected a justified, convincing, or at least appropriate utterance for what have caused the escalating clashes ever since the 911 yet actually far prior to that existence. Huntington, in this book, first investigated why there was the boundary between civilizations and how it drew to the clashes and the cooperation midst people, and subsequently the formation of the multipolar world with unbind cultures and states. He did analyze that why culture play an indispensable and more concretely the dominant role throughout the world, why it is separating people, and why international institutions,with EU and maybe NATO included,are the only redeemer for the deteriorating status quo. And he onwardly tried to excuse westernization by exaggerating the irrelevance and the superficiality of the alleged universal civilization.
Admittedly, people once were and are very likely to be segregated by culture yet integrated by groups, say, culturally religions and politically international institutions, but he failed to go further on this topic and he stuck the sense of culture only on the scale of “Big Tradition”,or the “Davos Culture” he himself posed the revulsion upon within the text. To be specific, he narrowed down the motion of ideology and influencing factors by presenting culture as the most dominant sector of clashes among the world,quoted”Now that a Maxist- leninist Soviet Union no longer poses a threat to the Free World and the United States no longer poses a countering threat to the communist world, countries in both worlds increasingly see threats coming from societies which are culturally different.”(P35)By acclaiming the overwhelming statue of culture itself, he drew the conclusion too harshly, in the way that there are still conflicts or least of clashes scattering around the world in terms of resource, industry and maybe most of all, politics. Citing examples, the oil crisis has been pummeling the Middle East time and time again; the terrorists who committed the attack in Brussels live in the community called Molenbeek, a place used to be the industrial zoneⅡ, now, however, is a rather deserted slum along with the resign of once prosperous industrial time; the “doomsday”also happened to Myanmar from the perspective of politics: America had imposed mounting sanctions upon Myanmar for forcing its military government handing in power ever since 1980s,whatever the excuse is, people in Myanmar had suffered enormous currency inflation, lack of resource, and limited channel towards outside world. Clearly, there are places of the world in chaos out of politics, collapsing industry and so on.What is even more clear is that, culture is not the only ringleader for today’s conflict.
Moreover, the only possible way of cooperating is to ally with others, forming international institutions. That is reasonable considering the time of the completion of the book was right the heyday of EU,which not only at that time, but also in today, the giant of the allied countries, but might no more in the future since the leftovers of the regional conflicts have begun to rebel on their origin: the flowing migrations, the post-effect of economic crisis, the inner disputes are all shouldering tons of burden upon the tied group. It is too wild to make bold predictions, but it is more likely to see EU’s dim future.
Another point to made is the far-fetching interpretation of the non-universal civilization.Ah, as students who study anthropology, I am reluctant to cite examples of the universality among cultures.(Too lazy to write LOL)
It is safe to conclude that culture does take its universal appeal despite the nature sometimes disguising as the vicious veneer of humanity, and we shall never lose faith towards humanity, and do forge a mode to settle the universality and heterogeneity of culture at the same time.