The culturally imperial and the satanic

Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian fantasy of a future where women are reduced to chattel. Its inspiration was apparently found in the US "Moral Majority", an organisation of religious fundamentalists. Something like it could happen to reverse all the gains women and the rest of society have made.

The Nazi barbarity did an immense amount of damage in the time it existed. However, the Tausend Jahre Reich lasted only twelve years. Mohenjo-daro, Harappa and surrounding smaller cities in the Indus Valley had a thriving civilisation which flourished from 2500 to 1900 BCE. Then for unknown reasons literacy disappeared for over a thousand years.

Progress is questionable, and civilisations may flourish or disappear. We cannot predict the future.

Probably people who favour a rigid lifestyle will continue to rail against moral relativism, and people who favour a 'free' lifestyle will continue to rail against cultural imperialism or its equivalents. In reality our society will continue to exist between the two extremes.

However, there may be a new power-relation in our future.In the past the English industrial revolution resulted in a large empire as British power controlled much of the earth's surface. British cultural imperialism spread the English language, the English religion and English culture over the world. China, India and Indonesia are all now experiencing their industrial revolutions. It is possible that they may become the three most economically powerful nations by the end of the current century. With economic power comes political, military and culture power. Will we then be on the receiving end of cultural imperialism?

One can speculate on the nature of Asian cultural imperialism. China and India have religious, artistic and literary traditions which predate that of Europe. Confucius predates Jesus. The Mahabharata predates Homer. The Shang Dynasty predates Athens and the Roman Empire. Will China seek to eradicate both Christianity and Marxism as western and alien?

Will we who are inheritors of western civilisation be promoting moral relativism to preserve our own culture? Will we try to justify our culture by contending it does have value even though it is not as venerable as the east Asian cultures?