Introduction
During recent decades, the phenomenon of Globalization has been discussed from a variety of different perspectives, which in its turn explains the fact that as of today, there is no universal definition as to what the concept of Globalization stands. For example, the majority of political scientists define Globalization as the process of independent nation-states being gradually deprived of their geopolitical sovereignty. On the other hand, economists point out the fact that Globalization is being primarily concerned with the process of manufacturing specialization. Nevertheless, comparatively few studies had been conducted on psychological aspects of Globalization, which is why this process’s conceptual essence often goes unnoticed by those who consider themselves being an expert on the subject matter. In this paper, we will aim at exposing Globalization as the process of “global ruralization”, with the metaphysical essence of this process being defined by a confrontation between people endowed with urban mentality, on one hand, and people endowed with rural mentality, on the other, while referring to the phenomenon of Asian “organic” medicine’s growing popularity in the West as such fully substantiates the validity of such our suggestion.
Discussion of Theory
Even a brief retrospective of the issue of Globalization reveals it as such that cannot be discussed outside of the concept of technological progress. It is namely the revolution in the realm of information technologies that had taken place during the sixties and seventies, which dramatically increased the efficiency of manufacturing and banking practices – thus, establishing objective preconditions for Western companies to consider moving their production lines into Third World countries. However, this process does not only relate to the comparative cheap cost of a labor in these countries, but also to the fact that in the West, there are now virtually no people left who had not been affected by the process of post-industrial urbanization.
In its turn, this explains why the percentage of employers, engaged in industrial manufacturing in Western countries, continues to be increasingly decimated. In their article “The Muddles over Outsourcing”, Jagdish Bhagwati, Arvind Panagariya and T. N. Srinivasan state: “About 70 percent of the jobs in the United States are in service industries such as retailing, catering, restaurants and hotels, tourism and personal care” (2004, 109). Nevertheless, given the fact that scientific discoveries, which have recently been occurring in exponential progression to the flow of time, imply ever-increased efficiency of manufacturing practices, Western companies now face an objective challenge of finding people who could serve as “firewood” in the chimney of world’s continuous industrialization – specifically, peasants, who would be willing to turn into urbanites. And, it is named in China where even today, 60% of the population continue to pursue the agriculturally-rural mode of existence – thus, representing a human resource of potentially high industrial value, in the eyes of Western investors. In its turn, this explains the actual subtleties of China’s “economic miracle” – the representatives of China’s enormous rural population are being increasingly tempted to relocate to country’s large cities, where they can get comparatively well-paid jobs at Western-owned factories and to enjoy the benefits of urban living.
In his article “Growth and Control of Population in China: The Urban-Rural Contrast”, Mei-Ling Hsu specifies the advantages of living in urban areas, as seen by Chinese peasants: “City dwellers (In China) tend to be better educated, to earn higher incomes, and to produce nation’s leaders… Larger cities in China offer much better social and medical services, which are critical to birth control and infant mortality” (1985, 249). Moreover, during the last twenty years, the Chinese government has been creating additional incentives for Chinese peasants to choose in favor of moving to the country’s cities, because it is being well aware of the fact that it is namely the continuous stream of Chinese rural population into country’s cities, which allows the process of China economy’s industrialization to maintain its current momentum.
In her article “China’s Future Population and Development Challenges”, Jianfa Shen states: “Government policies now regarded as a positive process which can stimulate socio-economic development, and the control of rural-urban migration has been more or less relaxed… In 1984, the State Council issued a document that allows peasants and their families to get permanent registration in towns and townships as long as they conduct industrial or commercial activities” (1998, 33). Nevertheless, the fact that nowadays, an increasing number of Chinese peasants attain a status of city dwellers does not deprive them of their essential peasant mentality. And; whereas, “urban mentality” is being traditionally concerned with the notions of rationale, science and progress, people endowed with “rural mentality” tend to assess surrounding reality through the lenses of spirituality, tradition and conservatism. In its turn, this provides us with the insight on why the popularity of Asian “traditional” medicine in countries of Asia-Pacific continues to rise – this phenomenon is nothing but a reflection of Chinese peasants-turned-urbanites’ growing economic power. It is comparatively well-off but utterly uneducated people who would be willing to spend money on paying for products and services, associated with exclusively perceptional value.
For example, the hottest item on the black market of Asian “organic” medicinal remedies has traditionally been considered black bear’s gallbladder, simply because Chinese men who eat this bladder are expected to be able to enlarge their penises significantly, within a matter of few weeks, after the beginning of a “gallbladder therapy”, even though as of today, there is not even a single scientifically substantiated proof as to this “medicine’s” ability to enhance men’s potency. In her article “A Galling Business”, Janet Raloff provides us with the insight into a true scope of gallbladder business in China: “Traditional medicine has been driving an active trade in bear bile and gallbladders, which produce it. Sales flourish despite along standing, near-global ban administered by the United Nations on international trade in bear parts and products. In China, wild Asiatic black bears (Ursus thibetanus) are protected as endangered. However, it’s legal there to sell bile from bears on licensed farms… Each bear is milked regularly for bile in a painful and physically harmful procedure, or the bear is killed and bile is extracted from its gallbladder” (2005, 251). And yet, it is namely because conventional science disregard the application of Chinese “traditional” medicine as being utterly ineffective and even dangerous, which boost the sales of bear gallbladder in China – this is nothing but a direct consequence of Chinese peasants’ inability to address life’s challenges in terms of logic.
In his article “Cultures of Reason”, Bruce Bower comes up with the suggestion that Asian mentality is being metaphysically different from Western mentality, simply because, throughout millennia, Asia-Pacific societies remained utterly rural, which continues to be the case even today: “In a variety of reasoning tasks, East Asians take a “holistic” approach. They make little use of categories and formal logic and instead focus on relations among objects and the context in which they interact. These populations also tend to accept or even search for contradictory perspectives on the same issue. In short, they direct their attention into a complex, conflict-strewn environment” (2000, 57). Thus, it is exactly because the process of Globalization prompts Western companies to move their production lines to traditionally rural countries of Asia-Pacific, which now result in these countries’ economies undergoing a rapid industrialization. And, as we have suggested earlier, the increased popularity of traditional “remedies” in countries of Orient should be thought of as nothing but a side-effect of such a process – former peasants, who have gotten a taste of money, create a popular demand for the products of purely perceptional value.
Cultural Analysis
Nevertheless, as we are all well aware – it is not only in China, where Asian traditional medicine is being sold in ever-increased quantities, but in Western countries as well. How this can be explained? The answer to this question also relates to the process of Globalization as such deprives its subjects of their former existential integrity. For us to substantiate the validity of this suggestion, we will have to draw a parallel between the history of the Roman Empire in time of its decline and the contemporary process of Western civilization being rapidly deprived of its formerly undisputed geopolitical might.
Ever since Roman Emperors had ensured an uninterrupted flow of foreign wealth into the Empire, Roman citizens started to grow intellectually corrupted, which in its turn, would prompt them to become increasingly fascinated with Eastern exotics. This process culminated in 380 A.D., when Flavius Theodosius had endowed Christianity with the status of Rome’s state religion – it is named in this year that the fate of Roman Empire became irreversibly sealed. In his famous book “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, Edward Gibbon states: “The manly pride of the Romans, content with substantial power, had left to the vanity of the East the forms and ceremonies of ostentatious greatness. But when they lost even the semblance of those virtues which were derived from their ancient freedom, the simplicity of Roman manners was insensibly corrupted by the stately affectation of the courts of Asia” (1995, 690). The reason why Roman patricians would be willing to convert to Christianity, during 4th and 5th centuries A.D., is because their bellyful idling caused them to think of this Semitic religion as being particularly exotic. Similarly, White citizens’ economic prosperity in post-industrial Western countries, causes them to grow increasingly preoccupied with exploring Eastern exotics, which explains the fact that it was named in these countries, where the philosophy of a so-called “New Age” had attained legitimacy, despite this philosophy’s values being of unmistakably non-Western origin.
It is important to understand that the policy of multiculturalism, which is now being forcibly imposed upon White people in Western countries, is nothing by one among many intellectual by-products of Globalization. The reason why many American mainstream politicians find it appropriate to hold speeches in front of cheering crowds of illegal immigrants from Third World, is not because these politicians are being concerned about immigrants’ well-being, but because representatives of America’s financial elites, which have American “progressive” politicians on payroll, are being directly interested in ensuring an interrupted flow of a dirt-cheap workforce into this country. Yet, the continuous existence of just about any multicultural society automatically implies that cultural relativism should serve as the only possible philosophical foundation, upon which such a society can be built. This is why nowadays; politicians in Western countries apply a great deal of effort in discrediting the very concept of euro-centric rationale as something “evil”, while simultaneously promoting multicultural values of spirituality, closeness to Earth and low gender differentiation.
In his article “Eurocentrism, Ethnic Studies, and the New World Order: Toward a Critical Paradigm”, Richard Lowy states: Eurocentrism signifies that Europe and European values became a foundational source of meaning through which individuals, groups, and nations from the continent could develop attitudes based on emerging ideologies of racial, religious, cultural or ethnic supremacy… It is the ideological use of Western religious and cultural values that have produced in recent years such strong and persistent condemnation of Eurocentrism by Third World activists, women, and progressive White scholars” (1995, 714-716). Thus, we can say that the popularity of Asian “organic” medicine in Western countries can be explained by two most important particularities of post-industrial living, which can be summarized as follows: 1) The fact that, during recent decades, White citizens in the West have been subjected to neo-Liberal propaganda of multiculturalism, 3) The fact that demographic fabric of Western societies continues to undergo a dramatic transformation as time goes by.
Therefore, this popularity cannot possibly be referred to as “thing in itself” – the faster this world is being turned into a “global village”, the more and more people in it are being deprived of their ability to utilize their sense of rationale, simply because self-appointed bosses of the “brave borderless world” rightly associate people’s ability to think in terms of logic as such that undermines the theoretical premise of Economic Globalization. In a Globalized world, it is namely individual’s willingness to conform to socio-economic circumstances, while suppressing its existential identity, which will account for such an individual’s chances to attain social prominence. This is exactly why Western “progressive” politicians resemble each other to such a striking extent – the same grey suits, the same conniving smiles, the same politically correct rhetoric, etc.
However, White people cannot be taught to think of their euro-centric mentality with contempt, unless they are being provided with a surrogate of existential identity. The vaguely defined notions of “new age living”, “environmental friendliness” and “multicultural tolerance” serve as such a surrogate, which explains why seemingly normal Whites go about philosophizing about the benefits of “traditional” medicine with such an apparent ease, as if they happened to live in time of Dark Ages – slowly but surely, Whites citizens in Western countries are being instilled with essentially rural mentality, so that they would cease representing such a striking contrast with “ethnically unique” immigrants of Third World, whose labor is being expected to make the promoters of Globalization even richer. And, as we have pointed out earlier – an individual endowed with a peasant mentality can be easily identified, due to his or her inability to perceive differences between mutually exclusive ideas.
For example, the proponents of “new age” living, known for their pathologic fascination with Asian “organic” medicinal remedies, appear to be utterly incapable of understanding a simple fact that such their fascination contradicts their another existential fetish – the protection of “cute” animals. After all, if neo-Liberal sophisticates were a given a chance, they would turn bear-hugging into their full-time occupation. Yet, the utilization of these bears in a particular cruel matter allows Chinese immigrants in Western countries to make money, while never ceasing to “celebrate diversity”. It never occurs to White believers in the power of “traditional” medicine, instilled with the complex of historical guilt, that is specifically indigenous people’s “spirituality”, which adds to pollution of natural environment and destruction of world’s fauna more than anything else does.
In his book “The Next Global Stage”, one of the most ardent promoters of Globalization Kenichi Ohmae, defines Globalization’s ultimate agenda as being primarily concerned with standardization of people’s socio-economic anxieties, regardless of their cultural and racial affiliation. According to Ohmae, such standardization can only be achieved through elimination of national borders: “The global economy ignores barriers, but if they are not removed, they cause distortion. The traditional centralized nation-state is another cause of friction. It is ill-equipped to play a meaningful role on the global stage” (2005, Plot). The actual effects of the process of Global economy removing national barriers can be seen even today – nowadays, virtually all large Western cities are being slowly transformed into Third World slums, where the residents of ethnic ghettos go about dumping garbage in front of their houses as something absolutely natural. And, the reason for this is simple – whenever a substantial number of people endowed with rural mentality move into a large city, they turn this city into one huge village. Moreover, while socializing with highly “spiritual” but animalistic individuals, who had just arrived from countries where they used to explore their “spirituality” by indulging in never-ending tribal warfare against each other, White citizens grow to become just like them. Just like representatives of racial minorities, Whites adopt a hostile attitude towards euro-centric science, which in its turn, results in boosting their obsession with “traditional” medicine, as well as with other non-Western exotics.
Conclusion
Thus, the foremost conclusion of this paper can be articulated as follows: the phenomenon of Asian traditional medicine’s growing popularity in Western countries is nothing but an indication of the fact that it is a matter of comparatively short time before Western civilization would cease to exist in its current form, just as Roman Empire had ceased to exist in 5th century A.D., with the ultimate reason for its downfall being the process of Roman native-born citizens growing intellectually corrupted, on one hand, and the process of an ever-increased number of barbarians finding its way into the Rome, on another.
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