No Civilization/s: Unity and Continuity in Diversity; or, Multilateral and Entropic Paradigms for the World Today and Tomorrow
Rent from DeepDyveA Holistic Introduction
We are living in confusing and dangerous times. The buzzword these days is "globalization"—as though that only started a few years ago. That widespread opinion leads to equally widespread confusion and misguided political practice. A related widely used term is that of ''civilization,'' or worse, distinct "civilizations" and ''cultures'' or ''ethnicities." For instance, the United Nations declared 2001 as the Year of Dialogue of Civilizations and the United Nations University organized a major international conference in Tokyo, which I attended. My thesis was that there are no distinct or even pristine civilizations (plural), nor have there ever been. These terms are confusing, even dangerous, particularly since the events of September 11, 2001. Civilization (singular) came into use to distinguish it from barbarism and [End Page 225] social evolution. The notion of distinct major civilizations has become popular especially since the nineteenth century, to distinguish one from another, and especially ''the West" from ''the Rest"—to use Samuel Huntington's terms in his widely successful The Clash Of Civilizations. Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain never tires of declaring that he and U.S. President George Bush, who has also used the same term, are defending ''civilization" (a singular and barely disguised reference to Western civilization) through the use of advanced-technology airplanes and bombs, as well as depleted-uranium and cluster bombs, dropped on the poor, and accompanying Big Brother ''war is peace" propaganda and obfuscation, including downright lies. One obfuscation, as important as it is hardly noted, is the abrogation of one of the greatest achievements of civilization: international law and its codification and institutionalization a half century ago at the Nuremberg Trials, the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations, and so on (be it noted, all brought into being by the very big powers who are now destroying them). Those who do not command these military and world-media weapons have recourse instead to the "poor man's weapons" of car bombs, suicide bombers, machetes, and ''ethnic cleansing." Now—and already for decades by the major powers—the dialogue seems to be about the use of the former by the rich against the poor in Vietnam and countless other instances.
To claim that different civilizations did and still do exist is not only historically and scientifically confusing but also dangerous. To claim to compare civilizations is misguided and therefore misleading. Even if it were possible to identify and compare civilizations, which it is not because they do not exist, the very attempt to do so only evades and confuses the issue. For instance, former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in his address to the United Nations in 1988 called for ''unity in diversity.'' Apparently, the United Nations did not listen very well, since instead it is still today going on about nonexisting separate civilizations. Alas, this problem with comparisons applies not only to nonexistent civilizations, but also to societies, cultures, ethnicities, and especially races. Apart from the tendency and danger of attributing and comparing characteristics that they do not, in fact, have, the very comparative method must lead to misleading results when it is applied to units or entities that are supposed to have always been or be separate. In reality, however, all have been and still are so related to each [End Page 226] other that some of their supposedly separate characteristics in fact result from their relation itself and/or from some influence that is common to them both or all. All social life is characterized by such relations, connections, and commonalities throughout world history. Moreover, before we can usefully distinguish differences, let alone understand which differences really make a difference, we need to identify the connections and commonalities from which to distinguish any differences.
All were historically shaped and are today reshaped...
