If you really want an expert opinion on this answer read Derrick Jensen. Then watch “Dances with Wolves” or “Avatar.”
For the sake of argument, let’s lump the examples you give (except for flying airplanes into buildings) under the heading of “institutionalized violence.” That is, violence toward individuals that is codified by the rule of law or by custom or otherwise sanctioned by society and its institutions. How far back in U.S. history do we have to go to run into examples of institutionalized violence?
I think your qualifier “that there is no other civilization on earth…” holds some legitimacy and is also where things kind of get subjective. Let’s say for the sake of argument, that yes we’ve promoted the sovereignty of the individual and human rights like no other nation on earth. We’re the pinnacle of human civilization in that respect. Is it “success” to be relatively the best or “failure” to fall well short of our own propaganda (vis a vis the above as well as nonviolent, institutionalized discrimination? It’s a glass half full/half empty question, no? And if you believe so strongly that we have achieved so much, why do you bemoan the haters? A crying baby is a baby that’s healthy enough to cry! Shouldn’t you consider vocal discontent a symptom of a healthy democracy?
A third point I would like to draw from the wording of your question is that it’s not necessarily true that “haters of Western Civilization” are “admirers of folks in the Middle East,” especially in the sense that we must view them as somehow superior in their contributions to the world or in their ethics. Undoubtedly, many of them per capita and relative to a per capita sample of Americans (for example) are crazy and violent. I would be too if, using Afghanistan as an example, my country’s history was one of a steady stream of invasions, most significantly, one might add, by western powers.
What your question doesn’t leave room for, which is where Derrick Jensen’s writing would fit in, is the exploitation, sickness, and violence that predicates Western Civilization. Western Civilization organized as it is today around capitalism (or probably more accurately mutant capitalism) is about chewing up and spitting out natural resources, including human capital, as fast and as furious as technology, security and demand will allow. Corporations are the primary vehicles for this (mutant) capitalism, and (I’m sure this is elementary) in law corporations enjoy the rights of persons*. If you compare the characteristics of these deemed persons to the criteria of mental/behavioral health and well being, you might note that the behavioral traits of corporations match exactly the behavioral traits of psychopaths. Those of us today who “hate” Western Civilization primarily (I would think) hate the psychopathy that assaults us every moment of our lives. How far back to we have to go in U.S. history to see examples of corporations taking every opportunity to cut off our heads with bread knives? How about the heads of third world savages?
I suppose my last point is more esoteric, but what of the sovereignty of creation and our environment? Oh, right—calculation of carbon footprints and trading of carbon credits, recycling, wind power. Western Civilization is so smart to have discovered these things. Science, a pinnacle of western intellect, has given us a beacon of light to save ourselves from our own destruction. What other civilization in human history was so clever to devise such hopeful solutions? Well, there’s those weirdo indigenous cultures like Native Americans, but they were letting all those natural resources go to waste when they could have been making money off of them. Sacred mountain this and sacred river that. Idiots didn’t realize they were sitting on a gold mine.
Obviously, the anti-Western Civ POV doesn’t engender a ready solution, but it’s in part due to the fact that Western Civilization is ultimately borne of a 10,000 year old “problem” called totalitarian agriculture (you will want to digest that concept because I think it is central to setting up my final point).
My final point (and forgive me if I speak incorrectly for everyone else) is that the hate for Western Civilization is at its heart an inarticulate longing and lament for a connected, organic, natural and indigenous existence that we can hardly imagine (thanks to conditioning) in our conscious mind but nevertheless feel in our hearts/unconscious/soul/what have you. It is an impotent mourning for the lost sacred relationships to the world around us. We’ve traded spirit for progress and while folks like yourself maybe have adapted to the best that modern living has to offer, there are many of us who feel something is terribly wrong, but haven’t fully internalized what a solution would look like, and can’t in a way, because the only answer that really makes any sense is to let go of all this crap and go live in a cave. (But probably not in Afghanistan—hahaha!)
(Note to self: reread the story of Adam and Eve)
* There are other threads of discussion about whether everyday people are also, in fact, legal “persons” as opposed to “men” and “women” but for simplicity’s sake and since we colloquially assume they are synonymous, I will leave that be and assume a colloquial application.
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