United We Drink:
Inquiries into the Future of the World Economy and Society
Sohail Inayatullah
“United We Drink: Inquiries into the future of the World System,”
Prospectiva (April 1995, No. 3), in English, and Catalan as Bevem Units:
estudis sobre el futur mundial de l’economia i las societat, 4-31.
UNITED WE DRINK
In a United Airlines commercial, we are told that from the outback of
Australia we can see Rio, from Thailand we can see the Rhine and from
Mt. Fugi we can see the Golden Gate Bridge. It is United that helps us
visualize this new world, a united world, a friendly world. Coca-Cola's
advertisement, played during the 1992 Winter Olympics at Albertville, is
equally important. Coca-Cola proudly announced that it was sponsoring
Olympic teams from every nation, the US team being one among them. This
is a first in the history of the Olympics and perhaps even the history
of civilization. We are united not by our mutual love, we are united not
by one ideology, or even by one God, but by our mutual desire to drink
Coke. It is the logos of Coca-Cola that stands tall above the planet,
the rays of sun glimmering off the bottle, and bringing joy to the
world. The world is not evil but friendly, United has made it that way.
In the early 1980's, Johan Galtung, Professor of Peace and winner of the
Right Livelihood Award gave a speech in which he reminded us that the
coke bottle also makes a great molotov cocktail. Well those days appear
to be over. In the battle of ideologies, capitalism has won--communism
and Third World nationalism are in ruins, now only waiting for eager
anthropologists to study this failure in civilization building.
The only recent threat to world capitalism was Saddam Hussein. Imagining
a global Islamic polity, or at least an Iraqi empire in the Middle-East,
and challenging the US backed Saudis and their territorial and cultural
claims on the holy land, Hussein moved into Kuwait. He was like the wild
gunslinger from the Old American West. Brave but brutal. But the Sheriff
did not blink and Hussein's vision of an alternative world, neither
Western nor Communist, but dynastic and Islamic, died. He was unaware
that the wildness of Iraq was no match for the technological
sophistication of the West. The Sheriff might not have had the fastest
hand but he did have global satellites.
The end of Islam as an alternative world system appears to now be
complete. While the inability of Israel to unite the Arab world was one
indication, the misuse of OPEC funds was far more serious. Instead of
using billions for Third World development projects, the money was
immediately reinvested back into US banks which then was loaned as
transformed petrodollars to third world nations. All gained but the poor
in the first and third world. But it was in 1981/82 when Hussein
attacked Khomeni--the legitimate challenger to the Western worldview in
that he did have an alternative to the modern world--that Islam began
crumbling from within. Instead of attempting to reconstruct Islam, to
make it relevant for the next century--that is, focus on rethinking
philosophy, science and technology and serving the poor--Hussein,
propped up by the CIA, focused on military power. Instead of developing
an Islam that had a strong material growth dimension and a commitment to
distributive justice, as well as articulating the fundamental values of
Islam so as to contribute to global issues of environment, knowledge and
development, particularly outside of the discourse of national
sovereignty and instrumental rationality, Hussein turned his gaze on old
dynastic disputes. While he failed miserably in conquering Iran he did
manage to destroy the Iranian claim to the future. The West enthralled
at his version of modernist Islam showered him with praise and funds. It
was this same West that was quick to abandon him when Hussein turned his
attention to their puppet state, Kuwait.
The Gulf War if not a World War was certainly a global war. Like other
global projects, this war united the world. Even though George Bush's
manliness was on the line, it was the United Nations that was fighting,
even if merely as an extension of the US State Department. The victor,
however, was Cable News Network, with individuals in real time able to
judge themselves who was right and wrong, who was winning and losing.
The world was now united in a new mythical polity of electronic nerves .
While Internet is in its infancy, it remains the planet's larger
undertaking, the grandest social and technological innovation, promising
to not only create communications among individuals and NGOs and thus
in-between State structures but also to provide the vehicle for the
Earth as a Shopping Center.
But internet had not yet reached Iraq and thus it was only through CNN
that news could be constructed. Still while CNN left out numerous images
for global visual consumption, the brutality on Iraqi citizens, for
example, we saw more than in the Chinese revolution. In that instance,
Deng saw that the workers had joined the students and that real
socialism, economic democracy, instead of a State monopolized economy
was being vocalized. A few students he could tolerate but workers
actually wanting people's socialism was too much. In the guise of
Tiananmen Square, workers' associations were crushed. The attack on the
Chinese State was defeated and notwithstanding idle trade threats from
the United States, from either Bush or Clinton, the Chinese GNP has
continued to expand. The message to capitalists everywhere is that your
money is safe in China. Our State is strong; labor is weak. Deng knew
that Coca-Cola would win. He was merely afraid workers might want a
greater piece of the action, of China's political and economic future.
And now as China sends its satellite (funded by Turner Broadcasting,
among others) into the sky, limiting sovereignty to 19th century visions
of the nation-state will not suffice. Even if receiving the signal
remains illegal, this temporary shutting of the gaze of the Chinese to
the external world will not succeed, for MTV, CNN, Sky News have already
entered Chinese social and cultural space (in Taiwan and Hong Kong). And
as Deng well knows the Chinese are first of all a people, bounded not by
Western articulations of the modern nation-state but by the historical
family State. Lee Kuan Yew's moral prescriptions may work much better in
managing the paradoxes and contradictions of the emerging world social,
spiritual and technological orders than the legislation of the
individual gaze.
GOOD AND EVIL: EVIL AND GOOD
In many ways, we have taken significant steps toward the global
civilization "new age millennium seekers" and others have been
envisioning for at least the last hundred or so years. But paradoxically
these changes have not come about from goodness as the humanists among
us would want us to believe, rather they have in many cases come about
from our "evil" actions . Indeed, it is the thin layer of American
culture that is universal . It is global pollution that unites us. It is
the depletion of the ozone layer that unites us. It is the fear of
nuclear holocaust that unites us. It is the unstoppable march of
consumerism that unites us, for we are all shoppers now.
It is Coca-Cola that unites us. In an age when many are reverting to
nationalism, and renewing vicious historical agendas long suppressed by
the materialism and technocracy of modernity, it is Coca-Cola that gives
us the message of the new world. And, intriguingly, it is the evil
empire, the previous USSR, that saluted not its own national flag but
the Olympic flag and anthem when it won medals--perhaps a minor moment
in the history of the expansion and contraction of the Russian empire,
but nevertheless ripe with poetic charm.
But how has this come to be. This modern world that is now breaking
apart began to take shape a few centuries ago. As R.B.J. Walker writes:
The claims of Church and Empire, the obligations of feudal modes of
socioeconomic organization, as well as the categories of philosophical
and theological speculation all rested on a hierarchical understanding
of the relation between the collective and the particular, the universal
and the specific. With the massive transformations of early modern
Europe, these hierarchical formulations no longer provided a plausible
account of this relation. It is in this context, for example, that we
usually understand the emergence of new conceptions of the individual
and nature as radically distinct from each other, of the Cartesian ego
set apart from the objective world. It is in this context also that the
most fundamental questions about political identity had to be posed
anew.
In the battle between Church and Empire--between intellectual expansion
and territorial expansion, in the battle between two very different
sorts of civilizations, one inward looking the other outward looking,
one feudal in its economic mode and the other tributary in its economic
mode--both lost. It was not the king or the knight who won. It was not
the priest, or the advisor, the minister, the serfs or the slaves.
Rather outside the castle wall (but not in the fields where the peasants
toiled), but in the trader-led marketplace began the emergence of the
world capitalist system (and then exported through the power of naval
and military technology).
This was the birth of capitalism, the beginning of a five hundred year
trend. Central to the new social formation was a system in which the
capitalists were at the top, farmers and workers at the bottom and
intellectuals/priests and warriors, the military in the middle, existing
at and for the will of the capitalists.
Instead of empire, it was now a system of not-so-equivalent
nation-states. Liberty, fraternity, and equality, the cry of the French
Revolution, eventually became the goals of "civilization" but only in
the context of, only in the boundaries of the nation-state. The strength
of the West was making its particular "civilization" universal, thus
becoming the measure of all other civilizations.
The universalization of a particular civilization further exacerbated
the tension between center and periphery, indeed, Western civilization
and modern capitalism thrives on this distinction. However, what is good
for the center is not good for the periphery for the periphery
structurally exists for the benefit of the center. The first stage in
this process was the slave trade, the second was the theft of raw
materials, the third was the dismantling of the periphery's
manufacturing abilities and the fourth was the creation of a world
intellectual space in which the other was culturally inferior, that is,
uncivilized. The fifth has been the paradigm of development, of
relinquishing the last bit of local knowledge for universal models of
economic and political development that implicitly carry on the value
structure of social Darwinism, of Spencer and Comte.
This has not been difficult to accomplish as most cultures themselves
make this important distinction between the inner and the outer: between
the racially pure and the barbaric. Once the definition of the West as
modern was accepted, the rest quickly followed . By the end of this
century, it has become quite clear who is Center and who is Periphery.
Simple indicators such as how we date history (BC, AD), time (GMT), how
we see beauty (Paris) and those in the periphery see the West (streets
of gold and lanes of sex), and the dominance of "development" (we must
develop the natives, the poor, the rural, women, the Other) as the
paradigm of science and social science tell us a great deal.
We see this most noticeably in the recent Disney movie Aladdin. The
magic of traditional Araby are replaced by images of Iowa, of
secularization, and of the categories of humor of Hollywood. Aladdin no
longer resembles an Arab but a mid-western American. In the beginning of
the movie he is called Aladdin--the servant of God--but by its end he
wants to be known as just plain "Al." Instead of categories of humor
based on the Arab world, we are given mindsets that emerge from American
situation comedies. The sophistication of the technology, the brilliance
of the editing make an alternative Aladdin a luddite joke. Thus instead
of a story of a young boy's dream of spiritual renewal, of challenging
the power of the Vizier, we enter a world where all of us become just
plain Al. And what does Al do after the movie: he buys Aladdin and
Yasmeen dolls. What does that do to the innocence of young children who
live in the Arab world: it leads to self-hate since they know they are
no longer Aladdin nor can they move to Iowa and become plain "Al."
Wars over material wealth as well have continued the peripheralization
process. World War I destroyed the old empires and created the
possibility for the American economic miracle. Standardize and buy: Mix
and Melt. Destroy Nature. Create Technology. Destroy History. Create
Movies (and now virtual Reality). Destroy tradition. Create
obsolescence.
World War II also destroyed the idea of world unity based on the victory
or the superiority of any particular race. But it created the
possibility of world unity based on a particular nation. America claimed
the mantle previously held by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch,
and the British. But now the arena of power has moved from the riverine,
to the Mediterranean, to the Atlantic and now with the rise of the
Japanese (and South-East Asia) to the Pacific .
Even having debt denominated in one's own currency (just print more
money, one doesn't have to worry about exchange rates) has not made up
for high military expenditures and the costs of being a global
policeman. Caught within its own paternal and expansionist cosmology,
the US can but take itself too seriously. The American image is that of
a global division of labor where the US provides power and high finance,
the Pacific manufacturing, and Asia and Africa raw materials and labor.
But as the Japanese have most recently shown, humans are so not because
they are spiritual or reflect on the world, but because they can improve
on nature.
Using the following indicators , we can better understand what has
happened. Their c/n ratio was even higher than the America's (c/n is
culture over nature, value added manufacturing), their quality/price
ratio was also higher and they understood (having few commodity
resources) that they had to be self-reliant. Working together, again
family as State--state and business, labor and management, high tech and
artisinal--they created a system of vertical integration where each
level, from multinational, to local suppliers, to labor, was provided
security. Moreover with Mahayana Buddhist and Confucian culture there
existed the prerequisite ethic to allow for a view in which heaven had
to be created on earth. The vertical structure of its culture was
isomorphic to a bureaucracy and an industrial organization while its
horizontal structure also allowed for distribution for all . Unlike
hindus who resorted to karma, the acceptance of the will of god, East
Asia wanted to improve upon God. Understanding that high-tech markets
were chaotically dynamic and that once buyers and suppliers became
locked into a new technology, profits would create a positive cycle of
growth also helped accelerate the miracle economy.
But like the US, Japan has one economic ratio that does not bode well.
This is the f/r ratio: the finance economy to real economy. This is the
relative amount of money that one can make through speculation versus
the amount of money that one can make through labor, manufacturing and
services. For example, why work when there are millions to be made in
the speculative markets. It is this speculative bubble, this misuse of
money--money which does not work, that takes money away from
reinvestment, from science and technology, from redistribution and
demand--that leads to cultural and economic decline. The markets go up
not because of industrial expansion (because of fundamental value) but
go up when the real economy goes down because interest rates fall.
Ultimately the two economies disengage, concentration of wealth goes to
record highs, money does not roll over and a deep economic crisis sets
in.
However, the Japanese seeing their real economy slowly delinking from
the finance economy have tried to cool things off and instead of a
spending spree they have been on a building spree, mostly in East Asia.
Like others, they know that the US is a sinking ship, and it is time to
get off.
In the third world case it is the not f/r ratio that accounts for
financial crises but the c/r ratio--the corrupt economy to the real
economy. Individuals feel hopeless since economic rewards go neither to
the speculators nor to the hard workers, rather they go to who has
caste, class, or family advantage, to those in the bureaucracy. The wave
of privatization is partly about reducing the power of bureaucrats and
creating an emerging entrepreneurial class. This, however, does not give
labor a better or new deal, as the Japanese have managed. Labor remains
local, while capital is global and mobile.
But from the Japanese corporate perspective, national capitalism is only
one stage. According to the President of Canon Corporation, capitalism
is ready for its final phase, having traversed the earlier three.
Phase 1-Jungle capitalism, survival of the fittest in Spencer's terms.
If you are poor, you deserve to be miserable. God's smile has not
touched you.
Phase 2-Modified capitalism. Labor is as important as management. Treat
labor well for they provide demand, they buy goods too. Moreover, well
treated labor is loyal and works hard. The goal is to reduce the ratio
between the wealth of the manager and the laborer, not 80 to 1 as in the
US but say 20-1.
Phase 3-National Capitalism. In this third stage, the State enters the
economy so as to provide discipline to money. It is the State that
should protect so that corporations do not suffer from "quarteritis" as
Loy Weston argues, so the long term, that is market share is kept in
mind, not merely short term profits. The State also ensure that labor
does not suffer from the cycles of growth and recession. But the nation
is limited in mobility and corporations can do a better job at giving
identity anyway. In short: the new world of the corporate world
government.
Phase 4--World corporations. In this final stage, corporations finally
gain sovereignty and individuals identify with them first, nations and
race, second, and families, third. They work directly with people and
with consumer associations, and other types of NGOs. States mainly
create an environment where corporations can thrive (without hurting the
system as a whole) and the State sets limits when battles between
corporations hurt the common good, for example, when they damage the
global environment.
This then is the future: a world led by corporations, where our sense of
identify is linked to companies. Will they issue passports, why not ? Do
we need nations? Only for the short run, in the long run a world
government that can aid in capital accumulation would be better. The
world government would have a military force needed when a particular
group reverts back to racism and nationalism or feudalism (Hitler or
Bush or Hussein).
NEITHER FEUDAL NOR CAPITALIST OR COMMUNIST
But this is not the only vision of the future. Another very important
vision comes from, among others, Indian philosopher P.R. Sarkar. In his
view we are in dramatic times, when time itself changes shape and begin
to "gallop." In the language of Ilya Prigogine , we are not in a stable
situation, we are a state of flux, in a state of chaos, a time of
bifurcation when the actions of a few can change the world system. In
these times, the action of a few can change the direction of history.
Human agency does matter.
Sarkar approaches identity in a dramatically different way than
conservative or liberal traditions. For him, we can associate with our
ego, which we often do or we can expand to our family. Then onward to
our nation, then often our race, and for a few of us, humanity. But
there is a step further which the Japanese model of growth, which the
Coca-Cola model of the future forgets. This is that nature is alive, we
can improve upon it but everything in the world is alive, animals,
plants and humans. Everything is an expression of the supreme
consciousness. Humans, of course, are special not because they can
produce hierarchy but because they have purpose. In a recent show of
Star Trek: The Next Generation, everyone suddenly finds themselves
without identity. One character suggests that we will know who we are
once we know our mission, our purpose. Another says we will know who we
are once we know our enemy, we are here to fight. A third response is we
will know who we are once we know our rank, where we stand in the
hierarchy of humans. Who are the ruled and who are the rulers becomes
the key question. A fourth possibility not developed in the show is that
of examining our pockets, to see how much we have in our wallet or bank
account and then locate ourselves.
For Sarkar it is purpose that makes us special, this ability to reflect
on consciousness, and following classic Indian thought to become that
consciousness through meditation on it, since our individual mind is
essentially the same as the universal mind, universal consciousness.
What results are strategies to save the whales, dolphins, rare plants,
to protect global life and diversity. But Sarkar is not merely focused
on the concern for the Other, he also understands that a civilization
cannot stand unless it provides for the economic vitality of its people.
But unlike the language of material resources which ends up commodifying
everything, for Sarkar the task is to create conditions where we can use
physical, mental and spiritual potentials to the utmost. Humans have all
types of potentials that are not used: land, labor, but especially
imagination and spiritual wisdom. Our global poverty is not only a
result of the concentration of wealth but also because of the lack of
use and misuse of our various potentials. Moreover, these resources are
rarely used for the global good, instead wealth remains in the nation.
Can the model of the family be extended beyond the nation, to the global
itself; instead of, Japan inc., World inc.?
However, while the spiritual potentials are endless mundane potentials
have limits and their overuse and abuse hurts the planet as a whole.
Thus in Sarkar's model there would be limits to wealth accumulation.
These would be tied to minimums placed in the context of basic
needs--survival needs, housing, air, water, health, education, food. The
largest part of the economy would be the people's economy run as
cooperatives with management and labor working together. In this
needs-based economy, new technologies would reduce hours of work.
Economic projects too large or complex could be run by large
organizations, corporations or government. And projects too small should
be run by individuals in a market economy.
Where the communists went off track is that they placed labor value at
the center of everything, forgetting the value of capital, imagination,
and spiritual development. Where capitalism is incomplete is that it
minimizes the value of labor placing the accumulation of capital at the
center. One totally attempts to place land in the hands of the
collective, the second in the hands of the individual. Certainly humans
have a desire to own some land and wealth but we neither need nor can
afford unlimited land for everyone, nor should we place wealth in the
hands of a central authority run by bureaucracies (as in the
nationalizing industries model).
Sarkar also understands the value of research and development, of
entrepreneurship, for it is this which leads to new wealth, which
increases our potentials, which leads to growth. There should be
incentive structures! Humans, after all, learn from struggle. Following
Indian philosophy, there is no end to history as with communism where
all ends with the perfect state or with capitalism where all the rich
end up in heaven. It is the individual in the context of the planet that
is paramount; the economic vitality is a prerequisite for creating an
environment where enlightenment is possible. Social perfection is not
possible since central to the Indian experience is diversity; individual
perfection, in terms of spiritual enlightenment, however is not only
possible but central to one's life mission.
But most important is that these principles should be applied
differently in different places. But given Sarkar's neo-humanism, of the
placement of our identity in the cosmos, what of our local conditions,
what of our local environment and our sense of territorial place? For
Sarkar, these local units should be our basic economic units, decided on
local languages, bioregions, and historical cultures not on the category
of artificial nations (created largely by departing colonial masters.
(Rwanda being the latest Western export to the US). As each unit becomes
self-reliant it will expand its trade until there is a world economy.
Sarkar does not argue against trade, however, as third world nations
know, when you sell your raw materials, in the long run you become poor.
The prices for commodities fluctuate, but the prices of manufactured
goods go up. Also with raw material there are no automatic multiplier
effects. With manufacturing there is learning as the challenges of
development are met. Schools and other industries grow up around
manufacturing centers. But where should these centers be? Where the raw
materials are, that is in the countryside, not in the city, argues
Sarkar. Thus for Sarkar local economic development is critical as it
leads to economic vitality, especially when based on economic democracy.
But this is not localism based on race as many would define it during
economic downturns (blame those that look or talk different is the
easiest strategy for the politician who wants to rule, as Slobodan
Milosevic of Yugoslavia knows very well). Localism is based on where one
puts one's wealth. One is local if one uses money for the area's growth,
not use it to make profit which is sent far elsewhere; if one
contributes to the area's social and cultural development.
Sarkar gives us another model of economic growth. Compatible efforts
include community development projects, cooperative centers and on a
larger scale through the activities of the Green Movement. But Sarkar
develops the most comprehensive, eclectic model. His model gives us a
real alternative to that of world capitalism or coporatism that
challenge identification with the logos of Coca-Cola.
But then who is right? Which way will it turn out? In the short run
clearly realpolitik will determine the future, that is, new models that
threaten traditional order are often resisted intellectually and if that
strategy fails, through physical force. But in the long run a model
succeeds if it is complete. To begin with, a new model will have to
bring economic wealth. But it will also have to satisfy the needs of the
French revolution which have all but become universal, that is, equity,
liberty and fraternity. And it will have to satisfy some basic spiritual
needs.
To better understand this let us frame this in a simle two by two table.
The top left square is survival needs. The top right square is for
well-being needs. The bottom left is freedom needs and the bottom right
is identity.
Capitalism and liberalism have been strong on freedom: the right to
travel, the right to mobility (especially for capital, less so for ideas
(monopolized by Western categories of thought) and less for labor
(bounded by nations and now larger economic blocks). Even with these
boundaries, one could still leave the farm, go to the city and make a
million dollars. One could buy a house and ensure that one's children
were not laborers, that their life was better off. Of course this worked
better for the center than for the periphery. Africa which lost it male
population because of the slave trade did not fit so well into this
model. Recently General Ibrahim Babangida, former president of the
Federal Republic of Nigeria, argued that debts would be written off
because the billions and billions of units of wealth that was lost
because of the slave trade . Indeed, the West should be paying
reparations to Africa because of the slave trade. This was true for
India as well where Indian weavers had their hands chopped off if they
dared weave clothes and defy the East India Company.
Thus capitalism does well in survival and well being categories at the
center but not at the colonies, for it is the colonies that provide the
raw materials, that provide the labor, that provided the gold. For
instance, imagine the opium wars if they were held today. Can one
imagine if the cocaine cartel attacked the US and forced Americans to
become addicts. Impossible and yet this was China's fate not too long
ago.
The community development model provides identity (localism, the local
group, often religion), provides well being, but only for a few and at
modest levels of wealth. It is excellent at survival, there is
employment, but is weak at freedom in terms of mobility. It works at the
local level but is more difficult at the national or global level. What
is needed are models like Sarkar's that attempt to bridge this gap
borrowing the best from the socialists, the capitalists, the Japanese.
Freedom, however, in terms of the accumulation of capital and land is
limited.
The presence of the periphery underscores the crisis within global
capitalism for not only won't the periphery go away but it has now
seeped into the Center, in a kind of reverse globalism. Among other,
Robert Nelson understands that there is a crisis within capitalism. He
reminds us that it is theology that gave legitimacy to capitalism.
However, capitalism has lost its ethical bases. It has not won! The
critique of inequity that television world travel show to all is no
longer hidden. And people know, especially women, that you can't blame
the victim; there are social structures that create victimhood. You thus
can't blame females for rape. Nor can you blame the rape and genocide of
the third and fourth worlds on those worlds themselves. With terms such
as structural violence becoming more current, then we should not be
surprised that the idea of progress is in trouble. For as Nelson argues,
capitalism might be efficient but it hasn't caught people's imagination.
Remember, economic growth was once linked to bringing heaven on earth.
At one time greed was harmonious with the predestined elect. It is no
longer. Self-interest was harmonious with the Newtonian worldwide since
the world was perfectly ordered and lawful (but relativity has made that
problematic). Spencer raised corporations to the top of evolution and
although many are still riding the crest, they have yet to deliver. Even
Pope John Paul II reminds us that while capitalism might be efficient,
investment choices are always moral and cultural. While the world has
rejected socialism, it has not rejected egalitarianism and
environmentalism.
Of course what John Paul was saying was that people want markets, the
free exchange of ideas, goods, and services but not, but not,
monopolies, excessive greed. For Nelson, if capitalism is to survive, it
needs new moral arguments and spiritual dimensions, a task for
theologians not economists. Unfortunately or fortunately, Coca-Cola has
not hired any theologians, and Disney only hires people who believe in
animism.
Again what is needed are theories and practices that create a new blend
of spirituality, environmentalism, distribution and growth. What is
needed are systems of thinking, like Sarkar's, wherein there is not one
right or wrong, but there are layers of reality, as with Spengler and
Buddhism, deep and shallow. Most of us exist at the base levels of
intellect and body. But great inventors and artists enter the realm of
intuition, while prophets go deeper into super rational realms in which
the unity of being is prima facie evident.
DIVERSITY AND UNITY
The last important criterion point is the ability to be diverse as
significant as survival, well being, identity and freedom. One must be
able to respond to the problem of philosophical diversity. There are a
range of positions available. (1) one could argue that there is only one
truth and others are false. History and the diversity of humanity have
not supported that view. (2) One could be zen like and argue that all
positions are useless since they are created by the intellect and we
must thus transcend philosophy. True, but creating structures and
theories is what humans do. Entering a zen frame of mind will not change
that. (3) One could argue that only the material world is real and
culture and spirituality are not important. (4) Or one could argue that
only the spiritual world is real and the material world is not
important. We have seen civilizations focus on either of these
directions and obviously both are true from different vantage points (as
Pitirim Sorokin argues). However, overly materialistic perspectives lead
to crises of faith and overly spiritual civilizations result in a loss
of economic vitality. There are a host of mid range positions that are
more useful, for example, the view that all cultures are trying to
approach some type of truth but are seeing different fragments of it or
there is one absolute truth and the material world is a representation
of it, not eternally true but relatively true. In this latter case the
relationship between the infinite and the finite needs to be worked on,
however. But what the ecological movement has shown us is the importance
of diversity. It is crop rotation that preserves the land and leads to
greater wealth. To this Sarkar adds prama or balance between the
individual and the collective, between body/mind/spirit, between inner
and outer directed activities.
As important as ontological diversity, the nature of the totality of
reality, is epistemological diversity, the ways in which we know we
know. A balanced perspective would acknowledge multiple epistemological
perspectives: logic/reason, sense inference, authority, and intuition.
It would also include love or devotion as not merely an emotion but as a
central way of knowing and changing the world. Most theories or
perspectives focus on one or two of the above but rarely do we have
attempts to include all of these epistemological perspectives.
One can thus judge the future based on the ability to meet freedom
needs, identity needs, well being needs and survival needs as well as
diversity (ontological and epistemological) needs. At the same time as
important are visions that blend the inner with the outer, the need to
bring heaven to earth and earth to heaven, that is those that provide a
moral and spiritual theory to our material dimensions and a material
dimension to our idealism. Socialism has failed. Capitalism has united
the world but cannot it lead us further. Most likely it is efforts such
as Sarkar's Prout and other similar efforts, that are both authentically
based on a civilization's categories, the local, and try and transcend
these categories through dialog and borrowing from other cultures, the
global. It is this link between the local and the global that will
provide the next model of the next century.
Postmodernity, Chaos, and Civilizational Stages
While we await new models of sustainability and transformation, the
present can be characterized by the end of systems. There is a pervasive
sense that things no longer make sense, that is the world is no longer
familiar. One possible accounting for our sense of homelessness is that
we are in between epochs. Sorokin is useful in helping us understand
this transition stage. He argues that the range of type of possible
systems can be understood by answering the question, what is real. We
answer this question either as matter or idea or both, or nothing is
real, or believe the question itself is meaningless, that is, we can
never know what is real. The first answer leads to a materialistic type
civilization, what he calls sensate, the modern world. The second leads
to ideational type civilization based on the transcendental, the middle
ages, for example. The third type leads to a brief period where both
mind and body are real, where both heaven and earth are considered
important. The fourth type cannot lead to any type of civilization and
the fifth leads to despair since there is no ground to stand on. Writing
much earlier, in the 1960's, Sorokin believed that we are at a time
where sensate civilization is in its final era and a new civilization is
starting. Thus the world does not make sense because the bases of the
world is changing. Sorokin predicts we will now enter the idealistic,
both mind and body, golden era.
But we could also move to a new ideational civilization. This was the
attempt of Iran to move an essentially spiritual religion civilization
run by the clerics. This is the effort of evangelical Christians where
the key question is not how much one has saved but is one saved? This is
fundamentalism--religious and scientific--a return to the original text,
uninterrupted by history and uninterpretable by those not chosen. For
the fundamentalist, we should live in a world without metaphors but with
the utterances of the original text since they were truth and will
always remain so. Interpretation is not considered problematic since
there is only one cosmology (Islamic or Western or Sinic or Scientific)
anyway. The problem is what is the status of the Other: are they
barbarians, their text but shadows of the real book, the real science.
Thus fundamentalism sees the future of a diverse world, a world of many
cosmologies, and evokes not the ancient world when language was magic
but the dying modern world wherein language neutrally describes reality,
where language is unproblematic. Seeing a vision of many, it returns
with vengeance to a world of One.
Others see the future and argue that we need new metaphors that break us
out of the universalizing and civilizing project of modernity. Joseph
Campbell certainly based his career on examining traditional
representations of reality across many cultures, arguing that it was
time for new mythic stories. Others ask: is it possible for
civilizations to engage in a grand conversation of who we are and what
the future for all of us can be?
Equally significant are postmodern writers such as Michel Foucault who
argue that we cannot know what is real since the real is always mediated
through language and culture. Everything is politics since language is
not transparent, it does not merely describe the real, but it creates
the real. This goes a step further than Noam Chomsky who argues that
language participates symbolically in creating the real by reference to
deep structures. It also does not return us to the magical world of the
mantra where the utterance of the right word can unite us with the
Other, be it God, nature or self. For Foucault and other postmodernists,
deep structures and ancient mantras are in themselves metaphors. In the
postmodern view, nothing indeed is really real since all is
representational. While this move certainly avoids the reification of
power to any particular vision, ideology or metaphor, it does not help
in creating possibilities and models for economic growth, for
sustainable development, for even as it opens up spaces for
alternatives, it refuses to allow these new spaces to be filled by
possibilities of a different world, of an alternative praxis. As Sorokin
would say, one cannot base a civilization when nothing is really real.
We need some anchor point, some point to place hand, heart and head as
we move onwards into the next century.
But again, Coca-Cola and United Airlines represent the world far better
than social scientists or revolutionaries. Through drinking Coke we can
participate in the soon to be global civilization; we participate in a
deeper emerging global structure. Helping every Olympic team is not the
act of traitors but the act of those who are truly patriotic to the
world--that market share goes up doesn't hurt either.
CULTURES OF TECHNOLOGY AND TECHNOLOGIES ENDING CULTURE
But not only are discussions of reality changing our world whether from
chaos theory or postmodern politics so are the rise of the new
technologies: physical, mental, spiritual and social. While change has
always been destabilizing, a few new technologies in particular promise
to change how we know ourselves and which categories of the real we will
inhabit.
Through virtual reality, we will be able to practise safe travel and
safe sex. Indeed it is the potential for pornography that will drive
this new technology. With the ability of expanded computer technology,
we will be unable to differentiate the real from the imaginary. An image
of a world leader promising prosperity might just be an image
constructed by a few hackers. Fidelity to traditional notions of
representation will be broken. The problem of the original text
especially for fundamentalists will be further complicated since
distinctions between types of reality will be blurred. Will religions
then offer virtual reality experiences of their image of God. Perhaps
the redeemer, whether Jesus, the Mahdi, the taraka brahma, is returning
and might be available to all, at all times. Reality will never be same
again (of course, postmodernists tell us, it never was other than
peculiar, it was always based on the episteme, the epistemological
boundaries of the time). However, now we will be in many epistemes,
which will grow perhaps by each technological innovation cycle. What
then will be fundamental?
Equally damaging our traditional notions of reality will be advances in
genetic engineering. But instead of ending the real, genetic
reconstruction will end the natural. While genetic engineering will
start out quite harmless since all of us want to avoid abnormalities, or
various genetic diseases, thus we will all want to be checked by our
family genetic engineer. But soon this will lead not to disease
prevention but capacity enhancement. Intelligence, memory, body type and
beauty will be open for discussion. Birthing will eventually be managed
by State factories and we may potentially be the last generation to
produce children the old fashioned way. It will be the final victory of
the feminists and their final defeat. The biological cycle will have
been terminated by technology and women will essentially be not any
different than men once their reproductive capabilities become
unnecessary. The causes of alarm are there (since the most likely
scenario will be one where it will be managed by the few for the profits
of the few with our genes moving from personal space to the marketplace)
but perhaps in latter stages when everyone can be beautiful it will be
moral and spiritual potential that will matter the most. Perhaps then
with fewer genetic diseases, our differences will become once again
charming instead of attributes that keep us from uniting as humans.
Perhaps genetic engineering will paradoxically lead not to sameness but
to difference and to a greater humanity.
Development in robotics and artificial intelligence will potentially not
only transform the labor movement and our definitions of work but also
our conceptions of humanhood. We can foresee a time when they will have
legal status . Perhaps not the same as humans but certainly some type of
legal category will be found or will develop that gives them protection
as well as culpability.
To begin with, the best way to eradicate the exploitation and drudgery
of labor (and to tame labor as well) is to increase the use of
technology. In capitalist structures this means layoffs, under
cooperative structures such as Sarkar's this means more leisure and time
for philosophy and play; politics and love. Eventually, a robot will
injure a worker and will be found culpable since it will be argued that
the manufacturer and owner should not be found liable since the robot
learned, since the robot is alive. While the initial drive will be
juridical, concomitant with ways of thinking that see everything as
alive, like quantum physics, Buddhism, animism and Indian thought, and
with advances in artificial intelligence it might be that we will
develop a new ethic of life where humans are only one life form among
many. Their utility value will be surpassed by their existential value.
While a robot uprising is unlikely, the move from robots as represented
as machines, to be seen as dumb but lovable animals and then to gaining
similar rights as children is quite easy to imagine.
What results from a view in which everything is alive, that the real has
numerous dimensions, is a perspective that frames technology not only as
material but as mental and spiritual as well. The first stage of this
results from the human potential movement. If we assume that most of us
use less than a percent of our brain and geniuses use two percent, then
technologies whether concentration and meditation exercises or those
that merge the brain with type of brain enhancement physical technology
should take off. A more balanced worldview (body and mind) would
encourage these types of developments more than chemical based ones.
These might also change our theories of the nature of science as we
search for unities that are both mind and body. Sarkar, for example,
posits that there exists microvita, basic "energies" that carry
information, viruses and can create life. They link perception and
conception and are thus both mental and physical not either material or
ideational as we have historically tended to view the subatomic world.
The basic substance of what is then is no longer dead matter but living
bottles of energy that both use us and can be used by us in a variety of
ways.
Less concerned with holistic technologies, Freeman Dyson believes that
we need to move away from metal-based technologies to biological-based
technologies. Among other suggestions, he has introduced the idea of the
Astro-Chicken: a space ship that is biologically grown instead of
engineered. We already have life substances that eat up bacteria, that
among other uses, can help deal with pollution spills as well as provide
food. His central argument is that we are looking in the wrong direction
for the future. Equally far reaching is the work of Eric Drexler on nano-technologies.
These are minute technologies which in effect would break down matter
and recreate it in any shape or form we want. Instead of growing food,
we could create food by simply rearranging molecules.
These new areas of technology then promise to change the world. They
certainly at one level make the vision of a small community, of local
spaces, less possible. However once these new emerging cultures
transform us, it could be that we might return to a more intimate tribal
lifestyle but choosing not only our tribe but our genetic make-up, our
version of the natural and of the real. These new intended communities
could be on Earth, in our minds, or we could be hurtling through the
stars either with or without our bodies.
Unlike most spiritual thinkers, for Sarkar, these new cultures of
technology provide us with great possibilities to create a better
future. Properly controlled, that is used for needs not profit, and
delinked from instrumental rationality (if that is possible!) they can
help create a planetary society. For capitalists these new technologies
promise a renewal, rejuvenation from the exhaustion that has set in.
They promise to revive the idea of progress. Thus, it is not theologians
who will provide the new spiritual basis for capitalism, but hackers,
lab experts, and new age visionaries. These new technologies pose the
most dramatic problems for those of us who consider the natural as fixed
instead of as constantly changing and in the process of recreation.
Fundamentalists, in particular, will find the next twenty or thirty
years the best and worst times for their movements. The best because the
forces of tradition will flock to them; worst because the technological
imperative and humanity's struggle to constantly recreate itself and
thus nature will not be easily forced back. Even biological spills will
most likely not be controlled by State regulations but by new
technologies themselves. The answer to these types of problems may be in
newer advanced--physically, mentally and spiritually--technologies.
Technologies in themselves will be redefined in this process as not
merely material processes but mental and spiritual processes embedded in
particular cultures. Our notions of the natural, the real, of truth, of
the technological will no longer be fixed but porous just as United and
Coca-Cola have made the idea of sovereignty deeply problematic.
Fundamentalists will attempt to dam these leaks through appeals to the
classical words: God and nation. Humanists will look to citizen control
groups to stem the technological avalanche ahead and scientists will
stand in stunned silence at the world they have helped undo.
And unlike the evening news which has numbed us to fear, the emergence
of a world without a concrete notion of truth, natural, life and good is
cause to fear and rejoice. In the chaos ahead, we may begin the slide
down into a long depression. Center/periphery distinctions could worsen.
Genetic technology or biological technology could yield new viruses, new
types of life that end our life. The planet itself, however, might not
care. Gaia , argues James Lovelock, is a self-regulating mechanism that
keeps life alive, humans might not be needed, just an experiment that
went wrong. She might "choose" rabbits instead of monkeys this time. Out
of this disaster instead of world church, or world capitalism, we might
end up with a world empire again with restrictions on freedom, survival,
identity and well being. Mad Max and The Terminator instead of the
Jetsons or Ecotopia. Or more likely an Internet system that feeds
directly into our brains as we imagine we are feeding into its nervous
system.
However, we can hope that in this postmodern chaotic period, a new world
will emerge that will have not one center but numerous centers, with
many civilizations in dialog with each other, with many forms of
cultures and life, rich with diversity but with some sense of unity, of
enchantment with a larger vision of basic values that we have willed
ourselves to: of dignity for all forms of life; of the right to basic
economic, cultural and spiritual needs for all of us on this planet.
However, in the meantime, the logos of Coca-Cola hangs above the planet.
But once we have drunk from the bottle, it is empty, and we need
replenishing. While spiritual perspectives remind us that only
consciousness is the real thing, local community efforts would have us
switching to juice or local forms of drink. The new technologies promise
to recreate drink itself so that imagining the real thing will be as
tasty as the real thing. Fundamentalists would remind us that the real
thing came only once and it cannot be symbolized as it exists outside of
culture and history. A balanced response might go ahead and drink the
real thing but when finished would search for consciousness and would
question how it was produced, would examine the economics and politics
of distribution and growth. A balanced approach would also want to make
sure there was enough air, food, family, community, education, health,
and mobility for everyone. Neither God nor economy or culture should be
scarce. Like visions of the future they should be abundant.