MANIPAL, India, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- Our new
21st century is seeing religion-based extremism and authoritarian attempts at
hegemony over democratic entities emerge as the twin threats to international
stability, the way Japan and Germany challenged the Western democracies in the
1930s. Deeper than politics, even economics, it is civilisational currents that
are determining the likely alliances in this conflict. Each of the four broad
streams now extant on the planet has its own characteristics.
These four civilisational streams are:
first, Euro-Indic; second, Arabian; third, Sinic; and fourth, African. Each is
further divided into tributaries. The Euro-Indic has the most
offshoots,including those dominant in India, Russia, France, the Spanish
Peninsula, Britain, Turkey, Iran and Germany.
Several earlier manifestations,such as
the Greek and the Roman, have effectively disappeared, as have those from other
streams, such as the Egyptian. Each tributary contains elements of the others,
and indeed significant strands of other streams. For example, African culture
has gone deep into European music and dance.
Next in importance to the Euro-Indic is
the Sinic,which again is divided into tributaries based in China itself. There
are at least three major variants based ton the south, north and north-west of
China itself: Korea, Vietnam and Japan. Several other countries, such as
Cambodia, Thailand and Laos have a fusion of the Euro-Indic with the Sinic,
while Malaysia and Indonesia have evolved a separate tributary based
substantially on the Euro-Indic, but incorporating elements from the Arabian.
