Candles in the Dark: A New Spirit for a Plural World

Foreword

FOREWORD Many wise words are spoken and written about the state of the world and of humanity in the dawn of this new age. It seems that millennial visions are no less prevalent in our times than they were a thousand years ago. What we see, at first glance, is their heterogeneity and incongruity. Few of them take a complex, holistic approach to the world and its problems. Few offer a universal cure for its ills. Although some of them purport to do this, they are, in fact, unable to offer even a moderately coherent view of the state of contemporary civilization and of the place of human beings-free individuals and co-creators of a unique history that cannot be repeated. According to some thinkers, history is already finished-all its enigmas revealed. They say nothing can overturn the victory of traditional liberal values. Others see an imminent clash of civilizations , of mutually irreconcilable cultural and religious groups, at the root of current local conflicts in different parts of the world. These visions predict that major non-Western groups-while taking advantage of the so-called Western modernization-will, in fact, never accept it and will even fight against it in the interest of maintaining their own cultural and religious identities, frequently using their opponent's weapons. As the 20th century fades into history, we cannot avoid experiencing, often painfully, sorrow for the loss of many traditional values, unquestioned or taken for granted until now. In this dawning period, vividly familiar images of an integrated humanity, rooted in the safe structures of family, religious communities, and traditional societal forms appear before our eyes. However, these images cease to be a life-giving inspiration or a guide to follow. The new age, the Euro-American age, has developed a coherent value system for human coexistence which is recognized as a foundation of coexistence among nations. It embraces the idea xix VACLAV HAVEL of human rights and freedoms, based on respect for the individual human being and his or her dignity, as well as democracy and all its commonly recognized characteristics. How long will this age endure? This value system is being challenged today from many directions. There is a yearning for a rebirth of authentic authority and authentic local traditions. There is justified skepticism and disappointment with the inadequate functioning of the present systems of government, which suffers from an absence of authority of a positive nature. Together with these indications of crisis we observe an ever more perceptible absence of a transcendental aspiration to which everything on earth strives. This absence is leading to a gradual collapse of the foundations of human values. A person devoid of respect and regard for a transcendent authority is not a freer person: freedom can be neither experienced nor realized without exercising this responsibility. But, if today this human responsibility is inadequately exercised, it is not the failing of democracy, it is, on the contrary , democracy's challenge. In contrast, dictatorship does not open any space for the expression of this human responsibility and consequently cannot create a space which can give rise to the authentic authority that is so badly needed. For that reason, every one of us who perceives the dawn of the millennium and the Euro-American modem age as a challenge should not hasten to prepare a funeral for democracy and freedom by accepting an ostensibly terminal diagnosis dignified and craftily justified by cold intellectual luminaries. Globalization and the obvious shrinking of our planet shift the discussion of elementary values that can and should be shared by everyone to a new plane. Artificial contrasts are often made between East and West, simplified as the contrast between the authoritarian systems (or dictatorships), allegedly anchored in the religious systems of the East, and the allegedly foreign democracy and foreign canon of human rights, imposed by a self-important West. xx FOREWORD If we turn to the fathers of Eastern thought, Confucius among others, we find profound passages defining real authority. Its norms have nothing in common with the norms of dictators or other men of brute force. Authority, whether that of the father of a family or the leader of a state, is, for Confucius, a metaphysically anchored gift, which does not draw its force from the strength of its instruments of power but from its heightened responsibility. Although, the two value systems of the East and the West...