Event statement
Pan-Asia: A new Dawn of Peace
On November 2nd, 2019 we will hold a celebration called Pan-Asia: A new Dawn of Peace, where we’ll examine the rich civilizational traditions that Asia holds and their relevance and importance for humanity today.
In the last 20 years, the Greater Boston Area has experienced a 200% increase in Asians. Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Korean, Filipino, Pakistani — the population in many towns around Boston are 20-30% Asian. But even surrounded by so many Asians, young people are taught by Western society that Asians come from cultures full of submissive people and absolute dictators. We are taught that we are lucky to be living in a Western society with “freedom” and “democracy.” We look towards the East and see countries scarred from years of colonialism and imperialism. So the Asian immigrant becomes convinced that they should separate themselves from the lands and civilizations that gave birth to them, for what could they possibly hold that is of relevance and importance today?
This leads to a stereotype of the Asian immigrant experience that is based in some truth. For some reason all children of immigrants reach a point in their lives where they’ll do anything to shake off their parents, and shake off a foreign culture blocking them from whiteness. Following an unspoken but real pressure, young people try to climb up a ladder of success, try to achieve acceptance from white people, seek wealth and fleeting flashy symbols of “making it,” all while they grow farther and farther from their families and all that gave birth to them.
And yet we live in a world today where Western civilization can no longer dominate, and its claims to superiority cannot be accepted seriously, are seen as hypocritical, and are without substance. The history of Western Civilization is one of the subjugation of other peoples, beginning with the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the enslavement and degradation of Africa, and leading to a modern culture today where we bully other nations to follow our bidding. And this culture affects the values of self-centeredness and disrespect for human beings different from us that our children are raised by.
The average American is more familiar with the “inevitability” of war than their country’s own historic freedom fighters for peace — Martin Luther King Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois, and Paul Robeson. Violence has become such a central part of American life that we cannot imagine moving towards a peaceful and just world. Extreme individualism and selfishness have become the norm, so we teach only luxury and self-attainment rather than sacrifice for the betterment of humanity. Alienation, pessimism, and depression have become our default way of being, and we cannot imagine friendship and solidarity between ourselves and nations of the world.
Now of all times is the time to stand against rather than continue to look up to the West. Western civilization has taught the modern world to be violent, self-centered, individualistic, dominating, but leaders from the East have been speaking explicitly about the significance of our ancient traditions of peace in saving our world from dehumanization. From South Asia, the great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore said over a 100 years ago: "We are asking ourselves everywhere in the East. ‘Is this frightfully overgrown [Western] power really great? It can bruise us from without, but can it add to our wealth of spirit? It can sign peace treaties, but can it give peace?'" From China, Sun Yat-sen said that all peoples in the 20th century have a choice between the rule of Might or the rule of Right — that in the face of a rising modern Western way of domination, Asian people must remember their ancient roots in peace and choose to move society with moral rightness.
Leaders like Tagore and Sun Yat-sen said that the largest question we face is deciding what moral grounds and in what spirit society should be anchored in and guided by. They spoke towards reviving historic links that were broken by Western domination, between Asian peoples, and between Asia and Africa. They were part of what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “world revolution” which influenced and informed the Black Freedom Struggle in America. And so, we have to make a critical moral choice today: whether to follow the West in its path towards destruction or to carve out a new civilization that learns from the past but looks to the future of humanity.
Across the world, there are people deciding to live differently, treat people differently than how the West does. And we celebrate Pan-Asia to remember traditions of moral righteousness across Asia. We can awaken and find inspiration in these traditions of true humanitarianism to not just ask for a unity of Asia in times of division but to help all of humanity move forward towards peace.