Last week the Economist asked the question of whether democracy is struggling in Asia – just look at Thailand, Bangladesh or Cambodia at the moment – because Asian leaders are confused by what it means.
In some ways this throws back to the ‘Asian values’ debate of ten years ago where Lee Kuan Yew famously said that Asians place more value on things like respect, family and hierarchy and therefore can never have free-wheeling, liberal democracies like in the West.
I am not so sure about that as it feels like too much of a crude assumption.
But another response by J. Zilber is that Asians tend to think differently to Westerners. It is not that Asians don’t understand ‘democracy’ but that there are different thought processes going on.
He says there is psychological research to suggest that ‘whereas Westerners tend to prefer clear cut, logical dichotomies and analyse things logically, Easterners think more holistically, where everything is combined and rules are not the final word. Elections are rule-based systems, and perhaps psychologically less appealing to the Eastern holistic way of thinking.
An interesting idea but is all of this just nonsense? Aren’t we all – whether Myanmar, American or Thai - fundamentally the same in the end? Striving for the same ideals?
Or alternatively, are there actually real differences between Asia and the West? Whether in understanding, values or even in thought processes?
No comments:
Post a Comment