East and West

The first of the major themes running throughout this book is the dichotomy between the East and the West and the culture of each. Hamilton characterizes the East as essentially inferior to the West because it is guided by fear of reality and religious and philosophical efforts to find meaning apart from the natural world. People, she says, look at their lives under tyrants and despots and see no hope of changing their condition or rising to a better life. Rulers in the east work in concert, she says, with the priests of established religion and propagate compliance and submission to the prevailing social order. This social order, she says, maintains its power and authority by handing out truth as it is defined and determined by the rulers and the priests. The people are reduced to attention to survival under dehumanizing conditions.

In the social and...