Is Western Civilisation better?

The concept of WC is criticised for promoting a view of “competing civilisations.”  The fact is, however, whenever there are two or more ideas or ways of achieving a goal, there is comparison and choice. And to date, WC generally delivers on the goal of maximising individual human potential better than any other culture.

It may be impolitic to say it, but it remains the case nonetheless: the inflow of people and resources to WC for the purposes of education, research, investment, services and refuge vastly outweighs the outflow.

WC undoubtedly has flaws, but it also has the principles and procedures that, if allowed to work, lead to self-correction. There is no doubt, that the process of self-correction is subject to corruption, but one must ask, does any other culture do self-correction for the good of the individual better than WC?

One legitimate criticism of the Ramsay Foundation’s proposal for a course on WC is that it is elitist, being open to only a few students, when the virtues of such a course are such that it should be available, if not mandatory, for all students.

Ideally, a course on WC will include trenchant criticisms of its failings both past and present, not only to expose those failings but also to show how the underlying principles and procedures of WC deal with those failings. In other words, the course should activate one of the most powerful processes in WC, self-scrutiny and self-correction.