• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • Club of Amsterdam Journal
  • The Future Now Show
  • Articles
  • Events Archive
  • Contact
Club of Amsterdam

Club of Amsterdam

The Challenge of Multiculturalism after Westernalization

11/05/2020 by admin Leave a Comment

by Dae Ryeong Kim

While the history of culture might be as long as the history of human civilization, it was during the nineteenth century that the word, “culture” began to be circulated in its modern sense. Expanding the modern civilization to the world, and facing the strong resistance from traditional cultures throughout the world, the Europeans began to recognize the reality of the diversity of culture. While the Enlightenment had been the force to motivate the Westerners to expand the western civilization to the rest of the world, it was, ironically, this very process of westernalization that has trigged the reaction of the multiculturalism in the western societies in postmodernity.

In order to illuminate the origin of multiculturalism, one needs to explore the post-Enlightenment world first. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Europeans were speaking of their own age as the Age of Reason, the Enlightenment. And this new confidence had explosive power. As Lesslie Newbigin vividly describes it, here was a new prospect for the whole human race. The light that had dawn in Europe now had to be spread throughout the world. The Dark Ages might have passed in Europe, but there were still dark continents where the light had not penetrated. Human reason was essentially the same everywhere, and all human beings, whatever their race or creed, could be taught to share the benefits of its unfettered use. Here was a task worthy of the supreme dedication of the peoples of Europe. In short, Europeans in this century had a motivation to westernize the rest of the world because they found their mission in civilizing the world.

First, however, there was the expansion of modernism in Europe accelerated by the French Revolution. The vision of liberation of the right of every human being to justice and freedom, had to be translated into the realities of politics. “Liberty” and “equality” were the watchwords, with “fraternity” a somewhat muted third cry. France was the first place where the explosion took place, but the Napoleonic wars carried many of the new ideas into the rest of Europe. Nothing in Europe would ever be the same.

The full article is available: click here

Filed Under: Journal

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Footer

Text Widget

The Club of Amsterdam is an independent, international, future-oriented think tank involved in channeling preferred futures. It involves those who dare to think out of the box and those who don’t just talk about the future but actively participate in shaping outcomes.

We organized events, seminars and summits on relevant issues and publish findings & proceedings through various off-line and online media channels. We understand us as catalysts for innovation in industries, science and society. Currently our main activities are the Club of Amsterdam Journal and The Future Now Show.

Recent

  • Chronicle from the Future
  • DDOs (Deliberately developmental Organizations) – The Future Now Show
  • Truth Decay and Truth Engines
  • Natural Capital & new innovation strategies
  • X Reality – The Future Now Show

Search

Tags

ARCHITECTURE BIOTECH DEMOCRACY ECONOMY EDUCATION ENERGY ENTERTAINMENT FOOD ICT INTERNET KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY LEARNING MEDIA MEDICINE MOBILITY MUSIC NANOTECHNOLOGY PHILOSOPHY POLITICS RELIGION SCIENCE SENIOR CITIZENS TECHNOLOGY URBAN DEVELOPMENT

Copyright © 2021 · Magazine Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in