Religion: The Eurasian East and West
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Are the religious traditions in the East and West of Eurasia just superficially different expressions of the same ancient understanding of human nature? Or are they truly distinct views of the world and our place within it, from the most fundamental to the most overarching descriptions of our existence? I approach this question from two directions: textual analysis and historical analysis.
Textually, there are clearly overlapping tendencies between eastern religions like Buddhism and western religions like Christianity. For example, each has an iconic human figure that embodies a god-like state and from which human morality flows. These icons teach self-discipline, respect for the poor, and loyalty to a higher purpose than one’s self that must be an objective aim for any moral person. There are also differing examples, such as Judaism and Confucianism, where there is no single, central human figure in Judaism and there is no godly presence in Confucianism. Why might there be these divergences? Must it be just historic happenstance?
Historically, it is clear that Eurasia’s East and West have developed with entirely different organizational modes. Most generally the West may be described as individualistic and expansionist, and the East may be describes as conservative and isolationist. These modes are highly correlated to each of their religious patterns, it seems. Under Buddhism and Hinduism, humans have an intrinsic duty to their born position that inherently restricts class- and other- mobility. Under Protestantism, the focus is on making a difference in the world in spite of structures of evil. Of course, these are broad generalizations, and the nuances of each religion deserves its own specific attention within this larger scope.
In the modern age, atheism achieves its largest audience in all of history. How does the historic religious trends and children of the Eurasian East and West explain this phenomenon; is it such a surprising development in the long view? Technology and industrialization has primarily characterized the modern age, so is there an element of the difference between the Eurasian East and West that religion fails to capture? It seems that the organizations of the United States and China demonstrate an archetypical fork between the nature of these two historic pathways even as industrialized as they both are.
