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
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Humanity has a Soul
(Much of this article is drawn from my book: “world without war, made possible by empowered individuals” - http://amzn.to/hAGSBH).
Why is Homo sapiens so successful? You’ll say it is our intelligence and our innovativeness. Sure – they are most important attributes as was also a highly developed language, which were also our distinguishing traits among all our relatives, whether human or hominid.
The scientific study of human evolution encompasses the development of the genus Homo, but usually involves studying other hominids and hominines as well, such as Australopithecus. ‘Modern humans’ are defined as the Homo sapiens species, of which the only extant subspecies is Homo sapiens-sapiens, us; Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as ‘elder wise man’), the other known subspecies, is extinct. Anatomically, modern humans appear in the fossil record in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The most accepted model for the extremely rapid development of skills and abstract thinking since then relies on studies of the diversity and mutation rate of nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA in living human cells. It is believed that all humans now living are descendents of a woman who is the ‘matrilineal most recent common ancestor’ (MRCA) for all living humans, who probably lived around 140,000 years ago. The existence of ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ and ‘Y-chromosomal Adam’ does not imply the existence of population bottlenecks or a first couple. They each co-existed within a large human population. Some of these contemporaries have no living descendants today, and others are ancestors of all people alive today. The Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution proposes that a small, relatively isolated population of early humans evolved into modern Homo sapiens, and that this population succeeded in spreading across Africa, Europe, Asia an America, displacing and eventually replacing all other early human populations as they spread.
With man forming larger groups and consequently communal living, came a need to understand more of the world. Decisions were more and more made by reason rather than experience and conditioning (see Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s dogs), and inventiveness and planning became the background to human dominance over the world. There is evidence found in sites in Spain that a predecessor of Homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago also “buried” their dead, but this was more likely a necessity rather than spirituality. Other carnivores were able to consume carrion and to avoid being detected by predators, humans had to dispose of their corpses.
The world man lived in was not perfect as Leibniz or even Kant wanted us to believe. Neither was it as salutary as the world in which the ‘natural man’ of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s early writings lived, often falsely referred to as the ‘noble savage’, a term Rousseau never used. He believed that man living in nature, not in civilisation, was good until humans came to live together with other humans, because from then on there would be the evils of jealousy, envy and competition.
Survival depended entirely on the co-operative strength man could muster. After all, there was no design in the creation of that world, nor was there a Paradise, but a process of development and competitive forces for survival. And man was not very well equipped as a predator. Its nearest relatives were mostly herbivores and man’s preference for hunting left it short with regard to speed, strength and natural weapons. The only way humans could succeed was by grouping together and working as a team, with some division of labour. Mostly men and some women went out to hunt, and most women and some men gathered food near the fixed home base, where they tended to the offspring and defended the camp against predators. This is an exception in the usual habit of apes, as pointed out by Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal):
“This act of returning to a fixed home base is typical of the carnivores, but is far less common amongst the monkeys and apes.”
In order to achieve trust among the team members, a man and a woman would be allowed to become a couple without the risk of the head of the group taking his share as among primates. The exception to this is in the closest relative of ours, the Bonobo or Pigmy Chimpanzee, where sexual activity has a socially important role.
About 60,000 years ago, survival for man became more and more difficult, even competitive between rival groups of humans, as with an increasing population the availability of hunting grounds began to come under pressure. Because of man’s physical inadequacies compared to its predators and prey alike, coordination of the individuals within groups became an essential requirement not only for hunting and gathering, but in the end also for the defence of territory. How else could they drive a large herd of animals bigger than themselves over a cliff to get the meat? Such coordination does not happen without leadership, and with leadership comes power, and competition for that power. Such co-operation is not reserved for humans alone, as there are many animal species that rely on their co-operation for survival, even using signals to communicate. We all know about the co-operation among bees, ants, wolves and whales, and between different species as in humans and dogs chasing and cornering larger prey, and more recently killer whales co-operating with humans when hunting larger whales involving established rules about who gets what of the spoils.
In order to ensure cohesion it became necessary that rules had to be formulated and enforced, together with a chain of responsibilities and a code of conduct. It was around that time, when spirituality became evident, where the importance of a code of behaviour, hunting success and the dependence on climatic changes had created the need for understanding more of nature and its effect on tribal co-operation in difficult times. That is most likely the period when a spirit or spirits were created to help in providing the cohesion of the group.
This was the way communities developed, and in principle remained as a Gemeinschaft until the industrial revolution. Such a community had what I call a “village conscience”, where everyone knew what everyone was doing, and the communal moral code was expected to be adhered to or else there would be social sanctions. This meant that the perpetrator of an unacceptable deed would be frowned upon, isolated, or severely punished. The moral code was one of cooperation for the common good, as simple as that.
The industrial revolution cause considerable social and cultural changes. Communities became separated as people went to the cities for work, and in the end individuals became anonymous to the extent that they might not even know their neighbour in the same apartment block. As a consequence their moral code became their own individual responsibility.
Not all was lost, however, as this code was still embedded in each person’s psyche from early childhood on. Social behavioural norms are initially acquired during childhood in the context of behavioural patterns involving others and are merely pre-norms. The child learns through role-playing, often without others present, where it might imagine a situation in which it changes actors and is interchangeably for instance the shop owner of the stolen items, the thief, the policeman and the customer. It will also be exposed to the imperatives for life taught by its parents or carer. It will learn to behave within the restrictions of these imperatives, because if they are not obeyed, the child will encounter sanctions. It learns this not simply because of the positive or negative sanctions, but importantly as part of the caring environment, and becomes aware of a behaviour pattern to be followed. This behaviour pattern then becomes internalised and forms the character of the little person who as a result acquires the authority of its willpower.
During the teens, when ‘team games’ are played, the norms and imperatives will be reinforced and developed through the involvement of other players. By now, the play involves communicative roles, equivalent to the perspective of coordinated participants, where the reciprocity of the interchange of perspectives represents a cognitive structure. This developed from the ‘ego’ to ‘alter’ and self to other situations acted out as a young child. It then develops into a behavioural pattern involving recognition of signals such as speech or action through interaction with others, the ‘alter ego’ as the participating ‘opposite’, as well as through an awareness of the presence of observers of the game with them as a ‘neuter’, all being members of the same group.
The set of norms that develops does then not merely represent the awareness of a behavioural pattern of a group, but also includes the linked expectation that all members of the group, the ‘generalised other’, will act in a certain way in certain situations and by corollary they each have the duty to perform such actions as expected by the others. This reciprocity of mutual expectations and reactions in the surrounding ‘Gemeinschaft’ is referred to as ‘institution’. An institution is the mutual reaction of all members of the ‘Gemeinschaft’, and includes the police, the court and a public hospital, which we mutually expect will react in certain ways if called upon to assist, and who will attract sanctions if they do not. I suggest that such a ‘village conscience’ environment can one day be revived in a wider community like a global village, if the world’s societies want to become a ‘World Gemeinschaft’. Perhaps it already applies in the Commonwealth of Nations.
This social code is innate in homo sapiens, as it existed since man walked on this earth. It starts with the basic normativity of each individual. Normativity is the individual’s abstract realm of thought and awareness. A person’s awareness and sense of justice and a sense of the ‘good that is equal to all’ are the basic elements that inform decisions as to what one ‘ought’ to do in the world. Through interaction with others, it will be developed into an irrevocable set of norms that becomes the ‘social normativity’, which I call the ‘worldsoul’, as it is ubiquitous throughout mankind. The responsibility to firmly hold and follow this set of norms is held by all who agree to its validity.
My concept of the ‘village conscience’ is perhaps similar to the ‘Kollektivbewußtsein’ or ‘collective awareness’ that leads to the collective identity of an individual who is part of a group, as suggested by the French philosopher Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) and also discussed in detail by Jürgen Habermas (Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns: Zur Kritik der funktioalistischen Vernunft):
“The single man for himself possesses the essence of man neither in himself as a moral being nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man with man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou.”
So here is the “worldsoul” that binds us together. It allows us to imbue all our activities with these basic norms. They can then be expanded into principles for the many activities of man.
According to Habermas, Durkheim separated the ‘sacred’ from the ‘profane’, and tried to find the origin of the ‘sacred’, morality and religion. He concluded that rituals existed first, and they were later joined and to some extent replaced by developed language with semantics and syntax, which were able to formulate clearer worldviews than mere symbols. A consensus on moral values was very much part of the first communities, and became part of the religious context. In more developed societies, these worldviews were seen, by consensus, as an opportunity to use them for the legitimisation of political leadership, and in this way supported the individual’s ‘moral authority’ and the validity of basic norms. This then was the basis for the development of ‘institutions’, which received their energy from the moral worldviews.
Moral values permeate all activities and are therefore applicable to each of the cultures of commitment, the three streams of human activities, namely spirituality, commerce and government. The ‘worldspirit’, that I will explore next time, represents in one concept the combined values of civic virtue, tolerance, justice, fairness, honesty and truthfulness, altruism and co-operation.
Why is Homo sapiens so successful? You’ll say it is our intelligence and our innovativeness. Sure – they are most important attributes as was also a highly developed language, which were also our distinguishing traits among all our relatives, whether human or hominid.
The scientific study of human evolution encompasses the development of the genus Homo, but usually involves studying other hominids and hominines as well, such as Australopithecus. ‘Modern humans’ are defined as the Homo sapiens species, of which the only extant subspecies is Homo sapiens-sapiens, us; Homo sapiens idaltu (roughly translated as ‘elder wise man’), the other known subspecies, is extinct. Anatomically, modern humans appear in the fossil record in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
The most accepted model for the extremely rapid development of skills and abstract thinking since then relies on studies of the diversity and mutation rate of nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA in living human cells. It is believed that all humans now living are descendents of a woman who is the ‘matrilineal most recent common ancestor’ (MRCA) for all living humans, who probably lived around 140,000 years ago. The existence of ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ and ‘Y-chromosomal Adam’ does not imply the existence of population bottlenecks or a first couple. They each co-existed within a large human population. Some of these contemporaries have no living descendants today, and others are ancestors of all people alive today. The Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian Institution proposes that a small, relatively isolated population of early humans evolved into modern Homo sapiens, and that this population succeeded in spreading across Africa, Europe, Asia an America, displacing and eventually replacing all other early human populations as they spread.
With man forming larger groups and consequently communal living, came a need to understand more of the world. Decisions were more and more made by reason rather than experience and conditioning (see Ivan Petrovich Pavlov’s dogs), and inventiveness and planning became the background to human dominance over the world. There is evidence found in sites in Spain that a predecessor of Homo sapiens about 300,000 years ago also “buried” their dead, but this was more likely a necessity rather than spirituality. Other carnivores were able to consume carrion and to avoid being detected by predators, humans had to dispose of their corpses.
The world man lived in was not perfect as Leibniz or even Kant wanted us to believe. Neither was it as salutary as the world in which the ‘natural man’ of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s early writings lived, often falsely referred to as the ‘noble savage’, a term Rousseau never used. He believed that man living in nature, not in civilisation, was good until humans came to live together with other humans, because from then on there would be the evils of jealousy, envy and competition.
Survival depended entirely on the co-operative strength man could muster. After all, there was no design in the creation of that world, nor was there a Paradise, but a process of development and competitive forces for survival. And man was not very well equipped as a predator. Its nearest relatives were mostly herbivores and man’s preference for hunting left it short with regard to speed, strength and natural weapons. The only way humans could succeed was by grouping together and working as a team, with some division of labour. Mostly men and some women went out to hunt, and most women and some men gathered food near the fixed home base, where they tended to the offspring and defended the camp against predators. This is an exception in the usual habit of apes, as pointed out by Desmond Morris (The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal):
“This act of returning to a fixed home base is typical of the carnivores, but is far less common amongst the monkeys and apes.”
In order to achieve trust among the team members, a man and a woman would be allowed to become a couple without the risk of the head of the group taking his share as among primates. The exception to this is in the closest relative of ours, the Bonobo or Pigmy Chimpanzee, where sexual activity has a socially important role.
About 60,000 years ago, survival for man became more and more difficult, even competitive between rival groups of humans, as with an increasing population the availability of hunting grounds began to come under pressure. Because of man’s physical inadequacies compared to its predators and prey alike, coordination of the individuals within groups became an essential requirement not only for hunting and gathering, but in the end also for the defence of territory. How else could they drive a large herd of animals bigger than themselves over a cliff to get the meat? Such coordination does not happen without leadership, and with leadership comes power, and competition for that power. Such co-operation is not reserved for humans alone, as there are many animal species that rely on their co-operation for survival, even using signals to communicate. We all know about the co-operation among bees, ants, wolves and whales, and between different species as in humans and dogs chasing and cornering larger prey, and more recently killer whales co-operating with humans when hunting larger whales involving established rules about who gets what of the spoils.
In order to ensure cohesion it became necessary that rules had to be formulated and enforced, together with a chain of responsibilities and a code of conduct. It was around that time, when spirituality became evident, where the importance of a code of behaviour, hunting success and the dependence on climatic changes had created the need for understanding more of nature and its effect on tribal co-operation in difficult times. That is most likely the period when a spirit or spirits were created to help in providing the cohesion of the group.
This was the way communities developed, and in principle remained as a Gemeinschaft until the industrial revolution. Such a community had what I call a “village conscience”, where everyone knew what everyone was doing, and the communal moral code was expected to be adhered to or else there would be social sanctions. This meant that the perpetrator of an unacceptable deed would be frowned upon, isolated, or severely punished. The moral code was one of cooperation for the common good, as simple as that.
The industrial revolution cause considerable social and cultural changes. Communities became separated as people went to the cities for work, and in the end individuals became anonymous to the extent that they might not even know their neighbour in the same apartment block. As a consequence their moral code became their own individual responsibility.
Not all was lost, however, as this code was still embedded in each person’s psyche from early childhood on. Social behavioural norms are initially acquired during childhood in the context of behavioural patterns involving others and are merely pre-norms. The child learns through role-playing, often without others present, where it might imagine a situation in which it changes actors and is interchangeably for instance the shop owner of the stolen items, the thief, the policeman and the customer. It will also be exposed to the imperatives for life taught by its parents or carer. It will learn to behave within the restrictions of these imperatives, because if they are not obeyed, the child will encounter sanctions. It learns this not simply because of the positive or negative sanctions, but importantly as part of the caring environment, and becomes aware of a behaviour pattern to be followed. This behaviour pattern then becomes internalised and forms the character of the little person who as a result acquires the authority of its willpower.
During the teens, when ‘team games’ are played, the norms and imperatives will be reinforced and developed through the involvement of other players. By now, the play involves communicative roles, equivalent to the perspective of coordinated participants, where the reciprocity of the interchange of perspectives represents a cognitive structure. This developed from the ‘ego’ to ‘alter’ and self to other situations acted out as a young child. It then develops into a behavioural pattern involving recognition of signals such as speech or action through interaction with others, the ‘alter ego’ as the participating ‘opposite’, as well as through an awareness of the presence of observers of the game with them as a ‘neuter’, all being members of the same group.
The set of norms that develops does then not merely represent the awareness of a behavioural pattern of a group, but also includes the linked expectation that all members of the group, the ‘generalised other’, will act in a certain way in certain situations and by corollary they each have the duty to perform such actions as expected by the others. This reciprocity of mutual expectations and reactions in the surrounding ‘Gemeinschaft’ is referred to as ‘institution’. An institution is the mutual reaction of all members of the ‘Gemeinschaft’, and includes the police, the court and a public hospital, which we mutually expect will react in certain ways if called upon to assist, and who will attract sanctions if they do not. I suggest that such a ‘village conscience’ environment can one day be revived in a wider community like a global village, if the world’s societies want to become a ‘World Gemeinschaft’. Perhaps it already applies in the Commonwealth of Nations.
This social code is innate in homo sapiens, as it existed since man walked on this earth. It starts with the basic normativity of each individual. Normativity is the individual’s abstract realm of thought and awareness. A person’s awareness and sense of justice and a sense of the ‘good that is equal to all’ are the basic elements that inform decisions as to what one ‘ought’ to do in the world. Through interaction with others, it will be developed into an irrevocable set of norms that becomes the ‘social normativity’, which I call the ‘worldsoul’, as it is ubiquitous throughout mankind. The responsibility to firmly hold and follow this set of norms is held by all who agree to its validity.
My concept of the ‘village conscience’ is perhaps similar to the ‘Kollektivbewußtsein’ or ‘collective awareness’ that leads to the collective identity of an individual who is part of a group, as suggested by the French philosopher Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) and also discussed in detail by Jürgen Habermas (Theorie des Kommunikativen Handelns: Zur Kritik der funktioalistischen Vernunft):
“The single man for himself possesses the essence of man neither in himself as a moral being nor in himself as a thinking being. The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man with man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou.”
So here is the “worldsoul” that binds us together. It allows us to imbue all our activities with these basic norms. They can then be expanded into principles for the many activities of man.
According to Habermas, Durkheim separated the ‘sacred’ from the ‘profane’, and tried to find the origin of the ‘sacred’, morality and religion. He concluded that rituals existed first, and they were later joined and to some extent replaced by developed language with semantics and syntax, which were able to formulate clearer worldviews than mere symbols. A consensus on moral values was very much part of the first communities, and became part of the religious context. In more developed societies, these worldviews were seen, by consensus, as an opportunity to use them for the legitimisation of political leadership, and in this way supported the individual’s ‘moral authority’ and the validity of basic norms. This then was the basis for the development of ‘institutions’, which received their energy from the moral worldviews.
Moral values permeate all activities and are therefore applicable to each of the cultures of commitment, the three streams of human activities, namely spirituality, commerce and government. The ‘worldspirit’, that I will explore next time, represents in one concept the combined values of civic virtue, tolerance, justice, fairness, honesty and truthfulness, altruism and co-operation.
Friday, October 22, 2010
The Levantine Union
The peace negotiations in the Middle East are not progressing with much promise, and it seems that a completely new approach is needed.
The Middle East is a name referring to a location relative to Europe; it should perhaps have its own name to create an image of independence. The Levant is a name by which the region has been known for centuries, and which implies the rising sun. It is also flexible in that it can include any number of countries.
Peace treaties have never lasted very long throughout history. They were broken for different reasons, but usually it was a matter of power and the monarch’s ego. The general population had no say in the decisions, but was persuaded to follow the leader. Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and before them Charles de Montesquieu thought that peace could not prevail in a monarchy. They said, that only when the people become “citizens”, that is when they have a democratic right to participate in the national decision making processes, would it be possible to achieve a lasting peace.
I am suggesting that the troubles of the Middle-East could ultimately be resolved by the formation of a Levantine Union, similar to the European Union. In principle, the Levantine Union would be a society of peoples that has formed a social contract for their co-existence.
The American socio-political philosopher, John Rawls, suggested a way how populations could form a society of peoples. He suggested that this could only happen between “well ordered” peoples, which means that they are liberal, democratic, pluralistic, and just. To start with, using John Rawls’ classification, there will be ‘‘well-ordered peoples’, plus ‘outlaw states’ and ‘peoples burdened by unfavourable conditions’. The well-ordered peoples will fit immediately into the requirements that can fulfil prerequisites for entry into a ‘social contract’ between them in the formation of a society of peoples. For the remainder, it will require time and eduction to bring them along towards adopting the principles of human rights and tolerance that will ultimately allow them to qualify for participating in the society of peoples. An important point in the considerations by the society of peoples for dealing with a rogue state is that there must be a distinction between its leaders and officials on the one side and the civilian population on the other, as the latter will usually not have the power to influence the leaders’ actions.
Going back to the example of the European Union. The EU was an attempt to break the cycle of bitter hostilities in Europe between historically bitter enemies . They were brought together by three men: the French member of Parliament at times prime minister or foreign minister, Robert Schumann, the Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak, and the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. These men where visionary leaders with persistence and courage. All of them changed the path of history towards peace.
On a smaller scale, there were other countries, bitterly divided, where men with vision and great ethic managed to create peace.
The division and hatred in Ireland was after centuries of bloodshed brought to a situation of consensus by Tony Blair and a dedicated team from both sides. The division and hatred that had beset South Africa as a result of the policy of apartheid was brought to a peaceful consensus between the opposing sides by Albie Sachs, judge on the Constitutional Court, and Nelson Mandela.
The Levant cannot expect to achieve a lasting peace treaty, because the entrenched political views resist any sacrifice towards peace that would diminish the autonomy of each state. In all of the above historic cases the situation was one of continuing disasters, and the peoples were ready for drastic action. I believe that the majority of people in the Levant want peace, and would welcome a new approach to achieve it.
To form a Levantine Union would first of all require an influential, visionary leader that understands the politics and culture of the peoples involved (and I have at least one such person in mind). Then the following guidelines would have to be followed:
• The negotiations must take place on the basis of “communicative action” (Jürgen Habermas), where all participants are equal, and where financial or military power is ignored;
• All participants must be willing to negotiate for the common good;
• All nations must be willing to give up some of their autonomy, which will then be pooled to achieve a common constitution;
• Voting will be on an equal basis per nation, not influenced by the number of the population;
• Each people will be able to have its own laws, subject to an overriding constitutional law of human rights.
The advantage of this to all participants is their greater international voice, their sharing of wealth, retaining their individual history, language and culture, and of course, peace.
Rawls’, concentrating on the political aspects of such a society of peoples, talks of an overlapping consensus” as a result of successful political, social and philosophical discourse through communicative action taking place in the formulation and interpretation of laws. This relies on faith in reason, and would, in my opinion, only be a first step towards true consensus, which requires the removal of those irreconcilable clauses in comprehensive doctrines, both religious and secular, that would otherwise remain as an underlying cause of friction. This can only take place if those clauses are modified to conform with the UN charter of human rights. It is matter of give and take for the common good.
The Middle East is a name referring to a location relative to Europe; it should perhaps have its own name to create an image of independence. The Levant is a name by which the region has been known for centuries, and which implies the rising sun. It is also flexible in that it can include any number of countries.
Peace treaties have never lasted very long throughout history. They were broken for different reasons, but usually it was a matter of power and the monarch’s ego. The general population had no say in the decisions, but was persuaded to follow the leader. Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and before them Charles de Montesquieu thought that peace could not prevail in a monarchy. They said, that only when the people become “citizens”, that is when they have a democratic right to participate in the national decision making processes, would it be possible to achieve a lasting peace.
I am suggesting that the troubles of the Middle-East could ultimately be resolved by the formation of a Levantine Union, similar to the European Union. In principle, the Levantine Union would be a society of peoples that has formed a social contract for their co-existence.
The American socio-political philosopher, John Rawls, suggested a way how populations could form a society of peoples. He suggested that this could only happen between “well ordered” peoples, which means that they are liberal, democratic, pluralistic, and just. To start with, using John Rawls’ classification, there will be ‘‘well-ordered peoples’, plus ‘outlaw states’ and ‘peoples burdened by unfavourable conditions’. The well-ordered peoples will fit immediately into the requirements that can fulfil prerequisites for entry into a ‘social contract’ between them in the formation of a society of peoples. For the remainder, it will require time and eduction to bring them along towards adopting the principles of human rights and tolerance that will ultimately allow them to qualify for participating in the society of peoples. An important point in the considerations by the society of peoples for dealing with a rogue state is that there must be a distinction between its leaders and officials on the one side and the civilian population on the other, as the latter will usually not have the power to influence the leaders’ actions.
Going back to the example of the European Union. The EU was an attempt to break the cycle of bitter hostilities in Europe between historically bitter enemies . They were brought together by three men: the French member of Parliament at times prime minister or foreign minister, Robert Schumann, the Belgian politician Paul-Henri Spaak, and the German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. These men where visionary leaders with persistence and courage. All of them changed the path of history towards peace.
On a smaller scale, there were other countries, bitterly divided, where men with vision and great ethic managed to create peace.
The division and hatred in Ireland was after centuries of bloodshed brought to a situation of consensus by Tony Blair and a dedicated team from both sides. The division and hatred that had beset South Africa as a result of the policy of apartheid was brought to a peaceful consensus between the opposing sides by Albie Sachs, judge on the Constitutional Court, and Nelson Mandela.
The Levant cannot expect to achieve a lasting peace treaty, because the entrenched political views resist any sacrifice towards peace that would diminish the autonomy of each state. In all of the above historic cases the situation was one of continuing disasters, and the peoples were ready for drastic action. I believe that the majority of people in the Levant want peace, and would welcome a new approach to achieve it.
To form a Levantine Union would first of all require an influential, visionary leader that understands the politics and culture of the peoples involved (and I have at least one such person in mind). Then the following guidelines would have to be followed:
• The negotiations must take place on the basis of “communicative action” (Jürgen Habermas), where all participants are equal, and where financial or military power is ignored;
• All participants must be willing to negotiate for the common good;
• All nations must be willing to give up some of their autonomy, which will then be pooled to achieve a common constitution;
• Voting will be on an equal basis per nation, not influenced by the number of the population;
• Each people will be able to have its own laws, subject to an overriding constitutional law of human rights.
The advantage of this to all participants is their greater international voice, their sharing of wealth, retaining their individual history, language and culture, and of course, peace.
Rawls’, concentrating on the political aspects of such a society of peoples, talks of an overlapping consensus” as a result of successful political, social and philosophical discourse through communicative action taking place in the formulation and interpretation of laws. This relies on faith in reason, and would, in my opinion, only be a first step towards true consensus, which requires the removal of those irreconcilable clauses in comprehensive doctrines, both religious and secular, that would otherwise remain as an underlying cause of friction. This can only take place if those clauses are modified to conform with the UN charter of human rights. It is matter of give and take for the common good.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Is the European Union truly pluralistic?
Pluralism is not a one-way street. To sign the UN charter of human rights is only the beginning of achieving true pluralism, and the citizens have to bring it to fruition.
There are a number of aspects to be considered in discussing pluralism, as this term includes race, and culture as well as religion.
The US has had a very long pre-occupation with the colour of its citizens’ skin. The recent article “There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism” by Jennifer Hochschild and Vesla Mae Weaver in the Cambridge Journals, describes, how laws have been promulgated to separate people of different races in the US, even to the extent that they prohibited interracial marriage. Things have changed however; quoting from the article: “The Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965 that removed immigration restrictions based on national origin and the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia that struck down laws forbidding interracial marriage jointly facilitated powerful demographic changes in the United States. Immigration rose, to over a million people a year in some years. Interracial and interethnic marriages occurred much more often than before; the number and proportion of mixed-race children grew; and multiple ways of recognizing group mixture arose in the society, culture, and economy.” So those recent changes seem to have taken skin colour out of the equation in the US, and some commentators suggest that by 2050 this will no longer be an issue. I suggest, that it should never have been an issue in the first place.
Multiculturalism is a mix of a very different nature. In Australia it is actually being celebrated, as it has, since WWII contributed to a much richer cultural mix in the population. It also drove a bottom-up influence for the government to give the original owners of the land, the aborigines, equal rights as citizens, accompanied by an apology for their prior mistreatment.
Religion is, however, still a major risk to achieving a unified people, even though the emphasis on the differences is driven by a minority in most countries..
In his book, The Law of Peoples, The American philosopher John Rawls suggested a way how a number of peoples could form a society of peoples. Such a society, he argues, can only be formed by well ordered peoples, which are liberal, democratic, and just, terms that include pluralism, justice as fairness, and human rights.
To reach an outcome with regard to pluralism, he prefers to discuss his theory on a purely political basis to the exclusion of other topics including religions by using a veil of ignorance. This then creates the problem of leaving conflicts between adherents of various comprehensive doctrines, both religious and secular, unresolved. Rawls answer to this is that their differences can be contained by reason, in that these adherents can be expected to find reasonable consensus for the sake of the common good, and that the citizens will live together peacefully in the society of peoples. This he calls overlapping consensus.
The European Union could be seen as one of such societies of peoples, and even John Rawls cites it as an example. However, as Jürgen Habermas pointed out to John Rawls in an article in the Journal of Philosophy 92 (March 1995), “Reconciliation Through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism” (Political Liberalism (Columbia Classics in Philosophy)
), the reliance on faith in reason does not remove the risk of substantial disagreement and even unrest.
Most nations these days are becoming more multicultural as a result of massive migration resulting from inequality between the world’s nations, and because of increased mobility. As a consequence people from many different cultures and religions are living together in close proximity to each other, mostly in an urban environment, and ignorance can create fear or at least dislike of the unknown other on both sides In addition, the newcomers, often coming from an unstable national environment, find it difficult to see that the rule of law in their new situation is in fact a reliable system to achieve justice.
Education, especially at an early age, will contribute towards a better understanding of the differences between and similarities of these cultures. Religious practices can, however, become the more obvious and visible obstacles to a better understanding, as is currently the case with the Burqa in France, or the building of mosques in Switzerland. As the EU is a union of European nations that have much of their history in common, Islam is immediately more visibly different in such an environment, and requires considerable patience to explain any differences.
Islam is already changing internally in removing some of the shackles that were imbedded by centuries of consensual development in its laws, the Shari’a. Many countries with a majority of Muslims in their populations have signed the UN charter of human rights, which means that their constitutions provide for the equality of the gender and freedom of choice of religion, which in turn represents a clear break from a traditional interpretation of the Shari’a. This has brought about a process of internal modernisation of Islam. Started by Ustadh (revered teacher) Mahmoud Mohammed Taha of Sudan, who believed that the part of the Qur’an received by the Prophet during the first thirteen years of his mission in Mecca is the true Islam, while the one received in Medina after that period was to be used merely as an introduction to Islam for people not familiar with the Arab traditions of the time. He and his ardent follower Abdullahi An-Na’im argue that with a generally much higher level of education now in the twenty-first century, the Medinan part of the Qur’an is no longer necessary and should now be abrogated, and that those clauses in the Shar’ia referring to them also be removed. To some Muslims this may appear rather drastic, but it would then take out those parts that have called for gross inequality of women and members of other religions.
It should therefore be possible for the imams and the other religious leaders in the EU to go beyond the idea of faith in reason as suggested by John Rawls, and negotiate the removal or modification of those parts of the Qur’an and Shari’a that are in the way of achieving true consensus rather than overlapping consensus between the different cultures within the peoples of the EU. Naturally, such negotiations may also need to bring about some adjustments in doctrines of other religions or secular groups to satisfy the needs of Muslims or atheists for that matter, to remove any such points of friction that may exist. A successful outcome of such negotiations would then create an example or role model for other societies of peoples, such as the African Union, and for that matter for the USA.
Now it is up to citizens to help their governments to bring about true pluralism from the bottom up.
There are a number of aspects to be considered in discussing pluralism, as this term includes race, and culture as well as religion.
The US has had a very long pre-occupation with the colour of its citizens’ skin. The recent article “There's No One as Irish as Barack O'Bama: The Policy and Politics of American Multiracialism” by Jennifer Hochschild and Vesla Mae Weaver in the Cambridge Journals, describes, how laws have been promulgated to separate people of different races in the US, even to the extent that they prohibited interracial marriage. Things have changed however; quoting from the article: “The Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965 that removed immigration restrictions based on national origin and the 1967 Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia that struck down laws forbidding interracial marriage jointly facilitated powerful demographic changes in the United States. Immigration rose, to over a million people a year in some years. Interracial and interethnic marriages occurred much more often than before; the number and proportion of mixed-race children grew; and multiple ways of recognizing group mixture arose in the society, culture, and economy.” So those recent changes seem to have taken skin colour out of the equation in the US, and some commentators suggest that by 2050 this will no longer be an issue. I suggest, that it should never have been an issue in the first place.
Multiculturalism is a mix of a very different nature. In Australia it is actually being celebrated, as it has, since WWII contributed to a much richer cultural mix in the population. It also drove a bottom-up influence for the government to give the original owners of the land, the aborigines, equal rights as citizens, accompanied by an apology for their prior mistreatment.
Religion is, however, still a major risk to achieving a unified people, even though the emphasis on the differences is driven by a minority in most countries..
In his book, The Law of Peoples, The American philosopher John Rawls suggested a way how a number of peoples could form a society of peoples. Such a society, he argues, can only be formed by well ordered peoples, which are liberal, democratic, and just, terms that include pluralism, justice as fairness, and human rights.
To reach an outcome with regard to pluralism, he prefers to discuss his theory on a purely political basis to the exclusion of other topics including religions by using a veil of ignorance. This then creates the problem of leaving conflicts between adherents of various comprehensive doctrines, both religious and secular, unresolved. Rawls answer to this is that their differences can be contained by reason, in that these adherents can be expected to find reasonable consensus for the sake of the common good, and that the citizens will live together peacefully in the society of peoples. This he calls overlapping consensus.
The European Union could be seen as one of such societies of peoples, and even John Rawls cites it as an example. However, as Jürgen Habermas pointed out to John Rawls in an article in the Journal of Philosophy 92 (March 1995), “Reconciliation Through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’ Political Liberalism” (Political Liberalism (Columbia Classics in Philosophy)
), the reliance on faith in reason does not remove the risk of substantial disagreement and even unrest.Most nations these days are becoming more multicultural as a result of massive migration resulting from inequality between the world’s nations, and because of increased mobility. As a consequence people from many different cultures and religions are living together in close proximity to each other, mostly in an urban environment, and ignorance can create fear or at least dislike of the unknown other on both sides In addition, the newcomers, often coming from an unstable national environment, find it difficult to see that the rule of law in their new situation is in fact a reliable system to achieve justice.
Education, especially at an early age, will contribute towards a better understanding of the differences between and similarities of these cultures. Religious practices can, however, become the more obvious and visible obstacles to a better understanding, as is currently the case with the Burqa in France, or the building of mosques in Switzerland. As the EU is a union of European nations that have much of their history in common, Islam is immediately more visibly different in such an environment, and requires considerable patience to explain any differences.
Islam is already changing internally in removing some of the shackles that were imbedded by centuries of consensual development in its laws, the Shari’a. Many countries with a majority of Muslims in their populations have signed the UN charter of human rights, which means that their constitutions provide for the equality of the gender and freedom of choice of religion, which in turn represents a clear break from a traditional interpretation of the Shari’a. This has brought about a process of internal modernisation of Islam. Started by Ustadh (revered teacher) Mahmoud Mohammed Taha of Sudan, who believed that the part of the Qur’an received by the Prophet during the first thirteen years of his mission in Mecca is the true Islam, while the one received in Medina after that period was to be used merely as an introduction to Islam for people not familiar with the Arab traditions of the time. He and his ardent follower Abdullahi An-Na’im argue that with a generally much higher level of education now in the twenty-first century, the Medinan part of the Qur’an is no longer necessary and should now be abrogated, and that those clauses in the Shar’ia referring to them also be removed. To some Muslims this may appear rather drastic, but it would then take out those parts that have called for gross inequality of women and members of other religions.
It should therefore be possible for the imams and the other religious leaders in the EU to go beyond the idea of faith in reason as suggested by John Rawls, and negotiate the removal or modification of those parts of the Qur’an and Shari’a that are in the way of achieving true consensus rather than overlapping consensus between the different cultures within the peoples of the EU. Naturally, such negotiations may also need to bring about some adjustments in doctrines of other religions or secular groups to satisfy the needs of Muslims or atheists for that matter, to remove any such points of friction that may exist. A successful outcome of such negotiations would then create an example or role model for other societies of peoples, such as the African Union, and for that matter for the USA.
Now it is up to citizens to help their governments to bring about true pluralism from the bottom up.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
World Population
As the growth of the world's population will have an impact on peace, I included a chapter dealing with this subject in my book, "world without war, made possible by empowered individuals". world without war, made possible by empowered individuals
The following is an extract from the book:
Statistics
The next 100 years will see a population explosion of incredible proportions. Not only will the resulting increase in the consumption of the world’s resources have a major impact on the environment, but the increase in population densities will also create social pressures throughout the world. As in the past and even at present, scarcity of supply will engender the risk of social unrest, warfare and starvation, and this has already now become evident in too many countries.
The current population density on earth, measured in people per country, is already showing China and India as countries with a population of more than one billion.
The world’s population will grow unevenly in the four corners of the earth.
There are a number of varying estimates for the size of the world’s human population in 50 or 100 years. A major variant is the impact of improved economies, as with greater assured family income there will be a reduction in the number of children.
The rate of increase has historically decreased in the last few decades, and it is expected to continue to decrease. Fertility, measured as the average number of children per woman, varies considerably in different countries.
Projections by the UN’s Population Division, based on the 2004 revision of the World Population Prospects database, are estimated to grow from 6.5 billion in February 2006 to 8.9 billion in 2050. In 1802, the world’s population was one billion; the 20th century has seen the most rapid increase in history.
Food
Third World countries will grow more unstable, as food resources will become scarce. Many people will emigrate as social or political refugees and will aim to enter First World countries legally or illegally. The influx of illegal immigrants to the USA from Latin America and Asia is a typical example, and pressure will increase as the impact of global warming and increased population in poorer countries increases.
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) famously warned that a rapid increase in population would ultimately result in ‘misery’ in the form of rapid depopulation as a result of insufficient food supply. As has been seen in history, his commentary has been proven right many times and is still being proven today in African nations and Haiti. His projections were not based on the much more efficient agricultural techniques of today, but the principle still applies. Global climate changes are already showing increases in extended droughts and cyclones, causing extensive crop losses in spite of state-of-the-art agricultural technology.
If history is any guide to how an increasing population will affect the mindset of people coming under increased stress from diminishing supply in food, fuel, water and essential raw materials for construction and manufacture, then one could expect greater hostility among peoples in the worst affected areas. Before people die of starvation, they will turn on one another, kill and even resort to cannibalism. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Arable land is limited and, apart from the oceans, it is the only source of food production. Of this planet’s 148 million square kilometres of land, approximately 31 million are arable; however, arable land is being lost at the rate of over 100,000 km² per year as a result of urban sprawl and drought. If this is seen against a growing population, it becomes clear that arable land per head of the world’s population is reducing at an alarming rate. While it was a mere 0.51 ha per person in the year 2000, it will become about 0.34 ha per caput in 2050, a reduction of 33 per cent or one third. If scientific predictions of rising oceanic water levels resulting from the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice eventuate, then available arable land will shrink even more as a result of flooded deltas and low-lying islands being submerged.
Population Impact
Non-renewable resources of this planet Earth are finite and supply of renewable resources is already under considerable stress. Populations predicted in accordance with various criteria are mere extrapolations that do not seem to include a factor for depopulation through environmental impact. Neither do they recognise the depletion of finite resources to construct homes, factories or machinery. Jared Diamond in his book ‘Collapses’ studied past and present populations whose cultures failed to survive as a result of mostly environmental degradation caused by their own actions.
Social Impact
Traditional cultures and traditions in each nation will be under enormous stress and most of them will continue to be diluted, a process that is noticeable now. In that change, much indigenous knowledge about animals and plants will disappear. The study of ethno-botany may save some of that knowledge but any plans to integrate population issues effectively into socio-economic development with an inevitable increase in population densities will need to include their knowledge for the protection of nature.
The official Roman Catholic Church policy of prohibiting the use of birth control is no longer tolerable. It creates population growth in the poorest civilisations in the world, population explosions that have caused in the past and are even now causing untold suffering with starvation and consequent genocide. This is one of the most urgent changes to religious dogma needed to help bring greater sustainability to the world as a whole.
What will be most pressing is the need to prepare for the huge social changes in a comparatively rapid shift towards urbanisation. In managing such changes, organised religions must put aside their differences and find common ground. Governments must plan for greater movement of people through legal or illegal migration. Such movement will bring together people of disparate cultures into urban environments with higher population densities and consequently closer contact with one another. At present, there is friction between cultures separated by boundaries, and such friction must be resolved now for future migration to take place peacefully and allow these people to become safely integrated into a new urban lifestyle foreign to them at present. Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’ will be a mild description of the changes confronting societies in the next ten decades. Future Shock
Change will always create friction, and rapid change will be even more difficult to implement without finding early answers to the increased stress. The old gods will not remain suitable and acceptable to many people, as they are unable to unite mankind’s mindset to create this new world of denser populations. Yet organised religions through communicative rationality could aim unselfishly to become a uniting participant in the social support and new philosophical thread that is needed to bind peoples together. Individuals will be able to drive this change to religious attitude collectively and to encourage organised religions to come together in the parliament of the world’s religions, so they can help tackle this enormous task. The ‘worldsoul’ in each person’s mind will sustain the ‘worldspirit’ of the spiritual stream in the cultures of commitment to develop the methodology and moral settings for achieving the necessary outcomes in the world, with or even without the organised religions.
At present, the business community is working towards better international co-operation with all stakeholders. So are an increasing number of governments. Organised religions on the other hand are still not sufficiently aware of the need for better inter-religious coordination in their share of the task of bringing humanity together in peaceful collaboration. There is room for all if we heed the word of the scientific community. If the world’s religions do not bring their followers along the same path, they will become redundant in the end. The global ethic started in the secular world with a view towards organised religions following suit.
The following is an extract from the book:Statistics
The next 100 years will see a population explosion of incredible proportions. Not only will the resulting increase in the consumption of the world’s resources have a major impact on the environment, but the increase in population densities will also create social pressures throughout the world. As in the past and even at present, scarcity of supply will engender the risk of social unrest, warfare and starvation, and this has already now become evident in too many countries.
The current population density on earth, measured in people per country, is already showing China and India as countries with a population of more than one billion.
The world’s population will grow unevenly in the four corners of the earth.
There are a number of varying estimates for the size of the world’s human population in 50 or 100 years. A major variant is the impact of improved economies, as with greater assured family income there will be a reduction in the number of children.
The rate of increase has historically decreased in the last few decades, and it is expected to continue to decrease. Fertility, measured as the average number of children per woman, varies considerably in different countries.
Projections by the UN’s Population Division, based on the 2004 revision of the World Population Prospects database, are estimated to grow from 6.5 billion in February 2006 to 8.9 billion in 2050. In 1802, the world’s population was one billion; the 20th century has seen the most rapid increase in history.
Food
Third World countries will grow more unstable, as food resources will become scarce. Many people will emigrate as social or political refugees and will aim to enter First World countries legally or illegally. The influx of illegal immigrants to the USA from Latin America and Asia is a typical example, and pressure will increase as the impact of global warming and increased population in poorer countries increases.
The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) famously warned that a rapid increase in population would ultimately result in ‘misery’ in the form of rapid depopulation as a result of insufficient food supply. As has been seen in history, his commentary has been proven right many times and is still being proven today in African nations and Haiti. His projections were not based on the much more efficient agricultural techniques of today, but the principle still applies. Global climate changes are already showing increases in extended droughts and cyclones, causing extensive crop losses in spite of state-of-the-art agricultural technology.
If history is any guide to how an increasing population will affect the mindset of people coming under increased stress from diminishing supply in food, fuel, water and essential raw materials for construction and manufacture, then one could expect greater hostility among peoples in the worst affected areas. Before people die of starvation, they will turn on one another, kill and even resort to cannibalism. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Arable land is limited and, apart from the oceans, it is the only source of food production. Of this planet’s 148 million square kilometres of land, approximately 31 million are arable; however, arable land is being lost at the rate of over 100,000 km² per year as a result of urban sprawl and drought. If this is seen against a growing population, it becomes clear that arable land per head of the world’s population is reducing at an alarming rate. While it was a mere 0.51 ha per person in the year 2000, it will become about 0.34 ha per caput in 2050, a reduction of 33 per cent or one third. If scientific predictions of rising oceanic water levels resulting from the melting of Arctic and Antarctic ice eventuate, then available arable land will shrink even more as a result of flooded deltas and low-lying islands being submerged.
Population Impact
Non-renewable resources of this planet Earth are finite and supply of renewable resources is already under considerable stress. Populations predicted in accordance with various criteria are mere extrapolations that do not seem to include a factor for depopulation through environmental impact. Neither do they recognise the depletion of finite resources to construct homes, factories or machinery. Jared Diamond in his book ‘Collapses’ studied past and present populations whose cultures failed to survive as a result of mostly environmental degradation caused by their own actions.
Social Impact
Traditional cultures and traditions in each nation will be under enormous stress and most of them will continue to be diluted, a process that is noticeable now. In that change, much indigenous knowledge about animals and plants will disappear. The study of ethno-botany may save some of that knowledge but any plans to integrate population issues effectively into socio-economic development with an inevitable increase in population densities will need to include their knowledge for the protection of nature.
The official Roman Catholic Church policy of prohibiting the use of birth control is no longer tolerable. It creates population growth in the poorest civilisations in the world, population explosions that have caused in the past and are even now causing untold suffering with starvation and consequent genocide. This is one of the most urgent changes to religious dogma needed to help bring greater sustainability to the world as a whole.
What will be most pressing is the need to prepare for the huge social changes in a comparatively rapid shift towards urbanisation. In managing such changes, organised religions must put aside their differences and find common ground. Governments must plan for greater movement of people through legal or illegal migration. Such movement will bring together people of disparate cultures into urban environments with higher population densities and consequently closer contact with one another. At present, there is friction between cultures separated by boundaries, and such friction must be resolved now for future migration to take place peacefully and allow these people to become safely integrated into a new urban lifestyle foreign to them at present. Alvin Toffler’s ‘Future Shock’ will be a mild description of the changes confronting societies in the next ten decades. Future Shock
Change will always create friction, and rapid change will be even more difficult to implement without finding early answers to the increased stress. The old gods will not remain suitable and acceptable to many people, as they are unable to unite mankind’s mindset to create this new world of denser populations. Yet organised religions through communicative rationality could aim unselfishly to become a uniting participant in the social support and new philosophical thread that is needed to bind peoples together. Individuals will be able to drive this change to religious attitude collectively and to encourage organised religions to come together in the parliament of the world’s religions, so they can help tackle this enormous task. The ‘worldsoul’ in each person’s mind will sustain the ‘worldspirit’ of the spiritual stream in the cultures of commitment to develop the methodology and moral settings for achieving the necessary outcomes in the world, with or even without the organised religions.At present, the business community is working towards better international co-operation with all stakeholders. So are an increasing number of governments. Organised religions on the other hand are still not sufficiently aware of the need for better inter-religious coordination in their share of the task of bringing humanity together in peaceful collaboration. There is room for all if we heed the word of the scientific community. If the world’s religions do not bring their followers along the same path, they will become redundant in the end. The global ethic started in the secular world with a view towards organised religions following suit.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Spiritual Change
Not quite independently from social changes (see my blog post below: Social Changes from Emancipation) caused by economic and commercial influences, changes in religious belief systems have occurred ever since the very beginning, when god was first invented in the form of spirits and symbols that were attached to objects.
With the development of less symbolic and more speech oriented language, with semantic and grammatical clarity, there was a gradual change of emphasis:
“The demystification and a consequential loss of power of the sacred realm took place via the conversion of ritually secured normative basic consensus into speech; in train with that followed the birth of the rationalisation potential imbedded in communicative action. The aura of the enchantment and horror radiating from the sacral, the enthralling power of the holy, is transformed into the binding power of the criticisable claim to validity, both sublime and banal.”
Habermas, quoting the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1958–1917), describes the process whereby religious powers attributed to objects gradually became reified. In this way, the concepts of god or spirit became formed in their own identity rather than in those of objects. While they may have had a preferred location for their existence, they were not attached to those locations or objects and became less concrete. The Greek and Roman polytheism represented a higher form of that animism, and took a new step toward transcendence. The gods’ dwelling places withdrew from the human communities to the mysterious heights of Olympus and the depths of earth. Only when Christianity deriving from Judaism arrived, did god finally move to its own kingdom, which is not of this earth. The separation of nature and divine was so complete that it showed signs of animosity. (Jürgen Habermas – Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns – Volume 2, 1995, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft – my interpretations).
At the same time, the notions of divinity became more generalised and abstract; they were no longer impressions, as in the beginning, but ideas.
In summary, the rationalisation of worldviews is expressed as a process of abstraction that changes mythical powers into transcendental gods and eventually sublimates them as ideas and concepts, and, at the expense of the shrunken realm of the divine, leaves nature behind without gods.
“Ultimately the rationalised world views have to compete with the authority of a fully secularised science. This will develop a reflexive attitude opposite tradition as such. The fundamentally problematic transmission of the tradition can now only be continued through the medium of controlled critical theory (Kritik). Traditional awareness of time does now have to be switched into an orientation towards the future.” (Habermas, 1995)
The rationalisation of the religious world views then reinforces the need for the separation of religion from the state. The state, on the other hand, is then forced, by the development of capitalism, to ‘control’ moral or ethical issues by devising legitimacy and introducing laws and control agencies. Individual ethics had previously been applied as a leftover of the ‘protestant business-ethic’ that prevailed in Europe during the early reformation. By contrast, in a people where state and religion have not become separated, such as in some Muslim countries that manifest themselves as unbroken totally integrated societies, such rationalisation has not yet taken place.
“In an unbroken integrated society the religious cult is like a ‘total institution’, which encompasses and normatively integrates all activities, be they in the family or in the area of communal work, and which treats any transgression of norms as sacrilege. While such basic institutions can use language for communicating situation and task specific norms, the communicative action again remains limited to an instrumental role, and the influence language has on validity and application of norms can be disregarded.”(Habermas, 1995)
With the development of less symbolic and more speech oriented language, with semantic and grammatical clarity, there was a gradual change of emphasis:
“The demystification and a consequential loss of power of the sacred realm took place via the conversion of ritually secured normative basic consensus into speech; in train with that followed the birth of the rationalisation potential imbedded in communicative action. The aura of the enchantment and horror radiating from the sacral, the enthralling power of the holy, is transformed into the binding power of the criticisable claim to validity, both sublime and banal.”
Habermas, quoting the French sociologist Émile Durkheim (1958–1917), describes the process whereby religious powers attributed to objects gradually became reified. In this way, the concepts of god or spirit became formed in their own identity rather than in those of objects. While they may have had a preferred location for their existence, they were not attached to those locations or objects and became less concrete. The Greek and Roman polytheism represented a higher form of that animism, and took a new step toward transcendence. The gods’ dwelling places withdrew from the human communities to the mysterious heights of Olympus and the depths of earth. Only when Christianity deriving from Judaism arrived, did god finally move to its own kingdom, which is not of this earth. The separation of nature and divine was so complete that it showed signs of animosity. (Jürgen Habermas – Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns – Volume 2, 1995, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft – my interpretations).
At the same time, the notions of divinity became more generalised and abstract; they were no longer impressions, as in the beginning, but ideas.
In summary, the rationalisation of worldviews is expressed as a process of abstraction that changes mythical powers into transcendental gods and eventually sublimates them as ideas and concepts, and, at the expense of the shrunken realm of the divine, leaves nature behind without gods.
“Ultimately the rationalised world views have to compete with the authority of a fully secularised science. This will develop a reflexive attitude opposite tradition as such. The fundamentally problematic transmission of the tradition can now only be continued through the medium of controlled critical theory (Kritik). Traditional awareness of time does now have to be switched into an orientation towards the future.” (Habermas, 1995)
The rationalisation of the religious world views then reinforces the need for the separation of religion from the state. The state, on the other hand, is then forced, by the development of capitalism, to ‘control’ moral or ethical issues by devising legitimacy and introducing laws and control agencies. Individual ethics had previously been applied as a leftover of the ‘protestant business-ethic’ that prevailed in Europe during the early reformation. By contrast, in a people where state and religion have not become separated, such as in some Muslim countries that manifest themselves as unbroken totally integrated societies, such rationalisation has not yet taken place.
“In an unbroken integrated society the religious cult is like a ‘total institution’, which encompasses and normatively integrates all activities, be they in the family or in the area of communal work, and which treats any transgression of norms as sacrilege. While such basic institutions can use language for communicating situation and task specific norms, the communicative action again remains limited to an instrumental role, and the influence language has on validity and application of norms can be disregarded.”(Habermas, 1995)
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
A Solution to Poverty?
There is no single silver bullet to solve poverty; it must be approached on an holistic platform. Poverty can’t be overcome by providing food, but must aim at assisting the poor with finding ways to produce an income that will provide them with the basic essentials of life.
Easier said than done, but some initiatives have succeeded. Here is an extract form my book “World without War, made possible by empowered individuals”.
“Poverty is a major cause of unrest and over-population in the world. To own property is one of the most basic incentives for people to be able to help themselves. This does not need to be a plot of land; at its most basic, it may be a herd of goats, or a sewing machine.
“Economic theorists have always recognised the importance of secure property rights in creating the right incentives to produce and invest.”
Secure property rights played an important role in the rise of western Europe’s economies, and students of less developed countries and ‘transition economies’ reinforce this lesson. The creation and support of property rights are the responsibility of governments, and by corollary, their loss is often caused by dictatorial governments driven by communist policies, or by greed, power or racial discrimination, with no understanding of economic principles. Communism has failed as a result, although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is managing a slow transition to capitalism by a gradual process. Her economy in the south east of the country at least is adopting some of the capitalist methods of transacting business in accordance with WTO rules, albeit with government capital under licence. The recent ruling in the PRC to permit private ownership of land is a further step away from communism in its strictest form. The transition is however likely to be associated with considerable unfairness and continuing hardship, as it appears that many properties were acquired from very poor peasants simply by displacement without compensation. In the end, to be accepted more widely, the PRC will need to be seen to conform even more to WTO and UN requirements for fair trading and human rights.
The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh through its founder, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2006 ‘for their efforts to create economic and social development from below’. His bank has initiated the worldwide trend of the introduction of micro-credit, loans for very small amounts to assist poor people to get started. The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh formally began operating as a specialised credit institution in 1983, although its history can be traced back to an innovative pilot project that began in 1976. The bank gives small-business loans to the poorest of the rural poor on a group liability basis instead of requiring any collateral. Because they have no collateral, the Grameen Bank borrowers do not have access to conventional sources of finance. This is seen as a major tool in the battle to break the cycle of poverty for millions of people around the world. ”
Infrastructure in the third world is just as important as education. A farmer needs to be able to transport his produce efficiently to market, which requires at least a path for a horse or ox drawn cart, or even a bicycle. If this farmer has to rely on a buyer to come to his property to buy, the price will never be satisfactory, but at a market place, the comparison with others will create better fairness.
Another way to assist in third world and developing countries, is by Moral Capitalism. This is the way socially responsible corporations utilise the low wages available in those nations, and at the same time supporting the development of infrastructure, education and training, by helping to reduce corruption, and engaging local suppliers and subcontractors. The result will be a growing economy and increasing access to the international market.
Corporations of this type have formed an institution, “The Caux Round Table”, that has established the principles to achieve such moral capitalism since shortly after WWII. Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good
Easier said than done, but some initiatives have succeeded. Here is an extract form my book “World without War, made possible by empowered individuals”.
“Poverty is a major cause of unrest and over-population in the world. To own property is one of the most basic incentives for people to be able to help themselves. This does not need to be a plot of land; at its most basic, it may be a herd of goats, or a sewing machine.
“Economic theorists have always recognised the importance of secure property rights in creating the right incentives to produce and invest.”
Secure property rights played an important role in the rise of western Europe’s economies, and students of less developed countries and ‘transition economies’ reinforce this lesson. The creation and support of property rights are the responsibility of governments, and by corollary, their loss is often caused by dictatorial governments driven by communist policies, or by greed, power or racial discrimination, with no understanding of economic principles. Communism has failed as a result, although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is managing a slow transition to capitalism by a gradual process. Her economy in the south east of the country at least is adopting some of the capitalist methods of transacting business in accordance with WTO rules, albeit with government capital under licence. The recent ruling in the PRC to permit private ownership of land is a further step away from communism in its strictest form. The transition is however likely to be associated with considerable unfairness and continuing hardship, as it appears that many properties were acquired from very poor peasants simply by displacement without compensation. In the end, to be accepted more widely, the PRC will need to be seen to conform even more to WTO and UN requirements for fair trading and human rights.
The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh through its founder, Muhammad Yunus, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize 2006 ‘for their efforts to create economic and social development from below’. His bank has initiated the worldwide trend of the introduction of micro-credit, loans for very small amounts to assist poor people to get started. The Grameen Bank of Bangladesh formally began operating as a specialised credit institution in 1983, although its history can be traced back to an innovative pilot project that began in 1976. The bank gives small-business loans to the poorest of the rural poor on a group liability basis instead of requiring any collateral. Because they have no collateral, the Grameen Bank borrowers do not have access to conventional sources of finance. This is seen as a major tool in the battle to break the cycle of poverty for millions of people around the world. ”
Infrastructure in the third world is just as important as education. A farmer needs to be able to transport his produce efficiently to market, which requires at least a path for a horse or ox drawn cart, or even a bicycle. If this farmer has to rely on a buyer to come to his property to buy, the price will never be satisfactory, but at a market place, the comparison with others will create better fairness.
Another way to assist in third world and developing countries, is by Moral Capitalism. This is the way socially responsible corporations utilise the low wages available in those nations, and at the same time supporting the development of infrastructure, education and training, by helping to reduce corruption, and engaging local suppliers and subcontractors. The result will be a growing economy and increasing access to the international market.
Corporations of this type have formed an institution, “The Caux Round Table”, that has established the principles to achieve such moral capitalism since shortly after WWII. Moral Capitalism: Reconciling Private Interest with the Public Good
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