The crisis in western thought

If the BRICS and SCO states, with China and Russia as their driving force, begin to replace the US and Euroland at the centre of global interaction, it is an understatement to say that Australia would be poorly prepared. With both American and European economies effectively bankrupt, such a new order could emerge suddenly as the dollar and euro cease to be accepted as reserve currencies. Moreover, the almost two and a half billion people of East and South East Asia, all profoundly, if variously, shaped by the Chinese classics, would emerge as the heartland of a new dynamic in global production, technology and education.

Australia would be immediately troubled on at least two fronts. First, those trained in the economic theory that has led to the dissolution of the West play an inordinate role in the upper reaches of all Australian government and commerce. Second, apart from those of Asian ethnicity, very few Australians demonstrate any comprehension of the thought culture of the Chinese classics which is likely to be fundamental in shaping new economic dynamics.. In order to understand the nature of this problem, one needs to go no further than the example of a former Prime Minister with credible spoken Chinese but no evident comprehension of Chinese or other Asian cultural and political realities.

This new world will be made no easier by the astute, hard edged calculations that characterize the influence of the Russian President, Vladmir Putin.

Of course, much of the above will read as worse heresy than Roberts's views on the economic dissolution of the West. It is, however, the absence of such heresy that has led to the imminent dissolution of Western influence and the associated crisis in Western thought. Those who are professionally obliged to take responsibility for the future of Western peoples now face a range of harsh challenges in which past certainties and comforts become their enemies.

Moreover, while the crisis in America and Europe in the immediate future is one predominantly of greatly diminished economic welfare and international relevance, in Australia it takes on the character of a basic challenge to the nation's identity. Australia has long prospered and celebrated being an outpost and legacy of British empire. That may become at best an awkward liability.

Despite some grandiose rhetoric, Australia has over the past half century done little to nurture any comprehension of the culture and thought that has inspired Asia's peaceful rise. Having squandered the opportunity to do this from a position of relative strength, it will soon confront the imperative to undertake the task from a position of weakness. The crisis in Western thought may prove even more acute in the southern than in the northern hemisphere.