by Brett Stevens on December 16, 2014

Western Europeans — both those in Europe and in the USA — do not realize that we are bizarre to most of the world. And every now and then our complete lack of guile reveals how out of touch we are with every other corner on earth.

In the image above, a CNN headline screams “Why?” in response to the shooting of children in Pakistan. Here is a news flash for the West: the “why” can be found in the nature of humans. We exist in groups. Those groups must define themselves so they can enforce standards. Groups without the same standards, or who are otherwise different, are a threat.

You cannot force us to be nice to each other. “Why can’t we all just get along?” is the parody it should be. Life is struggle, and each group is struggling against every other. The idea that we can all live together like college roommates is nonsense birthed of people hanging out in a society of plenty, where law and order is taken for granted, and where all individuals are seen as important.

In the rest of the world, the individual is more important, to the exclusion of everyone else. And yet, these individuals form groups because part of their importance is having a culture that reinforces who they are and creates the type of order they want to live in. By its nature as different, this culture — tied to ethnicity — is hostile to every other group.

We in the West exist in denial of this principle and we suffer for it. But with our wealth, our big media and our vast militaries, we can enforce our vision of the world. Briefly, that is, because the lens of history measures in centuries and our multicultural liberal democratic order has existed for barely half of one in its current form. We scream why at the screen when others act differently, in complete denial that our current society is a little “bubble” of wealth that allows us to ignore reality for a few decades before it blows up in our faces.

Why? The same reason as in Ferguson, Detroit, Muslim riots in Europe, the shooting in Sydney, the Crusades, Hamas versus Israel, Cherokee killing Karankawa, Nungs versus Vietnamese. Each group needs its own space. When it contacts other groups, the killing begins. This allows one group to rise above and assert itself. When we study this process in high school, we call it evolution.

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.