T.S. Eliot wrote that "we shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began...and know that place again for the first time."And so it is that in this new century as we are compelled to interact more with the East, with China, with Japan and with India, perhaps it will better enable us to understand our own limitations and see ourselves in a global rather than a provincial context. In so doing, we might also redefine both the importance of history, coupled with our ongoing urge to be modern. Author and journalist Patrick Smith in his new work Somebody Else's Century: East and West in a Post-Western World,
delves with extraordinary depth, into what it means to maintain ones true and unique identity and culture, amidst the onslaught of Western modernity.My conversation with Patrick Smith:
