Why the Rest Hates the West: Understanding the Roots of Global Rage Book

Despite the title, the book says much about how Western culture developed into modernity and post-modernity, and how that impacts Westerners on many levels, and little about how all this explains "the roots of global rage." Pearse also does a good job explaining how traditional (pre-modern) cultural values make sense in their context and are in many cases more stabilizing than Western ones.

The title topic is certainly touched on, but no more. Even where the cultural differences are cited as the cause of this rage, there is little exploration of alternative hypotheses such as competition for resources, perceptions of exploitation, jealousy, and, in the case of political Islam at least, a specific goal of defeating Western culture and bringing a different one into play even in "Western" countries.

Despite this, the book is a brief, well-written, well-structured look at the development of Western values and modes of thinking that we now take for granted. It raises many questions about whether some of these values promote our survival or are ultimately self-destructive.

An example of a Western cultural value Pearse discusses is that of progress. He shows how, until roughly the 18th century at least, social and political legitimacy depended on tradition, links to the past, so that change was either rejected or justified as a way of getting back to a past golden age. This pattern still is the common one in traditional societies. Since that time, though, progress has become a underlying assumption -- everything is getting better over time. One result of this is a devaluation of tradition, ancestors, and our history, which are all now seen as simple, unenlightened, oppressive, and so on. This attitude is so at odds with all the rest of the world that it contributes to the rest's dismay over what it sees as the West's anti-value stance.

Good reading, at a popular level. The ideas are quite important for all Westerners (especially since the survival of Western culture is one of the questions in doubt) and particularly for anyone working in a cross-cultural situation. It is written from a Christian perspective but in such a way that it neither evangelizes for that perspective nor makes it necessary for the sense of the book.