EnglishIsWesternCivilizationUniversalPage12

11 sex-on-the-run, all intended to produce intimacy in a high-transience environment.

In addition to the argument of rapid change rendering everything old and obsolete, Western cultural domination over non-Europeans is also justified on the pretext that their all-round well-being and happiness is infinitely improved under the new order. Therefore, it is argued, the destruction of the indigenous culture is no loss: A deep problem of values is embedded in the life histories of these men in motion. The moral issues of modernization often are reduced to this: Should they want what they want? Since they want what we have, if we resist, the temptation to adjudicate conflicting preferences among others, at least long enough to see how they consider these options themselves then we have a sounder basis than our own conventional Values for moral judgment For example, a very powerful finding in our study is that Middle Easterners who are modernizing consider themselves happier than those who retain the traditional lifeways. This is in striking contrast with the impressions conveyed by some observers often from highly modern settings themselves who feel that the undermining of traditional ways by new desires must result in a net loss. But these regrets are not felt by the modernizing peasants, nomads or beduins themselves or at least felt less disapprovingly by them than by the moderns who study them and love the familiar way they used to be. (pp. 73-74). Whatever the merit the conventional dichotomy of urban anomie versus rural stability may have possessed once upon a time, somewhere, in the Middle East today people talk as if they never heard such nonsense. In every country the rural villagers declare themselves the most unhappy fellows. In every country the modernizing individuals are considerably less unhappy and the more rapidly the society around them is being modernized, ¹