This morning we ended our discussion on economic crisis. I hope this economic crisis will also end this quickly.
As a historian, the economic crisis of East Asia seems simple to me. It just showed the fact that everlasting prosperity never exists in this world. The prosperity of the United Kingdom during the reign of Queen Victoria, prosperity of America in the 1920's, when Ford Model T ran all over America, Japan's high growth age of 1960's and the age of strong yen of the 1980's when Japan rehabilitated itself from oil crisis, everything which has a beginning has an end. In the same way the remarkable advance of East Asia, a great leap forward of not just one country but also a corps of countries had a beginning, and so it had an end.
When a crisis comes, we tend to have a negative view. On the contrary I would Like to say "Congratulations!" to KIT, that is, to Korea, Indonesia and Thailand - KIT nations.
Those nations tried to show their ability to move ahead, overstraining themselves and risking economic distortion, and now they are confronted by such crisis, which is, to tell the truth, the proof of their ability. It was pointed out that China and Malaysia did not open their markets fully because of strict regulations and that they were influenced relatively less severely. But I want to Say Vietnam, Myanmar and North Korea are not yet qualified for this crisis. Only those nations who showed wonderful power by trying to make a great leap forward and by overstraining and distorting their economies are entitled to face this crisis. When we look back on history, no society which showed is ability to develop, risking overstrain and distortion, failed after confronting the first impasse. All those societies. without exception, learned from the first impasse and started to grow again from that time on. Once you show such an ability, you have achieved a great thing. How to learn and how to cope with the crisis can be a big discussion point. So, in that sense, the morning session gave us a lot of intellectual stimulation. Anyway now let's move on to the session 4, where we will discuss from a wider viewpoint, not only from economic but also cultural, political viewpoints and also the viewpoint of international relations.
｡?Speaker: Ashis NANDY
Senior Fellow and Former Director, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies，Delhi
Well，nothing lasts in the world forever.
Our grandparents die and so do our parents. We also shall die. If you look into human history, you will find that many things which were said to be permanent also ended within a reasonable span of time. The so-called Dark Ages in Europe didn't last more than 400 years, some say they lasted less than 300 years. Even the ancient regime in Europe, which looked so permanent, passed without much fanfare or dramatics in the 17th century. The Newtonian world view, the world view which perhaps had been the most dominant one ever in human history, also has not lasted more than 200 years, Einstenian and quantum mechanical cosmologies have already begun to overtake it.
So, whether we like it or not, even the age in which we are living, the one you call the age of modernity, will also end.
It may be an uncomfortable thought, but at every earlier age, we were taught -- and we wanted to believe -- that that particular age was going to last forever. When we look to the future, therefore, we should keep in mind two limitations of human consciousness.
The first limitation can be described with the help of an illustration. We are going to see the end of in another two years. It is instructive to look back on how an earlier generation looked at the end of an earlier century 98 years ago. It was an education for me when, some years ago, I read an article that reproduced the predictions made by the world's most famous scientists, social and political thinkers, and philosophers about how this century, the one in which
