THE FUTURE
403
catastrophe for which they were not wholly accountable? It remains
a striking fact that such human loss is endured with a composure
which Westerners have not yet learned to muster. Is it mere cultural
chauvinism that inclines some of us to suspect the existence of a
deeply rooted difference in our respective attitudes to the worth of
human life?
The material foundation of what looks like passivity in the face
of disaster-to put it no higher-is indeed evident. Statisticians tell
us that by the end of the present century there
will
be one billion
people in India and an even greater number in China. One does
not have to be conversant with the precise state of Indian agriculture,
or the prospects of industrialization elsewhere, to realize that--even
without nuclear war-there may be catastrophes in the offing, of a
sort which Europe has learned to forget, and America has never
had cause to remember. And since the scale is so great-what is
the Irish famine of the eighteen forties, or even the Ukrainian disaster
of the nineteen twenties, by comparison with what may happen
quite shortly in India and China?-there is a natural tendency to
shrug and pass on. A tendency, I might add, shared by some of the
better situated and better educated fellow citizens of the prospective
victims. But this too has to be taken into account when it is casually
asserted that the East may be about to make a historic comeback.
It
is easy to say that the West has been privileged by history and
geography, and has not uniformly made the best use of its good
fortune. The truth of this observation is not in question, merely its
relevance. Mter all, the original rise of Mediterranean culture is
partly attributable to favorable geographic and economic features.
We owe it to these fortunate accidents, whatever they may have
been, that the Greeks were able to break away from the pattern
of Oriental despotism and to produce those distinctive achievements
on which Europe and the West have lived ever since. We do not
question their significance by relating them to their material sub–
stratum. In passing let me remark that cultural relativism is itself
an aspect of that loss of the philosophical dimension to which I have
referred. Its current popularity rests upon the not very startling dis–
covery that every culture has its own norms and values, which enter
into the perception of what is called "reality." The norms----so we
