Western identity developed centuries before it modernized, so it is not reducible to modernity

Evidence

The argument that they do rests on the assumption that modern society must approximate a single type, the Western type, that modern civilization is Western civilization and that Western civilization is modern civilization. This, however, is a totally false identification. Western civilization emerged in the eighth and ninth centuries and developed its distinctive characteristics in the following centuries. It did not begin to modernize until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The West was the West long before it was modern. The central characteristics of the West, those which distinguish it from other civilizations, antedate the modernization of the West. — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 183

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly supports the ‘Grafting & Growth’ article’s framing of institutions (trees, Western civilization) as historically sedimented forms whose identity predates their current function.