A
Gaia of Civilizations or the Artificial Society: Power, Structure
and the Future
Sohail
Inayatullah
Attempts to forecast global
futures fall into three or so camps. Most extrapolate from the
present focusing on variables such as population, resource capacity
and distribution of wealth. Technology,
economics and power are seen as the key drivers. From these a range
of scenarios are posited (Rich/Poor divide; The Long Boom; Global
Collapse). Others focus
less on the trends and more on aspirations what images people
desire the future to be like. Community-oriented, deep democracy,
appropriate technology and individual self-actualization tend to be
the descriptors of this more idealistic future. The driver is
generally human agency. A
third set of forecasts focus neither on trends or aspirations but at
other forces, either the transcendental (Hegel's geist moving
through history or the return of the avatar/jesus, for example or
evolution - survival of the fittest). The future that results does
so because of factors that are generally external to human beings,
grander variables.
What
is often lost in these important attempts to understand the future
are the structural constraints and structural possibilites.
In this sense, few scenarios go beyond the dictates of the
present (trend extrapolation), the dictates of vision (aspiration
scenarios) and the dictates of telelogy (the
transcendental/evolutionary).
Structural
approaches explore the parameters of the possible future. What is
probable, not because of current trends (although these are often
defined by structural forces) or agency or the transcendental but
because of real historical limits.
If
we begin to explore the long term, from a macrohistorical
(Galtung and Inayatullah, 1997) view, there are range of
possibilities that define the shape of the long term.
In this essay, we focus on four factors.
The first is P.R. Sarkar theory of varna (or deep episteme).
From this, the future is contoured by Sarkars notion of
four types of power (worker, warrior, intellectual and merchant or
chaotic/service; cooercive/protective; religious/intellectual; and,
remunerative). The second is based on culture and is derived from
Sorokins ideas of three
types of systems (sensate focused on materialism, ideational focused
on religion and integrated, balancing earth and heaven). The third
is based on class and is derived from Immanuel Wallersteins world
systems theory. The fourth is based on gender and is derived from
Riane Eisler's theory of Patriarchy male and female power.
Simply stated and
glossing quite a bit of history - there have been four structures.
1.
World Empire victory of warrior historical power
coercive/protective sensate patriarchy - ksattriya
2.
World Church victory of intellectual power normative
ideational patriarchy - vipra
3.
Mini-systems small, self-reliant cultural systems
ideational androgny - shudra
4.
World economy globalizing economics along national
divisions sensate - vaeshyan
The
question is, which structure is likely to dominate in the next 25 to
50 years? Option 1 is unlikely given countervailing powers given
that there is more than one hegemon in the world system and given
that there is a lack of political legitimacy for recolonization, for
simply conquering other nations. The human rights discourse while
allowing intervention in failing nations still severely delimits
nation to nation conquest.
Option
2, a world church, is also unlikely given that there are many
civilizations (from muslim to christian to shinto to modern secular)
vying for minds and hearts. While the millennium has evoked passions
associated with the end of man, and the return of Jesus, Amida
Buddha or the Madhi, the religious pluralism that is our planet is
unlike to be swayed toward any one religion.
Option
3 is possible because of potential decentralizing impact of
telecommunication systems and the aspiration by many for
self-reliant ecological communities electronically linked. However,
small systems tend to be taken over by warrior power,
intellectual/religious power or larger economic globalizing
propensities. In the
context of a globalized world economy, self-reliance is difficult to
maintain. Moreover, centralizing forces and desire for power at the
local level limits the democratic/small is beautiful impulse.
Option
4, the world economy, has been the stable for the last few hundred
years but it now appears that a bifurcation to an alternative system
or to collapse (and reconquest by the warriors) is possible.
Crises in environment, governance, legitimacy all reduce the
strength of the world system.
Revolutions
from above (global
institutions from UN, WTO, IMF) and regional institutions (APEC) and
revolutions from below
(social movements and nongovernmental organizations), revolutions
from technology (cyber
democracy, cyber communities and cyber lobbying) and revolutions
from capital
(globalization) make the nation far more porous as well as the
chaotic interstate system that underlies it.
A
countervailing force are revolutions from the past
the imagined past of purity and sovereignty (economic
sovereignty, racial purity, and idealized good societies), which (1)
seeks to strengthen the nation state (to either fight mobility of
individuals immigration or mobility of capital
globalization or mobility of ideas cultural imperialism and
(2) seeks to create new nation states (ethno-nationalism).
However,
none of these problems can be solved in isolation thus leading to
the strengthening of global institutions, even for localist parties,
who now realize that for their local agendas to succeed they must
become global political parties, globalizing themselves, and in turn
moving away from their ideology of localism and self-reliance.
Thus
what we are seeing even in the local is a necessity to move to the
global. There is no other way. The issue, of course, is which
globalism? Thus, globalism is not merely the freeing of capital, but
the freeing of ideas (multiculturalism challenging the western
canon, modernity, secularism, linear time) and eventually the
globalization of labor.
While
the latter is currently about fair wages for workers throughout the
world (in terms of purchasing power), it also means that for elite
workers movement throughout the world is now possible - university
positions in varied nations, or moving from ingo to ingo,
multinational to multinational, nation-hopping and passport
collecting. This could eventually lead to a real globalization of
labor and the creation of the Marxian dream a world where
workers unite and challenge capitalist power.
Globalized
labor is even more likely given the rapid aging of Western
societies, where to survive economically, they will need a massive
inflow of immigrants to work to support the retirement bulge.
Historically the median age has been 20, it is quickly moving to 40
plus in OECD nations. Who will purchase the stocks sold by
babyboomers as they begin to retire and pay for their leisure
lifestyles? (Peterson, 1999). Only elites in developing nations are
likely to do so.
Choices
For
the West there are three choices: (1) Import labor, open the doors
of immigration and become truly multicultural and younger. Those
nations who do that will thrive financially (the US and England, for
example), those who cannot because of localist politics will find
themselves slowly descending down the ladder (Germany and Japan, for
example).
The
second choice is dramatically increase productivity through new
technologies, that is, fewer people producing more goods (or a mix
of immigration and email outsourcing). While the first stage is the
convergence of computing and telecommunications technology (the
Net), nano-technology is the end dream of this.
The
third choice is the reengineering of the population - creating
humans in hospitals. This is the end game of the genetics
revolution. The first phase is: genetic prevention. Phase two is
genetic enhancement (finding ways to increase intelligence, typing
second, language capacity) and phase three is genetic recreation,
the creation of new species, super and sub races (Inayatullah and
Fitzgerald, 1996; Foundation for the Future, 2000).
This
is the creation of the Artificial society. The convergence of
computers, telecommunications and genetics, seeing genes as
information and finding ways to manipulate this information. The
main points of this future are:
·
Genetic
Prevention, Enhancement and Recreation New Species , Germ Line
Engineering and the End of "Natural" Procreation
·
Soft
and Strong Nano-Technology End of Scarcity and Work
·
Space
Exploration Promise of Contact or at Least, Species Continuation
·
Artificial
Intelligence The Rights of Robots
·
Life
Extension and Ageing Gerontocracy and the End of Youth Culture
·
Internet
the Global Brain
The
underlying ethos is that technology can solve every problem and lead
to genuine human progress.
In
the long run, this creates a new globalization, where the very
nature of nature (once stable, now dramatically alterable) is
transformed.
Coupled
with changes in nature are processes that are changing the nature of
truth. Postmodernism and multiculturalism all contest stable notions
of truth, instead seeing reality as for more porous, based on
individual, cultural and epistemic perception, essentially
political. Reality as well is less fixed, whether from quantum
notions of what is essential, or spiritual notions of life as
microvita, as perception and empirical, or from virtual reality,
where the world around is no longer the foundation for knowing and
living what is.
Taken
with the problematic nature of sovereignty of self and nation, the
stability of the last few hundred years of the world
economy/interstate system are suspect.
What
this means is that globalism as the agenda of neo-liberalism has far
gone beyond the original program (or perhaps fulfilling the deep
code of the program). Technologies and the reductionist scientific
process they are embedded in are creating a new world where nothing
will have a resemblance to what we historically knew, making humans
superfluous.
Other
Scenarios
But
returning to our structural perspective, alternative scenarios are
possible. This is the Collapse, the convergence of new technologies
gone wrong, the technological fix creating even more problems
new viruses, new species, for example. Nuclear meltdown, virtual
stock markets delinked from real economies and postmodern cultural
depression, even madness, are further problems.
Next
is the globalized multicultural society the vision of the social
movements. Globalization, in this future, would extend to the
liberation of not just capital but as mentioned above: (1) labor
(the right to travel and work eventually eliminating visas and
passports). (2) Culture (news, information, meaning, ideas,
worldview) moving from south to north, and not just as commodities
for liberalism to allay its colonial guilt. The long term
implication is the creation of a gaia of civilizations, each in
authentic interaction and interpenetration of the other, each
needing the other for survival and "thrival" (3) A global
security system, that is, for issues such as war, terrorism, global
climate change, viruses, and new problems being created by the
globalization of capital and technology.
This
world a communicative/inclusive vision of the future - would
have the following characteristics:
·
Challenge
is not technology but creating a shared global ethics
·
Dialogue
of civilizations and between civilizations in the context of
multiple ways of knowing
·
Prama
balanced but dynamic economy. Technological innovation leads to
shared cooperative "capitalism"
·
Maxi-mini
global wage system incentive linked to distributive justice
·
A
soft global governance system with 1000 local bio-regions
·
Layered
identity, moving
from ego/religion/nation to rights of all
·
Microvita
(holistic) science life as intelligent
The underlying perspective
would be that a global ethics with a deep commitment to
communication could solve every problem
this
would then be a systems bifurcation where the world polity would
become decentralized either networked or loose confederations or
multiple hegemons - and the world economy as well would be
decentralized. Culture would move from uniculturalism to
multiculturalism to human culture (our genetic similarities are
among the surprising benefits of the mapping of the human genome, ie
there is no genetic cause for racism and racial differences).
It would be a
future with a non-strategic governance partnership society.
However,
while the aspirations for a soft world governance system are
laudable - during times of intense transformation, plastic time,
where there is a struggle between worldviews and processes - there
is a new center, a reordering of power.
Power does not so easily go away.
Exploitation can be reduced but its elimination is unlikely.
The
structural reality is that over time what will emerge will be a
world government system with strong localism. That is, the
communicative-inclusive vision of the future does not adequately
address issues of power; it is focused far more on aspirations. This
world polity will likely have a world constitution with basic rights
such as language, basic needs, culture and religion enshrined. It
would be a stronger version of the communicative-inclusive society,
that is, with some teeth with it, in the form of a functioning world
court, for example perhaps a balance to the four types of power
referred to above. This system would be a planetary system and not
an empire since there would be no single state hegemon nor would
there be conquest per se.
Still
it is the creation of an artificial society with deep cleavages
between those with access to wealth, information and genetic
technology that remains quite likely. The elite would be from the
North, older, and will be able to extend their life span by thirty
to fifty years. Outside the walls of technocracy, will be the
others.
And
it is the fear of others that will define the polity of the
artificial society. Two political systems are likely a world
empire (the rise of new Napoleon using genomic and net warfare as
the main methods of conquest) or a world church/technocracy (a
religion of perfection with gene doctors becoming the holders of
life and liberty). In the communicative-inclusive future, there will
either be a soft governance system or stronger world government
system. From a structural view, the latter is far more likely.
But
there remain many unanswered questions.
How
will the new technologies and resultant cultures evolve? Who will
control them, how will they be used? Will social movements be able
to successfully resist elite science (concentrated intellectual and
military and technocratic/economic power) using culture and
technology to create inclusive futures? Will a more public and
responsible postnormal science develop (that includes the subjective
and the ethical)? Will multiculturalism transform the West or will
the artificial society beat back the invading others?
References:
Foundation
for the Future (2000). The
Evolution of Human Intelligence. Bellevue, Washington,
Foundation for the Future, 2000.
Galtung,
J and Inayatullah, S (1997) Macrohistory
and Macrohistorians. Wesport, Ct, Praeger.
Inayatullah
S and Fitzgerald J (1996) Gene Discourses: Law, Politics, Culture,
Future, Journal of
Technological Forecasting and Social Change (Vo. 52, No. 2-3,
June-July), pp. 161-183.
Peterson,
P (1999). Grey Dawn. New
York, Random House.
www.ru.org
on the communicative inclusive society
www.futurefoundation.org
on the debate between the artificial and other scenarios
www.proutworld.org
on the more spiritual dimensions of social transformation