The West is obsessed with the end of things

A friend, a shaman from an indigenous tribe in southern Brazil, once told me a funny story. "When the white men come, we put on our feather headdresses, dance, beat our chests, and listen to their stories about the end of the world. We nod and agree, but as soon as they are gone, we put on our jeans, drink beer, and agree that their apocalypse is never apocalyptic enough."

That sounds convincing to me. If anyone knows what the end of the world looks like, it is these indigenous communities. They were the ones who were decimated, their culture almost destroyed.

Nevertheless, especially in the West, people seem obsessed with the “end” of this and that. However, our idea of the end tends to block our imagination rather than open up new perspectives. A striking example of how abstract these considerations often are and how little they are accompanied by concrete changes was provided by the American philosopher and literary critic Fredric Jameson with his bon mot that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of our economic system, capitalism.

If you want to tackle the big question of what is coming to an end, then perhaps it is a certain idea of “the West” and its dominance. It is a concept that does not work well on its own. It always needs something to distinguish itself from: the West versus the East, the North versus the South.
To quote an influential German philosopher, perhaps we are currently bidding farewell to Hegel's peculiar philosophy of history, according to which history moves like the sun, which rises in the East but then travels across the West and stays there. It's as if the light only falls on the West – but of course that's not true. Time marches on, and in reality the world is much bigger and more fascinating than we thought.

We must allow a broader spectrum of voices and the history of the rest of the world to teach us what lies ahead and who we can become. This is a hopeful conclusion, which I much prefer to endless apocalyptic thinking.

Europe is suffering from fatigue and a lack of imagination. It is time to listen to new voices

If we consider, for example, the “West” and its connections to Latin America, we see that its wealth is based on colonial plunder, such as the stolen silver from Potosí in present-day Bolivia. But it is not only raw materials; ideas from the Global South have also made the West what it is today. Even what we call the “Enlightenment,” which we consider typically Western, was in many ways shaped by encounters with the indigenous peoples of the Americas. When Europeans reached the New World in the 15th century, they encountered for the first time peoples who lived without a king or institutionalized religion. That was revolutionary.

Take the Spaniard Hernán Cortés, who came to Tlaxcala, east of Mexico City, before setting out to conquer Tenochtitlán. He encountered a society that was not organized from the top down, yet was highly complex. Archaeological finds show that their system was more akin to what we would call democracy today. The people there held assemblies to discuss whether, for example, they should take action against the Mexica – as the Aztecs called themselves – or ally themselves with Cortés. For Europeans, who only followed the king's orders and took his word as God's word, it must have been an overwhelming experience to witness such public debates. It must have been a whole new feeling of freedom that they felt when they arrived on the American continent.

Anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow describe such connections in their book “The Origin of Civilization: A New History of Humanity.” Referring to more recent archaeological finds, they also refute almost everything we thought we knew about ancient history. This includes the idea that humans originally lived only as hunters and gatherers in small, relatively egalitarian communities and then lost their innocence when they settled down or developed so-called advanced civilizations. This image of the “noble savage” — largely shaped by Jean-Jacques Rousseau — does not match the facts.

Both the idea of the loss of innocence and its counterpart, the belief in progress, which are both very important to the Western world, fit in with an understanding of history as a linear development. For Graeber and Wengrow, however, this understanding of history does not fit reality. Even when applied to today's circumstances, it is more about a mixture of old and new, a dialogue, a constant interaction between cultures. If you look closely, you will discover a south in the north, an east in the west, and a west in the east. This world is also more fun.

Global exchange and migration can serve as sources of inspiration: we can listen to each other, gather ideas from different continents, and learn from each other in order to reinvent ourselves. Europe is currently experiencing a certain fatigue, lack of imagination, and apathy. It is time to listen to those who come from elsewhere. They bring more life and color to the Old World. We can redefine ourselves and draw hope. When we look to Latin America, we find inspiring approaches. For example, among indigenous activists and thinkers such as Davi Kopenawa of the Yanomami people and Ailton Alves Lacerda Krenak of the Krenak. The two first became known for their commitment to fighting the destruction of the Amazon, as promoted by mining companies, for example.

Immigrants bring more life and colour to the Old World

But in lectures and books, they also outline a fundamentally more sustainable lifestyle — on that is in harmony with natural cycles, spirituality, and a culture of oral tradition and attentive listening.

These and numerous other indigenous activists are part of a larger development in recent decades that has been summarized under the slogan “Buen Vivir,” or “good life.” It goes back to the Quechua term “Sumak kawsay,” a traditional concept among indigenous peoples in the Andes and the Amazon: it refers to living in harmony with the environment and other living beings, without fixation on material growth, the accumulation and concentration of possessions and money. At least on the initiative of such communities and parts of civil society, elements of Buen Vivir were incorporated into the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador under left-wing governments in 2007 and 2008. They range from the guaranteed right to clean water and the prohibition of privatization of common goods to the idea that nature, such as a river, has its own rights.

A current example of how such ideas can penetrate political institutions is Francia Marquez, the environmental activist and civil rights activist who was elected as the first Afro-Colombian vice president in 2022. Not only does she wear traditional clothing, she also draws on ancient knowledge for the issues of sustainability and the common good.

Against this backdrop, it is worth remembering that even the Amazon rainforest, often declared to be virgin nature par excellence, was significantly shaped by humans. The black soil found across large areas of the forest, known in Brazil as “terra preta,” was created by indigenous peoples, among other things through slash-and-burn agriculture. This thin layer is characterized by enormous fertility.

All of this brings me back to my shaman friend—and to a final thought: Some developments in Latin America in particular show that the future lies not ahead of us, but behind us.

Perhaps it is time for us to take a closer look at (supposedly) past cultures and rethink our view of history, because they offer many unfinished but promising projects. They could be exactly what we need to move forward.

As told to Jess Smee