A speech between civilizations has been seen as necessary at times. The League of Nations and the United Nations were established to help this speech as the world appeared to be emerging from a long black hole at the end of the First and Second World Wars.
However, the pattern of war has remained unbroken to this point, and Taiwan’s threat of nuclear conflict is also looming. Are we on the verge of a civilization-wide speech?
It’s not just the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, we also face natural disturbance, increasing injustice, loss of society, declining physical and mental health, and the lack of reliable sources of significance.
We are essentially one world because technology has made connections between us. But how do we create the institutions and mindsets that enable us to respond to our shared problems in a planned manner, fueled by various inputs?
The West: Enlightened or Barbaric?
American administration is being challenged. But are American beliefs. However, many Northern people see their democratic society as the country’s best trust in the face of Chinese and Russian totalitarianism, religious fundamentalism and terrorism.
However, such claims have a dull ring for those with darker body who have lived through American imperialism and its aftermath.
The winning Allies after World War I refused to support self-determination for participant people and racial justice because of the grievous harm that racism and imperialism had caused to non-white people. The viability of Western humankind’s capability to calm violence and maintain civility was undermined when Eastern intellectuals saw the fractious slaughter of two world wars.
There have been brutal attacks of human populations by the United States during World War II, the Holocaust in Germany, and numerous deaths in Vietnam and Gaza at the hands of British military technology, to add to the horrors of servitude, the murder of indigenous people, and the indignities of colonialism. As Gandhi pointed out over a century ago, the West lacks the social capital for global leadership.
Do non-Western leadership and a world order based on various civilized principles, however, been more compassionate? Not necessarily, in light of recent history. Once they become militarily powerful, the Japanese and Chinese peoples are humiliated and downed by Western imperial powers and support nationalist governments with their own imperial designs.
After being subject to racism and unfair treaties by the West, Japan rose to the position of imperialist power in Asia. Its alleged goal was to elude Western imperial powers from Asia as a pretext for brutal aggression. Today, the Chinese government acts bellicosely toward its less prosperous neighbors in Southeast Asia.
Under the banner of the Belt and Road Initiative, it is trying to set up its own sphere of influence, justified, as in prewar Japan, by appeals to” co- prosperity”.
Once they mastered the technical mentality and its associated skills and established modern institutions, it was inevitable that non-Western peoples would overtake them in terms of wealth and power. But such “development” has come at a high cost.
The emerging countries ‘ embrace of the nation-state system, whose driving force is nationalism, has been replaced by emerging ones, such as China and India. Moral considerations do not impede the national pursuit of wealth and power, just like in the West.
Nevertheless, competition among nation- states for supremacy may be coming to a close. The stakes are too high, given the crises we face. Our current difficulties cannot primarily be attributed to Western leadership. Rather, they point to the limits of global modernity. All modern countries are affected by ecological decay, the threat of nuclear war, and the absence of a moral and spiritual compass.
Globalization, promoted by the liberal West, promises material abundance evenly distributed as the basis for lasting peace. However, this promise ca n’t be kept in a world of finite resources where people must adjust to environmental constraints. What’s more, the West, and the United States, in particular, expect China and India to make the greatest sacrifices for the sake of the environment.
Additionally, the West has denied the Islamic, Chinese, and Indian civilizations more political voice and influence. Because these civilizations have large populations, seek a place in the sun, and are frequently motivated by anger toward the West, this will only increase conflict.
Within Eastern civilizations, the path to inner awakening has been highly developed, but it is never a central part of the majority’s daily lives. Their influence, though, evaporated in modern times as Westernization and the nation- state took hold.
Then, as the West’s admiration for it faded and ethnic nationalism grew, warrior virtues and a masculine cult took hold. Inner development and reflection appeared to be unaffordable luxuries due to the need for quick and decisive action.
The code of the samurai was idealized in prewar Japan, while in contemporary India, Modi has supplanted Gandhi’s nonviolent and Nehru’s cosmopolitan outlooks with a muscular Hindu nationalism.
Politicized versions of Islam have pushed Sufism aside in recent times, but the nation-state has also neutralized the influence of Muslim jurists and scholars.
Even in China, long ruled in accordance with communist ideology, Xi Jinping has introduced Confucian nationalism. This politicized Confucianism, justifying Xi’s authoritarian rule and top- down orientation, is a far cry from Confucian reliance on the building of moral character and appeals to benevolence.
Is it too harsh or too simple to say that the political and moral values that are a significant component of Eastern culture’s excellence have been undermined by economic development and political power? After all, cultural differences can be accommodated in order for economic development to be achieved without widespread consumerism and ecological collapse, and international politics does n’t need to be a zero-sum game.
Time for intercivilizational dialogue
The alternative modernities to the Western model that Japan, China, and now India have adopted have succeeded in promoting economic growth.
As Tu Weiming suggests, the Enlightenment values of instrumental rationality, freedom, rights, the rule of law and individualism are universal modern values, and so are the Confucian values of sympathy, equality, duty, ritual and group orientation. It seems that yang and yin, reason and emotion, left and right hemispheres of the brain are complementary.
If Western and Confucian civilizations compensate for each other’s weaknesses, they both would benefit from intercivilizational dialogue. Real power is the capacity to be aware of and detach ourselves from our social and cultural conditioning, and the leaders and peoples of China and the United States disagree because they lack a crucial insight that is at the spiritual core of Eastern philosophies. Then we no longer unconsciously react to the prompts of media, advertising and political propaganda, like puppets on a string.
By choosing our own destiny, we take the next step in human development. We are well-versed in the East but also in the West with wisdom traditions that enable us to make this significant leap forward.
Modern science, which has provided us with a lot of insight into human nature and its psychological and social dimensions, is now integrating ancient wisdom, greatly increasing our ability to address the world’s modern crisis. However, opinion leaders and their supporters must acknowledge that no country can win the global fight for power because, under current circumstances, we all lose by its very existence. This is due to modern identities, which are built on gaining power in a zero-sum game.
Civilizations are interconnected, not independently evolving. This was Marshall Hodgson’s radical conclusion, whose book in the 1950s and 1960s revolutionized Western understanding of the Islamic world.
Equally important, Hodgson realized that in the wake of World War II, the world outlook of the West had to become cosmopolitan. Scholars were unable to see these regions in Western terms as the rest of the world began to assert itself. They each had their own distinct histories, religions, and cultures that a narrowly Western perspective could n’t possibly cover.
Iran, in 1998, proposed the idea of a UN Year of Intercivilizational Dialogue, which was adopted in 2001. Muhammad Khatami, the President of Iran, stressed the need for a global culture, while also emphasizing the importance of being anchored in local culture.
Without dialogue among thinkers, scholars and artists from different civilizations, we would be vulnerable to” cultural homelessness”. He added that it was impossible to continue relying on the discourse of power in international relations. From an ethical standpoint, the will to power had to give way to empathy and compassion, without which a stable world order was not possible.
Discussions were taking place at UN Headquarters in New York at the same time as the Twin Towers bombings took place. The South African author who took part in the discussions, Nadine Gordimer, made the point that even more sophisticated weapons did not keep a nation safe.
The question is whether or not we will engage in sincere intercivilizational dialogue before new tragedies happen. Or will we continue with the status quo in terms of politics and culture while ignoring the dangers that lie ahead?