Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Who Is Truly a Westerner Today?byHenry BarnesThe Western world is watching current events unfold in EasternEurope with amazement and no little self-satisfaction. “At last,” one thinks,“they have seen the light and are learning to do things our way! We Westernershave, of course, known all along that political democracy and marketdrivencapitalism are the way to live, and now, finally, they are catching on!”Our virtuous self-congratulation is spiced with the heady wine of a vision ofenormously expended markets for Western goods and services. But whereare the voices calling on the West to awake to its own responsibilities; torecognize the need for critical self-examination of its own state of being?What about our own moral and spiritual values? As an American, one asks,what about my own society with its widening gap between rich and poor,its inner-city cancers, its failing educational system, stagnating economyand irresponsible financial legerdemain? Is this really the model for a worldstruggling to find itself after decades of suppression and totalitarian controlin the name of an ideology that promised brotherhood and equality for allmankind? Is not the awakening in Eastern Europe also a powerful call tothe West to awake to its own true nature and thus become the partner a newEurope and the wider world need?It is in this sense that one asks: who, indeed, is truly a Westerner today?What are those distinctive attributes that are needed if the world is tobe complete and whole? Are they identical with the West’s own Hollywoodimage of itself, which the media has worked so hard to project? Or is thereanother “West” struggling to find itself below the surface of life today, aWest rooted in the past, but seeking always to “become”?264