Talking About Western Political Correctness
Whether from watching domestic news while in China, or from real feelings after coming to Ireland, political correctness is a very obvious feature of the West. The common domestic view is that political correctness is rather stupid and amounts to digging one’s own grave. Yet after coming here, I found that they themselves are actually proud of it. Today I will share some of my own analysis and views on the reasons behind political correctness.
The earliest science and industrialization. To put it unpleasantly, they are “too full from eating.” Fertilizers, pesticides, mechanization, the Haber nitrogen-fixation process. Material life is relatively abundant, so they have spare capacity to do political correctness. Typical cases are various environmental organizations. As the saying goes, “when warm and well-fed, one thinks of desire.” It is like pursuing higher-sounding things such as environmental protection and poverty. Various developing countries naturally do not have this capacity for political correctness. Of course, in most cases it is also only to satisfy their own higher-level desires, just in a more respectable-looking way. Unlike our country, which spends real money and genuinely solves poverty and environmental problems.
Pride and prejudice. Put unpleasantly, “why do they not eat meat?” Under several hundred years of long-term economic leadership, people from top to bottom do not understand imbalanced development worldwide. Media and education are also all from a Western perspective. A typical case is the Swedish environmental girl. As the old saying goes, “read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles.” Reading ten thousand books reduces temporal prejudice; traveling ten thousand miles reduces spatial prejudice. Only when you know more and possess strong empathy can you avoid pride and prejudice.
The objective needs of economic development. Since ancient times, China called itself the Middle Kingdom because agricultural development came early and it was more developed than the surrounding “barbarians.” From the pre-Qin period to the Tang dynasty, China from top to bottom was also full of institutional confidence and was relatively welcoming to and willing to use people from different ethnic groups, reaching its peak in the Tang dynasty. Since the Song dynasty, as its relative development advantage declined, it became obviously more conservative and exclusionary. The West is now in a leading position in economic development. Developed industrialization itself leads to lower birth rates. On one hand, it needs people of different ethnicities and countries to build society and provide various services and industrial labor. On the other hand, it is also relatively confident. Therefore, political correctness characterized by diversity and inclusion, and excessive care for minority groups, has become mainstream.
Historical habits of population exchange. On the other hand, China’s unification and expansion had already reached the limits of agrarian society. It assimilated the land in East Asia that was more suitable for survival, along with surrounding areas, and therefore had less contact with the outside world. In fact, from a global perspective, Eurasia is the core continent, and the center of Eurasia is actually the Middle East, today’s Arab world. The Middle East connects west to Europe, south to Africa, and east to South Asia, Central Asia, and East Asia. This can be seen from the origins of the names Asia and Europe. Europe comes from Europa, a Semitic word meaning land of sunset. Asia comes from Asia, a Phoenician word meaning land of sunrise. Also, unlike Chinese history, which was mainly unified, the West was mainly divided. Therefore, exchanges between different peoples were very frequent and natural. Refugees immigrating to Europe today also mainly come from the Middle East and North Africa. The distance is short, there are few natural geographic barriers, and population can easily flow in.