Reconciling the societal differences between the Western world and Asia--particularly with respect to China, Korea, and Japan--may never be a possibility. The divide is not so simple as the distinctions between mere Christianity, Confucianism, or communism, nor is it reducible to simple philosophical terms such as capitalism, liberalism, or Marxism. Indeed, the inherent dissimilarities between Eastern and Western cultures are as likely the result of the forced separation due to geography and the consequence of limited contact over the millennia.
As Rozman insists, the failure of social science to investigate national heritage as the fulcrum of societal differences, particularly in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, belittles "the enduring consequences of historical factors." Further, (Western) political scientists and social scientists find separate explanations for the varying inclinations of Eastern societies toward dictatorial or democratic regimes, socialist or capitalist development. And none of them may satisfactorily explain how heritage influences and shapes the "unusual dynamism" which propels Eastern societies:
The way people interact at home, school, and their workplace, the way they view their government and their own society's place in the world, affects their rate of modernization. Even if, for a time, the foreign impact seems to be displacing more and more of the traditional behavior, a process of interaction is at work in which some elements of tradition may be reasserted . . . . (S)ome elements of a region-wide heritage are being credited as the common denominator for a resurgence that ignores national boundaries.
De Vos explains that East Asia is a continuity of both religious and folk traditions which have existed from before recorded history. Ancient mystical beliefs and more universal spiritual traditions continue to co-exist today in the minds of many Asians, while Christianity an...