One of the great qualities of the West is its belief in the directionality of history. Many ancient cultures believed that history was circular: Native American cultures often believed that reality itself was circular; Hinduism thinks similarly. The Judeo-Christian West thought differently: that God exists outside of time, but that He guides mankind forward, step by stumbling step, toward an eschatological culmination.
This means that the West has thought, more than any other culture, about progress. It also means that the West tends to mistake movement in time for progress, and waystations in history as endpoints. Thus, World War I was labeled "the war to end all wars" .
.. until World War II.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama suggested the possibility of an "end of history" ...
until history reasserted itself along the lines of Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations. The West also tends to mistake institutional forms for underlying realities. Because the West, particularly in the aftermath of the Enlightenment, has thought so much about the varieties of human institutions and their purposes, we tend to believe too much in the power of human action.
This means that we often reverse cause and effect: We tend to believe, for example, that democracy precedes rights, as opposed to rights preceding democracy. We also tend to believe that we are the creators of our own rights and responsibilities; we are, in essence, legal positivists who believe that law is cr.