On Nov. 7, 1095, Pope Urban II spoke to a crowd of priests and common men, uttering reports of atrocities the Muslim invaders committed on the raided towns and cities of the Byzantine empire. The Byzantines had long since splintered from Rome during the Great Schism and had political and theological disagreements with the Pope, but now that their lands were under threat, they decided to call upon the West to send help. “For your brethren who live in the east are in urgent need of your help, and you must hasten to give them the aid which has often been promised [to] them,” Pope Urban II said in his speech at the Council of Clermont.
At the time of Pope Urban II’s speech, the West was defined by the church, as Rome, the Holy See of the Catholic Pope, was literally in the west. Yet as western civilization grew past Europe into places such as Australia and New Zealand, the geographical separation no longer applied and a new definition of what is considered the West is needed.
The West became a set of values that were built on by civilizations throughout history branching out from Europe though constantly seeking freedom and equality, building up to what is the modern world.
To understand what the West is, history must be referenced as what it meant back when there was a geographical separation instead of an ideological one, such as the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Yet the origins of the west can be traced to works by Greek and Roman philosophers such as Socrates and Pliny the Elder, which were rediscovered, analyzed and taught during the Medieval Age and the Renaissance by the Catholic Church. Then the West manifested in ideas of common law and natural rights as well as freedom and equality.
Yet today when the West is referenced, countries such as Japan and South Korea, countries nowhere near Europe or the Americas, are grouped in with the West because of how their civilization is modeled after a capitalistic framework. Thus is the conclusion that the West has evolved beyond geographical positions and into the realm of ideas and ideologies, leaving the problem of identifying the West to identifying common ideas. “Western civilization is more of a mindset [than a geographical location],” humanities teacher Tim Anderson said.
When these “Western civilizations” are analyzed, it is evident they share ideas such as capitalism and freedom as core to their civilizations as well as common law and the rule of law. The West has always valued intellectual prosperity and the importance of education and has developed the ideas of the predictability of nature and the controlling of it. “[Western civilization is based on] the idea of individual choice and [the] ability to be economically free,” humanities teacher Mathew Winter said.
The West has continued to fight for the ideals of individual freedoms, such as in the split Berlin of the 1980s. During the Cold War, walls would be erected to make sure that the citizens of East Berlin did not escape to the freer and economically richer West Berlin, and now the people of Berlin sought unification, a fight the West would throw its weight behind. “For I join you, as I join your fellow countrymen in the West, in this firm, this unalterable belief: Es gibt nur ein Berlin. [There is only one Berlin,]” according to Ronald Reagan in a speech called the Remarks on East-West Relations at the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin.
The future of Western values is grounded upon the attraction to them and the upholding of them, which has deteriorated in recent years as the West is in a period of rapid social and political change. The continuation of these values relies solely on the ability for one generation to pass it down to the next generation successfully, and without this, ideologies die out and empires lose their purpose. The future of Western values may be successful or futile, only time will tell what happens.
