The need for global culinary perspective

Eastern civilization is superior? Superior in what? Ethics? Let's try something a little easier.

Say you were an alien who arrived on earth with the intention of studying humans. You might begin your experiment with a survey of eating habits; inevitably you would notice a difference in the utensils of the Western and Eastern man. You would see in the fork a nasty, brutish device invented to distinguish its holders as culturally superior to those who use their hands. To mold a utensil from two wooden sticks, however, would appear such a demonstration of genius that you would surely hold its creators to be of a higher rung on the evolutionary ladder. Surely, the artful chopsticks befit the refined delicacies of Asian cuisine, which would be barbarically mutilated if eaten with a miniature spear. In comparison, the fork just seems too simplistically intuitive. From this culinary premise, you might logically conclude that Eastern civilization is simply more advanced.

Does this train of thought seem absurd? To see such "logic" at its finest, we must refer to Alex Zubatov's recent article [Culinary Envy, 10/31, YH] which also facetiously starts off with a culinary introduction, only to conclude with an inflammatory justification of Western superiority. He writes: "...many people aren't particularly good at anything, or at least, they don't feel like they are in an environment like this. So, as a last resort, they fall back upon culture, the great given, the thing everyone has. It can be ethnicity, race, religion, sexual preference, geographic origin, or any of a numberless variety of things with which people may identify. It gives them a superficial sense of self-respect."

Without an inter-global perspective such as the alien's, earthlings of the Western world may easily come to ignorant conclusions. In the same way they denounce African habits as unsanitary, they condemn Asian habits as backward. Wallowing in the folly of self-proclaimed superiority, they position themselves in opposition to everything else. It's the logical solution: when too many groups threaten your stronghold, declare yourself the hegemonic dominant--the champion of mainstream thought. Not unlike the pre-Copernican ignorance of the solar system. After all, the best way to destroy alternative identities is to advocate progress that destroys the heritage which has shaped the underlying periphery.

Yet, together, "fringe" groups constitute a majority in the world. It's not just a question of Western or Eastern; there's more to earth than this dichotomy. From the alien's point of view, there are far more non-Western civilizations than Western. Depending on perspective, any one of these groups could define the mainstream. Why not abandon paradigms from a fixed reference point and see the world as it really is--a mosaic of interacting cultures as opposed to concentric circles of periphery. Each culture has its strengths and weaknesses. Why focus solely on the virtues of one's own and carp about the vices of others? Moreover, how can one attack others based on your own criteria?

The answer is very simple, really. Everyone needs to feel a sense of self-worth, and self-worth stems from doing that at which one excels. So why deny everyone else that opportunity to pursue their passions by denouncing those passions as inferior? To deny the existence of other groups is ignorance; to uphold one's own as superior is just stupid.

Those who oppress the beauty of others do so out of envy or fear. So what is it that you fear, Alex Zubatov? You have much to gain by embracing diversity. Imagine a purely Western world--wouldn't eating baked potatoes every day get dull?

--Felix Chang, BK '98