Critical Reflection on the theories of the West

I’m glad that Marx’s theory and call for revolution to overthrow capitalism and its ideals triumphed within a short period of time but failed miserably in the long run. Marx’s ideal world is hard to achieve because the possession of wealth and information always conjures power relations. If the workers around the world succeeded in overthrowing the ruling capitalist, the vacuum of power would be filled by those who are triumphant. Perhaps in that reality, the working class would be the center of power and wealth concentration and thus power would just transfer from one class to the other without really diffusing it as envisioned by Marx. Being happy about the failure of Marxism to set up a world system of equality does not mean that I accept the idea of Capitalism in its totality. Capitalism is not a perfect ideology and the consequences brought about by its ideas were a mixture of cost and benefits.

Capitalism is obviously the victor in the contest against Marxism. However, the supremacy of Capitalism is not yet certain because a new challenger has come to light. The new challenger is brought about by the consequence of Capitalist Imperialism or colonization. Capitalism became the tool for the powerful to manipulate the culture and consciousness of the colonized and subjugated. The unwanted consequence of Capitalism gave birth to something that threatens its continual survival. I think this is what the western cultural theorists realized in their observation. The attempt of man to fully put fellow men and nature into his or her subordination through reason and logic prospered only to fail in the latter end. I think this is because human logic and reason, no matter how advanced it is, is still is far from fully comprehending everything the world has to offer.

Most of the discussion about culture being a commodity sounds so true to me. Basically the first thought that came into mind when speaking of commodified culture is tourism. However, culture as explained is not just something sought after from place to place, but it has become export oriented commodity. There is no doubt that culture has this property since culture is an idea. Writing this blog has made me remember about the film ‘Inception’ by Christopher Nolan. Like the main idea of the film, culture can be like an idea in the process of ‘inception’. There is a strong sense of belief that the film fully demonstrated the expression of the idea being addressed here. Ideas can be planted in the depths of our mind, and bet we Filipinos are the best example of such.

Maybe someday I’ll write a blog an analogy in some of the narrative elements in ‘Inception’ to the anatomy of commodified culture in the Philippines.