This is a continuation of my earlier post of “humanity has a soul”. It deals with the expansion of the awareness of norms, the normativity, in the “worldsoul” towards the values which are collectively the “worldspirit”. The worldsoul informs the worldspirit, and the resulting values are the irrevocable moral basis of all human activities in the real world, leaving each individual in control by this empowerment and responsibility for the common good.
Human activities follow various life streams, and in each stream the principles required to prepare plans for action need to allow for flexible approaches because they will need to be sensitive to the local cultural and historical environment. Non-the-less, they must always remain within the irrevocable values of the worldspirit.
Margaret Mead in her anthropological study, “Culture of Commitment” (1970), divided human activities into three cultures of commitment: religion, commerce, and government. Johannes Heinrichs in “A Model of Value-Based Democracy as Condition of Ecological Sustainability” (2009) prefers to talk of four levels of parliament: economical, political, cultural, and basic values.
In my suggestion of three life-streams, I decided to follow Mead’s idea, although I prefer ‘spirituality’ instead of ‘religion’ as this can then include a wider field of spiritual activities such as art, atheism, philosophy, etc. My scheme naturally has also some similarities with Hendrichs’ although I make no separation within the stream of spirituality as he does with cultural and basic values.
For Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, in his “Phenomenology of Spirit” (Phänomenologie des Geistes (1807) , the a worldspirit (“Weltgeist”) is a central concept of his speculative philosophy. To Hegel the total historical reality, the “totality”, is the product of the worldspirit, by which the ultimate purpose of the world’s history is realised, namely Reason within history.
Plato was the first to suggest a worldspirit as ‘Anima Mundi’ in ‘Timaios’. His worldspirit could be seen as a mover of the world’s psyche and actions simply from its origin in the individual’s normativity. According to Plato, the Demiurg created the ‘anima mundi’ first and then the material universe. This ‘anima mundi’ was the commanding entity and consisted of two principles: Sameness and differentness representing reason and chaos, and he then mixed the two into a third essence. He tells us that the creation of the cosmos was not ‘ex nihilo’, out of a nothing, as there existed ‘structures’ in the form of ‘categorical ideas’ beforehand, which existed by ‘necessity’ and could not be altered or annihilated but allowed the ‘Demiurg’, the creator, some processes and denied others through which the resulting cosmos represents the product of ‘necessity’ and ‘reason’.
“Therefore this world order is caused by a mixture, which resulted from the unification of necessity and reason. Indeed, reason reigned over necessity, because it was able to persuade it to direct most of ‘the created’ toward the best. For this reason then [ … ] this universe came into being from the beginning.” (Plato, Timaios 48 a, my translation from the German text}
My version of the worldspirit is, however, much more banal. It is simply the collective term of the moral values informed by the worldsoul, and which are both ubiquitous and irrevocable, and as such will be central to reason within historical progress. Because they need to be irrevocable, it will be necessary to be sparing and intelligent, out of ‘necessity’ and ‘reason’ as by Plato, to include only those values that can be applied throughout mankind in all cultures. By corollary, some cultures may need to modify some aspects of their belief systems where they are irreconcilable with the innate human world order that is for the common good. The values of the worldspirit can therefore be: Civic virtue, tolerance, justice, fairness, honesty, truthfulness, altruism, cooperation, and discourse ethics. Justice is not what is written in the laws, but what represents the ethic that will need to be applied in writing and enforcing the law. Discourse ethics (Karl-Otto Apel) is a system that refers to a type of argument that attempts to establish normative or ethical truths by examining the presuppositions of discourse.
The three life-streams or cultures of commitment, namely spirituality, commerce, and government, do each have separate disciplines within that I will not specify here. Their governing principles are developed through formal pragmatics (Jürgen Habermas) and can be summarised under the following headings: For spirituality it is the ‘global ethic’, for commerce it is ‘moral capitalism’, and for government say ‘social contract’.
Each stream requires a culture of commitment by the individuals striving to develop the moral consistency for building the action plans in keeping with the values set in the ‘worldspirit’.
The term ‘streams’ reflects the idea that the activities in the three cultures of commitment flow downstream like a river that springs from a rich source of inspiration of the individual and spreads its nourishment into the valley of human activity to sustain the life-world of mankind. To lead into the discussion of the three streams, here is a brief introduction into the concepts that, combined, will be the driving force for actions and the means that will result in the desired ‘concrete ends’ in each stream.
The necessary process of human interaction relies on controlled discourse. It must follow rules to ensure that communication will not become biased by the inequality of the participants, but takes place in an environment of truth, validity, truthfulness and therefore trust, as proposed by Jürgen Habermas, who developed the ‘theory of communicative action’. My project analyses the processes of a person’s forming a set of moral and ethical norms, a normativity, and engaging in discourse with other people to achieve an outcome of a ‘good’ acceptable to both ‘actors’ (Habermas). I deal with this in more detail in my book.
The link, http://bit.ly/gx4wb5, shows a graphic outline of an individual’s involvement in these three streams and the mind processes that are involved and described below, beginning with the development of a shared social normativity in the person’s mind as the categorical and irrevocable prerequisite for the ‘worldsoul’. This will in turn inform the ‘worldspirit’, which is the set of values central to and binding for the three action streams, the cultures of commitment. The participants in each stream then focus on developing the ‘principles’ for the activities on the ground, the ‘facticity’, to achieve outcomes in the ‘life-world’ as well as in the ‘system’ (Habermas) in accordance with values and principles agreed and established by communicative action.
This will be applied in a family situation or a larger group of people with common principles, in a business environment and in a religious activity. It will apply in our attention to the environment, and it will filter up into various levels of government and in the end to a world community.
By necessity, such discourse will take place on two levels:
First of all on a personal level in dialogue between two people, either as individuals or as representatives of other individuals, where the subjects will be comprehensive as in dealing with social, spiritual and political philosophy. This will be the process establishing the values of the ‘worldspirit’, and hence setting the irrevocable values and principles for the three streams of activity. These values will be common to most cultures, as for instance the ‘golden rule’, which has been the basis for the ethic of reciprocity.
Second, on another level of discourse between citizens as citizens within a people, and among peoples as peoples within a society of peoples, where the subjects may be more focused on political philosophy, but not to the exclusion of cultural, spiritual and social philosophy.
Three cultures of commitment cannot, however, exist as entirely separate entities within a people. They must communicate with each other and provide and receive input for the proper functioning of the community.
As the values and principles were developed so that each stream can prepare suitable plans for each culture of commitment, they would have tended to develop somewhat independently from each other. In the end it is essential that the three streams come together in an embrace, a culture of pooled commitment. This means that spirituality will influence commercial decisions in the stream of commerce, and influence citizens in their development of political constitutions and institutions in the stream of government. By corollary, government will influence spirituality when comprehensive doctrines are being modified to make the change possible from ‘overlapping consensus’ (John Rawls) towards ‘true consensus’, always retaining the separation of state and religion. Commerce will influence government in the financial and moral support towards cultural endeavours such as a wider curriculum in education to include subjects like history, languages, philosophy, art and religions, and support institutions in similar fields.
As all three streams come together in an embrace, a culture of pooled commitment, it will set the scene for creating a World Gemeinschaft made up of regional societies of peoples. I am not the first individual who suggested that a formally united world community is possible. Before me were Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and John Rawls in particular, but all of them had a preference for a political entity.
My suggestion (as described in my book) is for the formation of regional societies of peoples, who will be liberal, democratic and just, and will have pluralism at least to the extent of "overlapping consensus" (John Rawls). This has similarity with the EU.
The ultimate target in the three streams will be for outcomes towards ‘a global common good’ in a World Gemeinschaft.
• Shared spirituality, where people of different cultures and religions can live co-operatively together in harmony and in a communal spirit of true pluralism.
• Shared wealth resulting from profitability in commerce will create opportunities for more employment, a reduction in poverty and a consequential decrease in population growth for many burdened peoples in the world.
• True consensus in peace supported by ‘stability for the right reasons’, general health and a thriving global civilisation amid cultural development.
• The environment will be carefully managed in the interests of all and will be able to support all life, human as well as diversity in flora and fauna.
Each of the three streams needs to embrace the other streams in a culture of pooled commitment in order to coordinate their activities under the overall banner of the ‘worldspirit’ and promote the principles to be followed on the path towards a World Gemeinschaft.
In the stream of spirituality, true rather than overlapping consensus between comprehensive doctrines, religious or non-religious, achieved through negotiated modification of doctrines to remove irreconcilable paragraphs, will pave the way for the stream of government to develop constitutions for true pluralism that can derive from those modified doctrines. These negotiations will be supported by education and the building of social capital together with the stream of commerce in underdeveloped nations and burdened societies, made possible by moral globalisation, which will result in ‘rules-based’ replacing ‘relation based’ governance in their economies resulting in decreased population growth.
The streams of government and spirituality can build a communal spirit and charity beyond their boundaries to support the principles of ‘the common good’ and ‘stability for the right reasons’.
This may all sound like a dream, a wonderful utopia that could never be achieved. Never say never! It has already started to be fulfilled with intergovernmental organisations and in a small way with the example given by the European Union, a project in progress.
In the end, a World Gemeinschaft must not be a political entity or government as such, but an integral global community that shares common interests towards peace in the way that the European Union is evolving and proving itself to function successfully. The World Gemeinschaft will however be the most pluralistic in that it will globally embrace all peoples with their different histories and disparate cultures. As such it can sustain a world without war.
Let’s think anew with new insight and courage
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