Class XII, ENGLISH, Summary, "Reflections on the Re-Awakening East"

Reflections on the Re-Awakening East

Introduction
The chapter entitled Reflections on the Re-awakening East, has been written by Bertrand Russel. He is the most outstanding writer and thinker of our time. His more popular 3orkds have been notable for their introduction of scientific attitudes into the discussion of politics and sociology.
Summary
According to Russel, power has never stayed permanently in the world. Initially at the beginning the East and the Eastern nations had more power then the West but gradually the power slipped out of the hand of the Eastern nations and went into the hands of the Western countries. The West became all powerful and the East lost its power.
This chapter has been written in the year 1954 so Russel is talking about the conditions of year 1954. When Russel is talking about the conditions of year 1954. When Russel wrote this essay in 1954, he thought that power was once again passing out from the hands of the West and the East was beginning to re-awaken and to gain power, therefore, what we have learnt so far is that power changes from hand to hand. Russel is expressing his thoughts and his opinions as to what the Eastern nations should do on their re-awakening Russel is offering advice to the Eastern awakening.nations as to what should they do in order to prosper and be successful.
First and foremost Russel advises the Eastern awakening nation not to adopt communism because Russel describes communism as a poison. The next advice that he gave them is to adopt industrialization and mechanization because according to Russel any country that does not accept industrialization will lag behind. He advises the Eastern countries to stay away from war, to struggle for peace.
The next advice is not to follow the West blindly but to take from the West what is good and to leave out what is bad. After that Russel goes on to declare that Asia has some excellent and major civilizations. These civilizations should never be mixed with each other. Furthur more another excellent advice that Russel gave was that it is definitely agreed that we can’t progress without mechanization yet the fact remains that side by side with mechanization we should not forget poetry, arts, friendship, character-building, all these come side by side. We must see to it that on one hand we progress in science and on the other hand we build our moral value.
Last but not the least, Russel concludes with the optimistic thought that the Eastern and Asian nations shall contribute to the betterment and the progress of the world and will not imitate the mistakes of the West.