Not only does the very basic essence and nature of Western culture and Western history negate the possibility of a more participatory form of government and a more inclusive system because of the centrality of class conflict and feudalism in Western culture and the Western system, but Western culture and the Western system also negate the possibility of an egalitarian disposition and discourse in addition to negating basic freedom. For instance, the facial expressions, attitude, and tone of an inconsequential white person at a shopping mall or at a restaurant who most likely comes from a peasant or serf ancestry and background will demonstrate that an egalitarian discourse and disposition is virtually non-existent in Western culture and the Western system. And in a broader sense, the facial expressions, attitude, and tone reflect a sort of passive-aggression and violence that are the core characteristics of a culture and system which has class and feudal repression and suppression at its core. As the activist Angela Davis noted:
“We know that the historical process of colonization was a violent conquest of human beings and the land they stewarded. It is thus essential that we identify the genocidal assaults on the first peoples of this land as the foundational arena for the many forms of state and vigilante violence that followed.”
Davis added:
“Moreover, the violence of European colonization, including the slave trade, constitutes the common history of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and the American hemisphere. In other words, there is a longer and larger history of the violence we witness today. Our understandings of and resistance to contemporary modes of racist violence should thus be sufficiently capacious to acknowledge the embeddedness of historical violence – of settler colonial violence against Native Americans and of the violence of slavery inflicted on Africans.”
Class repression and suppression as well as a feudal economic, political, and social structure also mean that regular people are seen as property by the power elite rather than autonomous and free individuals. The commoditization of human beings in the Western world first began with peasantry and serfdom, and then it extended into the commoditization of Africans through the European slave trade of the colonial age. Plus, in many places in the United States, women no longer have control over their own fetuses, and one cannot rule out the possibility that their sexual autonomy and sexual freedom are also on the verge of being taken away. Thus, as Albert Camus argued: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
Moreover, youth and inexperience translate into a general inability to distinguish between appearance on one hand and reality on the other hand. But with experience and time, the ability to distinguish between appearance and reality ends up growing. And the inevitable consequence and social outcome of the class-based and feudal repression and suppression which forms the basic essence and nature of Western culture and the Western system is social injustice, an example of which is letting Dick Cheney off the hook while the hammer comes down on a poor writer for seeking the truth about reality and about the place in which he has been living all this time, yet was largely unfamiliar and hard to decipher for him until recently. In turn, the correction of social injustice does not involve addressing isolated incidents such as the killing of unarmed black men or drone attacks in the Middle East, but rather, it involves addressing and reversing historical patterns and trends which underlie an entire culture and system, which is easier said than done.
Adam A. Azim 