I have been seeing people in the internet saying Western Cloth, Western Media, Westernizing, Western Movies, Western Nations. What does the term “Western” mean. Can anyone explain to me like I am 5 years old
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It really depends on context. But generally speaking “Western” countries are defined by three things:
1. Democracies with written constitutions, universal voting rights, and fair elections.
2. Rule of law and specific protections of human rights including the rights of women and religious minorities. This includes truly independent courts, and public officials who are not generally corrupt.
3. Capitalism as their economic model with basic economic protections for investors and consumers.
So this is why Poland is an odd duck despite being a member of the EU and NATO. It has a ton of autocratic impulses and is… shaky… on human rights.
Some countries also have a very hard time actually embracing some of these things because their fundamental beliefs are just kind of at odds with them. Japan for example is extremely insular and while they might talk the talk on human rights they don’t walk the walk.
For example CHINA, a country of 1.4 billion, granted citizenship to 1500 immigrants last year. That would be like Canada granting citizenship to 35 people in a year.
An interesting twist to all this is that I think certain ideas about capitalism and democracy are starting to show their age in an increasingly technological world and I would expect that at some point soon we are going to start seeing some people start to innovate about ways to run a society that don’t fit comfortably into any of the current political frameworks. For example I would very much expect that in our lifetimes we will see a serious attempt to start a society that both respects human rights but abandons capitalism instead relying on UBI and automation. And you could certainly imagine a near future society run by AI instead of democracy.
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