Why conflicts in Asia seem to be more violent ?..

.. or is it a misperception?

Looking at the particularities of Eastern and Western cultures [1], I often come across the thought: If you think “this thing” is crazy, just google for “this thing” + “Asian” and it’s going to be 10x crazier. Things that can be found both in the East and in the West, go on steroids in the East compared to their Western counterparts.

If you read through the history of humankind, it seems that this idea also applies to violence, i.e. the gruesome things that individuals or groups of people did to other people. Reading about the medieval conflicts in Europe can give you quite a chill and discomfort but then if you decide to turn the pages and look into what happened at the same during the Mongol conquest, the Song dynasty or under the reign of Timur Lenk, it seems to be just so much beyond imagination, that it causes spiritual and emotional pain just to read about it.

I puzzled about this for quite a while until recently, when a friend of mine pointed me into a direction that seemed to make sense to me: Looking into the spiritual belief systems of the West and the East, we can observe a interesting and important difference: In the Western believes there is a strong tendency to think that “this is the one and only life you have” and after that you are gone and you are gone for good (to a better place or a worse, where details depend on the belief system). In contrast in the East, there is a broad consensus (while details vary) on the idea of reincarnation which means that the body is only temporal and when you lose your current one, you move on the next. As the current body is not the only you have, its relative value is diminished. [2]

So while the concept of reincarnation might have many positive consequences in the way people think and act, this seem to one of the negative consequences even if it acts in a very unconscious and subtle way.

This is surely only one of multiple factors that one can find but I perceive that it is an important one as our belief systems form our ultimate moral compasses. If a body, and therefore the life it carries, is only one of many, it is should be not of surprise that it is less valued and treated consequently.

[1] There are many ways to define “Eastern” and “Western” cultures but for the sake of simplicity in this text, I think of the “West” as human civilization that was strongly influenced by the cultures around the Mediterranean and the “East” as civilizations that descendent to the North and South of the Himalaya region.

[2] A quite tangible examplification of this can be found either in the novel “Alternated Carbon” by Richard Morgen or in the corresponding Netflix show that goes by the same name.