The practice of democracy that has won out in the modern West is largely a result of a consensus that has emerged since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolutionand particularly in the last century or so.
As a result, scientific progress was hindered by religious rules in the East, while it flourished in the West. No civilization has intruded on the West in a comparable way in the last years, and if it had, we would resent it mightily.
The interactions between civilizations vary greatly in the extent to which they are likely to be characterized by violence. In the 15th century, competition, both economic and political, fostered capitalism and spread the wealth from royal courts to a fragmented European state system.
The findings, just published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, reveal that the self-beliefs of members of Western cultural groups have much more in common with the rest of the world than was previously suggested, contradicting the generally accepted view of a "West versus the rest" divide in concepts of selfhood.
As the events in Yugoslavia show, it is not only a line of difference; it is also at times a line of bloody conflict.
While Confucianism is a major component of Chinese civilisation, Chinese civilisation is more than Confucianism.
More often, leaders of non-western societies have pursued modernisation and rejected westernisation. Worldwide, however, how many people share this culture?