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“Like it or not (and much of the world often has not), for the moment, the West has triumphed.” What exactly does this quote mean? What does ‘for the moment” mean? What is ‘triumphed’? Who exactly is ‘the West’? To begin with the West begins in Europe, specifically Western Europe. When colonization begins, in the late 1400’s to 1500’s the West becomes America too. Before this there was not really a modern civilization. As Europe spread, so did the West. Now what does ‘for the moment mean’? It means that the West will not triumph forever. There was a time, believe it or not, when the Chinese were the ‘triumphing’ country or civilization. In a few hundred years there is a good chance that the West will no longer be the triumphing civilization. What is ‘triumph’? Triumphing can be anything from winning wars, inventing machines that make the world better, having a good economy, or even just having your people happy. All of this the West has done at one point or another. This quote is saying that the West is essentially in control of the world. Yes, we like this but the rest of the world doesn’t. lkjadflgkjdf In 431 BCE Pericles made an oration (a speech) to the people of Athens. It was praising their system of government. This outlined what Athenian democracy was like, and we have used many of their ideas in our own democracy. Athens, Greece had the first step in Western culture of creating democracy; a government in which the people vote for who they want in office, or to lead them. Athens’ version of democracy was not the same as ours. They didn’t vote for people to represent them, they voted directly for the issues that affected their society. This type of democracy is called direct. One thing that not everyone knows is that only white land-owning males born in Athens could vote. In the US we have what is called “indirect” democracy. We vote directly for governor and representatives. We have representatives that vote on issues for us. The one thing, which is recent, is all man and women 18 and older can vote. This is one of many important triumphs of the West. Over time the quality of government seems to go downhill for a little while. After the Roman Empire falls, everything in it seems to get lost, including government. In mid-evil (medieval) Europe they had a system called the feudal system where there was a king, who had lords, which controlled the lesser lords, who controlled the knights who then had control over the peasants and townspeople. Everyone in this society had someone in control of them, except the king; everyone also was in control of someone.
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