DIALOGUE OF CIVILIZATIONS FOR PEACE

By Majid Tehranian

University of Hawaii at Manoa

Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research

The 20th century has been the bloodiest century in all recorded human history (Tilly 1992). Can we turn the 21st century into a century of peace? As we continue to make progress in the hit/kill ratio of weapons, the next century might be even more bloody. That perplexing problem is at the heart of all efforts to develop a global culture of peace through a dialogue of civilizations. This essay assumes a medical systems approach to the problem by providing a diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy.

Diagnosis: A Century of Death by Design

How do you make sense of the collective suicide of 39 Americans, young and old, men and women, in San Diego in late March 1997? The people who took their own lives were not poor, desperate, uneducated, or rebellious. By all accounts, they were highly gifted computer web-designers, making a good income, living in a posh San Diego suburb, in a luxurious mansion, peacefully among themselves and with others. They all belonged to a religious group known as the Heavens Gate, which had started in the 1960s with syncretic beliefs and practices. According to all who came into contact with them, they were all the gentlest and kindest group of people you could have ever wished to know. Why then the extreme measure of taking their own lives? It is a baffling question, and no one can pretend to have a definitive answer.

However, the groups collective suicide presents a telling metaphor for our own century. Since 1900, about 250 new international and civil wars have been waged in which over 100 million soldiers and another 100 million civilians have died. Counting only military casualties, the 18th century had a casualty rate of 50 per million population per year as compared to 60 per million during the 19th century and 460 per million for the 20th century so far. The end of the Cold War brought forth a ray of hope, but subsequent outbreaks of violence in many parts of the world have chastened those hopes. If we add structural violence, which goes on unnoticeably in the slow death of millions suffering from famine, malnutrition, epidemics, or homelessness, the 20th century could be legitimately called a century of death by design. Most of the wars and genocides of this century have been carefully planned by the most advanced techniques of science and one could say, systems engineering.

The end of each millennium has historically prompted hysteric episodes such as collective suicides and apocalyptic predictions, collectively known as the fin de siecle phenomenon. What is, however, special about the 20th century? This has been a century of death by design. From World War I and II to Hitlers, Stalins, Maos, Pol Pots Holocausts, and all postwar conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, Palestine-Israel, Persian Gulf, and Bosnia, the death and destruction of millions of people have been meticulously designed by responsible government authorities who have employed the most advanced information and military technologies to subdue their enemies. As the two recent Persian Gulf Wars (1980-1988, 1990-1991) demonstrated, we have improved our technologies and engineering of death well beyond our moral imagination.

Under such conditions, moral bewilderment is encountering technological certitude. Is it any wonder that sensitive souls might take refuge to a cult that promises the end of time, a recycling of the Planet Earth, the joining of a UFO hidden behind a comet, and the transmigration of life into a new paradise? Religion is the sigh of the oppressed and the stuff of human hope. For centuries, it has renounced the pain and suffering of this world for the coming of a world of peace and plenty. It is only in the last couple of centuries that we have come to expect a ceaseless improvement of our lives here and now. For millions of people everywhere, the Idea of Progress has thus come to the end of its tether. For about half of the human race suffering from worsening conditions of physical and political security, this is fairly obvious. But for the other half living in societies affluent or aspiring to affluence, spiritual poverty is sometimes harder to bear than material poverty. The ceaseless anxieties of atomized societies that reduce the individual to conditions of abstraction and anonymity can lead into cultist ventures or interethnic blood baths as witnessed in Bosnia and Rwanda-Burundi.

Despite its mass murders, the 20th century also has been a century of spectacular achievements in science and technology. This, in turn, has improved the material conditions far beyond all expectations. Absolute incomes have no doubt increased, but so have the gaps in relative wealth and income. The United Nations Human Development Report of 1996 (p. 2) tells us of the growing gaps between rich and poor within and among nations. Two sets of statistics tell the story:

The poorest 20% of the worlds people saw their share of global income decline from 2.3% to 1.4% in the past 30 years. Meanwhile, the share of the richest 20% rose from 70% to 85%. That doubled the ratio of the shares of the richest and the poorestfrom 30:1 to 61:1.

The assets of the worlds 356 billionaires exceed the combined annual income of countries with 45% of the worlds people.

We are witnessing the rise of a global two-tiered society in which automation and robotics are eliminating repetitive and routine jobs in favor of high-tech, high-skill, knowledge-based jobs. Downsizing and outsourcing have become the dual response of the corporate world to the challenges of global competition. Two new social classes identified as the underclass and the corporate elite have emerged at the bottom and top of the global social structure, while the middle classes are routinely downsized to the level of sporadic unemployment. Meanwhile, the social safety net, absent from the Third World, is being chipped away in Europe and the United States. Under these conditions, what does the 21st century portend?

Prognosis: Whither 21st Century?

In recent years, a number of pundits have apocalyptically warned us of the end of history, geography, modernity, university, journalism, and work. Others have spoken of a coming chaos, clash of civilizations, or a new age of feudalism and tribalism that will be characterized by ethnic cleansing on a systematic basis. Nothing is, of course, ending except the 20th century. And since time is a figment of our own imagination to punctuate our own finitude, the end of the century is also illusory.

However, important changes are taking place. In the literature of futures studies, three basic scenarios can be identified which may be labeled as Continuity, Collapse, and Transformation (see Table 1). While the Continuity scenario suggests a continuation the nation-state system and its struggles for power, the Collapse scenario argues that our present international institutions cannot withstand the forces of technological and economic change; therefore, a collapse similar to what happened during the 1930s is probable. A third and more proactive approach calls for the transformation of our institutions in order to meet the challenges we face in the present technological and economic revolutions.

For want of a better term, I am going to call the emerging global political economy, Pancapitalism. In several respects, the new system is distinctly different from its antecedent, i. e. national capitalism. Without going into considerable detail, we may argue that there is a perceptible transition from industrial to informatic economies, from inflexible to flexible accumulation, from national to global markets, from national welfare to international two-tiered societies, from open to gated communities, and from conventional state wars to protracted low and high intensity conflicts within and among nations with heavy civilian casualties.

If the present trends continue, the technologies of mass murder also will progress much faster than the technologies of peacemaking. The wars of the 20th century have been waged in the name of the colliding moral spaces of nationalism, colonialism, and imperialism. The identities and cartographies of violence have been transformed across global times and spaces, from premodern to modern, and postmodern formations. From Korea to Vietnam, Israel/Palestine, Persian Gulf, Somalia, and Bosnia, the collision of spatial claims have been increasingly clothed in greater moral self-righteousness. The adversaries are playing to an ever growing gallery of global audiences watching them on television screens. As the mass media dichotomize, dramatize, and demonize them against us, reiefied images of the Islamic Terrorists, Satanic Americans, Cunning Japanese, Evil Chinese, and Uncivilized Africans become frozen in the minds of mass audiences as justifications for the next cycle of violence.

The new phase in global modernization under Pancapitalism is creating new forms of manifest and latent violence. Since 1945, the character of warfare has changed from direct military confrontations primarily with military casualties to protracted warfare with heavy civilian victims. In WWII, 95% of the casualties were military, in more recent wars, 60% of the casualties are civilian (Barnaby 1988: 57). In these invisible wars, global media are performing a dual role by providing channels for the clash as well as dialogue among competing truth claims. Although the roots of conflicts are structural, the battles are often politicized in the name of competing cultural and ethnic identities. A change in epistemic framing of conflict and cultural attitudes can thus more effectively deal with the underlying problems.

Therapy: Cultural Remedies to Violence

Rapidly expanding global communication provides hope for achieving greater long-term understanding among nations and cultures, but the cluttering of the channels by episodic news of violence without any serious analysis of its root causes and possible remedies is leading to systematic distortions in communication and knowledge. Most news are framed in narrow partisan and nationalist terms. But a global marketplace and society demands global norms, citizenship, and journalism. In order to go beyond partisan interests and their moral geographies, a new spiritual breakthrough leading to a new ethics of transnational communication is needed. This requires intercultural learning.

We may identify at least three kinds of cultural learning: additive, regenerative, and transformative. Additive learning is typical of scientific and technological learning in which knowledge tends to be accumulative and accelerating. Regenerative learning is the moral knowledge that is passed on from one generation to another; it often has to be relearned through the pains and sufferings of each new generation. That is why wars recur and each generation makes some of the same mistakes of the previous ones. By contrast, transformative learning is a type of moral and spiritual knowledge that comes about sluggishly through the inspirations of a great spiritual leader who takes a giant leap forward by integrating the collective learning of all past generations. Such great moral breakthroughs are the equivalent of big technological breakthroughs in history. They reverberate in the sinews of society for centuries to come until they are fully institutionalized. Such are the teachings of our great masters from Zoroaster to Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tze, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad, and Gandhi.

Remedies to violence can be most effectively achieved through a change in cultural perspectives followed by structural reforms (see Table 2). Our social structures determine our images of the world, and our images determine our social behavior and structures. The dialectics of structure and culture is thus a never-ending chain reaction. Due to the universal human conditions of conflict and cooperation, all human cultures contain within themselves contradictory propensities to both peace and violence. However, conditions of rapid growth, inequity, and relative deprivation give rise to greater violence than relative stability and perceptions of equity. Social and cultural learning about conditions of violence can preempt them. Such learning requires dialogical communication among different social classes, ethnic groups, nations, religious and political persuasions. Framing the problems from a single perspective leads to ideological obfuscation and self-righteousness. Entering into dialogue in the public sphere under conditions of relative equality of access to the means of communication and competence can enhance a more dispassionate understanding of the existing social conditions. The international discourse on human rights presents one such example of intercultural negotiations on the issue of human rights (see Table 3).

Gandhi once said it simply, "It is possible to live in peace." Peace is not therefore an end to be reached; it is a process to be generated; it is a path to be taken; it is a culture to be adopted. Pursuing peace with violent means has historically proved self-defeating. But pursuing peace with peaceful means requires a value system that puts the preservation of life forms above all else. It also requires a form of communication that is dialogical in character and transnational and inter-civilizational in its epistemological reach. In such an endeavor, the following seven propositions on the practicality of peace may prove useful:

1. In human relations, conflicts of interests and perceptions are ubiquitous. Peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace, in fact, welcomes the inevitably of human conflict as a reality that makes negotiation of truth necessary and also reconciliation possible through communication and conflict resolution.

2. Conflict can be less destructive and even creative if channeled into understanding and accommodating the interests and perceptions of others. Conflict can serve functional or dysfunctional purposes. If accompanied by violencephysical, political, economic, cultural, or environmentalhuman conflict can become dysfunctional by developing into a cycle of violence. But if conflict is expressed through open, equal, and interactive communication, it can lead to greater understanding and accommodation of interests and perceptions of the conflicting parties.

3. Dialogical communication and conflict mitigation, regulation, and resolution can fulfill this purpose through a variety of methods such as negotiation, adjudication, arbitration, mediation, and satyagraha (non-violent resistance). Dialogical communication, defined as open, equal, and interactive, can facilitate conflict mitigation, regulation, and resolution. The methods of conflict resolution are of necessity culture-bound and can themselves become subjects of conflict. But in a world of colliding cultural and moral spaces, we have no choice except to negotiate and develop synthetic, third cultures in order to bridge the gaps in meaning and understanding between the conflicting parties. A number of conflict resolution methods have, however, become universal in their application, including negotiation, adjudication, arbitration, mediation, and satyagraha (non-violent resistance). Education and training in such methods and any others emerging of indigenous cultures would be of immense value to the mitigation, regulation, and resolution of conflicts at all levels.

4. However, individuals and collectivities are ontologically prone to project the dark side of their contradictory selves onto other(s) providing "legitimate" grounds for dichotomizing, demonizing, and devouring "the enemy" within and without. Conflicts often result in framing, labeling, and name-calling of "the enemy." If such grounds of "legitimation" of conflict are routinized for a few generations, they are reified in the consciousness of the conflicting parties forming insurmountable prejudices that are difficult to overcome. Such are the racial, religious, and ethnic hatreds of several centuries.

5. The Propensity to self-hatred, other-hatred, and violence also rises with increasing atomization of society, identity anxiety, and intensifying low self-esteem. The modern industrial world with its dislocating, atomizing, and abstracting effects on the individuals has become a breeding ground for such collective hatreds. Low esteem, bred by ontological insecurity, identity anxiety, or feelings of futility in the modern world, has proved a powerful force in the development of mass movements that have encouraged an "escape from freedom" (Fromm 1963) and a social-psychology of scapegoating.

6. Propensity to peace rises with increasing family and community bonding, identity security, self-respect, and respect for others. Conversely, ontological and identity security often leads to feelings of self and other respect. That, in turn, often paves the path to peace. Caring families and societies are thus generally peaceful families and societies. To cultivate a culture of peace, we must cultivate a just and caring society.

7. A culture of violence thus constantly dichotomizes self and others separating ends and means, while a culture of peace identifies the self significantly with the other viewing ends and means as a never-ending chain. As Gandhi taught, we must open the windows of our house to all cultural currents without being swept off our own cultural feet. We can best discover global unity through exposure to and celebration of its diversity. Any worldview that dichotomizes between self and other is vulnerable to obscurantism, failing to recognize that the human mind is now more than ever before a constellation of centuries of the human collective unconscious. Any worldview that also draws a sharp distinction between ends and means, speaking of just and unjust wars, legitimate and illegitimate uses of violence, is laying itself open to a culture of violence feeding on self-serving moral pretensions. Moral self-righteousness is the first step in descending into the fire of anger and violence. Intellectual humility and moral self-criticism are the first lessons into the recognition and acknowledgment of the truth claims of others.

Conclusion

Marshall McLuhan's global village has proved to be not a place of harmony but of colliding moral spaces. The Lords of the electronically-moated opulent castles and the rebellious serfs, shamans, and jesters surrounding them have confronted each other through a variety of violent encounters: physical, political, economic, cultural, and environmental. Some 3000 nationalities around the world who have not yet received political recognition from the international community are increasingly clamoring to be subjects rather than objects of history. The global state-corporate system of organized violence will continue to be challenged by sporadic but persistent acts of counter-violence unless the world learns to respect and celebrate diversity by devolving power to the smallest levels of human communities. In place of states of violence in which the world has learned to acquiesce, zones of peace must be built. Such zones, however, would have to rethink the problems of sovereignty, governance, economy, human rights, and civic responsibilities in order to accommodate a human diversity that can be homogenized only to the detriment of peace and justice.

Table 1 - A Schematic View of the Post Cold War Future Scenarios

Table 2 - Cultural Tendencies Towards Violence and Peace: A Schematic View

Table 3 - Cultural Policies with Respect to Diversity and Democracy

REFERENCES

Barnaby, Frank, ed. (1988) The Gaia Peace Atlas. New York: Doubleday.

Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1963

Tilly, Charles. War and the International System, 1900-1992, paper presented for the Hannah Arendt Memorial Symposium on Peace and War, New School for Social Research, 26 March 1992

United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Human Development Report. New York: UNDP, annual since 1990

Majid Tehranian is professor of international communication at the University of Hawaii and director of the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. His latest books are Technologies of Power: Information Machines and Democratic Prospects (1990), Restructuring for World Peace: At the Threshold of the 21st Century (1992), and Globalism and Its Discontents: International Communication and Modernization in a Fragmented World (1998).