Modern Age - Fall 2014 - 45

WHAT U.S. FOREIGN SERVICE OFFICERS SHOULD KNOW

they consequently suppose to be universal.
Because multiculturalists thus negate the
reality of all cultures, seldom do they bother
with foreign languages, literature, or history.
But this "multicultural" mentality is as rare,
narrow, and peculiar as the mentality of the
remotest Tibetan lamasery.
Hence U.S. diplomats, along with the rest
of our ruling class, are ever more inclined to
assume that, although people may look dif-
ferent and were raised in different cultures, in
different religions or none, they really want
the same things-especially if they speak
English. Nothing could be further from the
truth. In this regard, a study by the Gallup
polling organization titled "What Muslims
Want" found that, throughout the Muslim
world, people agreed and disagreed with lists
of sociopolitical propositions in roughly the
same proportions as respondents in Western
countries. But the study's authors conceded
readily that the words of those propositions
(e.g., "freedom") meant entirely different
things to the Muslim respondents than they
did to the Westerners.
Since seriousness in representation begins
with avoiding such "mirror imaging," the
FSO should be ever aware that the identity
of the persons to whom he is representing
America depends on their culture, and on
the features of that culture to which the
regime that reigns over these persons gives
priority.

T

he world's civilizations flow from very
different views of God, man, and
nature-that is to say, from different cults,
different religions. Our civilization makes
sense only in terms of the Bible's Old and
New Testaments-in terms of Moses's Gen-
esis and David's Psalms, of Jesus's gospel, as
well as of Plato and Aristotle-of Jerusalem
and Athens. Only those who are part of this
civilization accept that God created man in

His own image; that since men are neither
animals nor gods, no man may treat another
as if he were a god and the other an animal,
and hence that all men are created equal;
that duties to God are different from duties
to Caesar; that the human mind can grasp
natural phenomena because they occur
according to the laws of nature; that nature
exists for man's use; that two contradictory
propositions cannot be true at the same time
in the same way and hence that grasping
truth is possible and essential. To other civi-
lizations, these propositions are indefensible,
incomprehensible nonsense.
In our time, understanding people raised
in other civilizations is more difficult than it
used to be because all non-Western cultures,
each in its own way, have weakened, addled,
if not given up their most basic features, and
adopted pieces-or perhaps only a patina-
of Western civilization.
Africa is the most obvious example. Until
recently, the mass of its people lived in
tribal settings with animist mentalities. The
bounds of the tribe were those of language
and of humanity itself. The world was filled
with spirits to be propitiated. Then colonial
educators and missionaries, followed by
the flood of modern communications and
urbanization, created a class of persons
who speak English or French, who profess
and have identified with Christianity or
Islam, and who mix these identifications
with often exclusive tribal attachments. For
a substantial number, Westernization has
meant acculturation to secular ideologies
and bureaucratic ways. Although they are
no longer animists, the distinction between
correlation and cause, taken for granted by
Western philosophy and science, escapes
many of them. Conspiracy theories thrive.
What most Westerners regard as corrup-
tion, many Africans regard as the legitimate
appurtenances of high social status.
45
Modern Age - Fall 2014

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