Is the concept of "the West" destined to be useless in normal discussions? Academics have lots of interesting things to say about it; but they struggle to say anything which spreads far from their various specialized fields, without a lot being lost and distorted. At the same time, the general public tends to constantly be attracted to extremists and caricatures. People tend to gravitate either to thinly disguised racial thinking, all about whether Europeans were better or worse or more aggressive or more rational, or whatever, than other people. Or; when people consciously try to avoid this they tend to simply take the opposite position of saying that it was all dumb luck, and being in the right place at the right time. What most thoughtful approaches have in common is that they try to look at for human traditions that were unique; and which made a difference. The general public tends to be vaguely aware of such ideas, but even among scholars the common threads which